Thai Children With Foreign Fathers Don't Have Full Citizenship Rights In Thailand

[hgma]

I do like your assumption rule....very good....could be a life saver you know around here!

I learned the hard way......never ever assume anything around in Thailand...it could cost you your life.

(in this sample its only meant voor road traffic assumption)

Watch your back, without being paranoide.

hgma

One should never "assume" anything, especially when dealing with foreign matters. (As we say in the army, "assume" makes an "ass" of "u" and "me")

Just because the rules are one way back home, doesn't mean every other country in the world follows the same rules. In Canada (it used to be anyways), if you were born on Canadian soil, you had Canadian citizenship, period. If you were on a ship that was in Canadian waters, same thing. If you were on a ship that had a Canadian Captain, same thing.

Once obtained, it pretty much takes a ruling by the Supreme Court to have your citizenship stripped.

My father was born Canadian, but raised in the USA. On his 18th birthday he had to choose which country to reside in (he picked Canada, long, long before the whole Vietnam thing started up).

Obviously, Thailand has it's own set of rules regarding citizenship. However, I hardly doubt they are going to fill massage parlours with female undercover policewoman, hoping to catch a couple of luk kreungs so they can deport them.

The Kingdom obviously had reason to make these regulations, and at the time, they probably did it with the best intentions of the Kingdom in mind.

[Arkady]

The more common situation that interests TV posters more is where children are Thai citizens by virtue of being born to a Thai mother whether on Thai soil or abroad, a category of eligibility that was only introduced in the early or mid 90s - before that a Thai woman had to remain not legally married in Thailand to her foreign partner, if she wanted Thai nationality for her children, and tell the district office that the father of their child was a Thai man who had unfortunately disappeared before she could note down his ID card details.

Do you know this for a fact? Any online reference you can point out?

That has been my hypothesis all along and the wording by which the 1992 Thai Nationality Act is presented in many law firms' and official websites is consistent with that (i.e. said 1992 Thai Nationality Act has much changed the previous situation and granted Thai citizenship in a lot more cases than previously).

Anyway, isn't it interesting to see how in Thailand very rarely old pieces of laws are amended to conform to the new and conflicting bits..?

I remember old Thailand hands with Thai wives in the late 80s and early 90s telling me that they had had to structure there families in this way to get Thai nationality for their children. They got married abroad and/or in Thailand under local custom only but did not register the marriages in Thailand. The missus had to go and register the births without disclosing the foreign father which meant saying that the father was a Thai man but he had disappeared (a not uncommon event here) and she only knew his nickname or some such. (Not registering the marriage in Thailand and keeping quiet about the foreigner was also essential for the wife to own land until the 1999 Land Act gave Thai women with foreign spouses the same land owning rights as Thai men.) I can’t find any direct online reference to back this up. However, the reference below suggests that the bloodline basis for nationality in the original law of 1913 was only through a Thai father. This might not have been too much of a problem because any one born in Thailand was also entitled to Thai citizenship (except hill tribes of course). In those days Western countries had similar nationality laws and UK law even stripped women of British nationality automatically, if they married foreigners.

http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/pu...ginier-ch4.html

“The earliest policy affecting hill tribes is the first Nationality Act of 1913, which granted Thai citizenship based on bloodline (Thai father) and territorial basis (born in Thailand), thus replacing previous customary laws. A first national census in 1956 failed to include hill tribes and thereby excluded them from Thai nationality, which remained so till 1965 (the nation 2000), thereby setting them apart very early on.”

The problem seems to have come in the early 70s when the Thanom dictatorship, which also bequeaved us the FBA, issued a decree that had the effect of discontinuing the right of citizenship to those born on Thai soil specifically to block the children of Vietnamese refugees from getting citizenship, including those born to Vietnamese fathers and Thai mothers. The reference below is rather muddled but it provides the gist of what must have happened. The date of the decree is clearly wrong because Thanom was booted out in 1973. I think the decree must have taken place in 1972 or 1973. Thanom staged a coup against his own government in 1971 and his revolutionary decrees, including the FBA all date from 1971 to 1973. Anyway this decree seems to have left bloodline through a Thai father as in the 1913 act the only route to Thai citizenship. (If the decree had been enacted 30 years earlier most of the Thai-Chinese who are the most vocal proponents of the FBA and Thai only land rights might not even be citizens today.) I am sure the concept of bloodline through a Thai mother was certainly not in the 1965 act and was only introduced in the 1992 act. To be sure you would need to refer the Thai version of the 1965 act.

http://www.hmongnet.org/hmong-au/thaihmg.htm

“Before 1972, Hmong in certain areas were granted Thai citizenship and issued with identity cards, except for those in isolated settlements which were not surveyed by officials, or those who were not eligible for political reasons. When Gen. Thanom Kittikhachon took over the government of Thailand in 1977, the new Administration issued Proclamation No.337 to the effect that it would have to withdraw the citizenship of all those persons whose loyalty to the Thai nation was in doubt. It was aimed mainly at the Vietnamese minority in Thailand who were suspected of supporting the Communist Hanoi regime with subversive activities.”

[otton]

I remember old Thailand hands with Thai wives in the late 80s and early 90s telling me that they had had to structure there families in this way to get Thai nationality for their children. They got married abroad and/or in Thailand under local custom only but did not register the marriages in Thailand. The missus had to go and register the births without disclosing the foreign father which meant saying that the father was a Thai man but he had disappeared (a not uncommon event here) and she only knew his nickname or some such. (Not registering the marriage in Thailand and keeping quiet about the foreigner was also essential for the wife to own land until the 1999 Land Act gave Thai women with foreign spouses the same land owning rights as Thai men.) I can’t find any direct online reference to back this up. However, the reference below suggests that the bloodline basis for nationality in the original law of 1913 was only through a Thai father. This might not have been too much of a problem because any one born in Thailand was also entitled to Thai citizenship (except hill tribes of course). In those days Western countries had similar nationality laws and UK law even stripped women of British nationality automatically, if they married foreigners.

http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/pu...ginier-ch4.html

“The earliest policy affecting hill tribes is the first Nationality Act of 1913, which granted Thai citizenship based on bloodline (Thai father) and territorial basis (born in Thailand), thus replacing previous customary laws. A first national census in 1956 failed to include hill tribes and thereby excluded them from Thai nationality, which remained so till 1965 (the nation 2000), thereby setting them apart very early on.”

The problem seems to have come in the early 70s when the Thanom dictatorship, which also bequeaved us the FBA, issued a decree that had the effect of discontinuing the right of citizenship to those born on Thai soil specifically to block the children of Vietnamese refugees from getting citizenship, including those born to Vietnamese fathers and Thai mothers. The reference below is rather muddled but it provides the gist of what must have happened. The date of the decree is clearly wrong because Thanom was booted out in 1973. I think the decree must have taken place in 1972 or 1973. Thanom staged a coup against his own government in 1971 and his revolutionary decrees, including the FBA all date from 1971 to 1973. Anyway this decree seems to have left bloodline through a Thai father as in the 1913 act the only route to Thai citizenship. (If the decree had been enacted 30 years earlier most of the Thai-Chinese who are the most vocal proponents of the FBA and Thai only land rights might not even be citizens today.) I am sure the concept of bloodline through a Thai mother was certainly not in the 1965 act and was only introduced in the 1992 act. To be sure you would need to refer the Thai version of the 1965 act.

http://www.hmongnet.org/hmong-au/thaihmg.htm

“Before 1972, Hmong in certain areas were granted Thai citizenship and issued with identity cards, except for those in isolated settlements which were not surveyed by officials, or those who were not eligible for political reasons. When Gen. Thanom Kittikhachon took over the government of Thailand in 1977, the new Administration issued Proclamation No.337 to the effect that it would have to withdraw the citizenship of all those persons whose loyalty to the Thai nation was in doubt. It was aimed mainly at the Vietnamese minority in Thailand who were suspected of supporting the Communist Hanoi regime with subversive activities.”

It appears BAF has been right all along, this has been his hypothesis from post #21.

P.S. The similar UK law you mentioned AFAIK has been in effect only from 1870 to 1914 and, with 100% certainty, not after 1948.