Immigration Crackdown

[george]

Immigration crackdown

Immigration police arrested 280,937 foreigners who worked or entered Thailand illegally in 2003.

Authorities rounded up 189,486 people on illegal work charges and another 91,451 on charges of illegal entry at the country's airports and 54 border checkpoints, said national police spokesman Maj-General Pongsapat Pongcharoen

A total of 168,414 Burmese nationals were arrested, 155,633 for working here illegally and the rest for illegal entry.

Of the 78,438 Cambodians arrested 54,738 were working illegally in the Kingdom. The third largest group was Laotians, with 19,115 nationals arrested.

Most of those arrested were repatriated to their home countries.

Pongsapat said that immigration police were to be more strict this year in examining visitors, whose numbers are predicted by tourism officials to swell to an all-time high of 12 million in 2004.

"The national police chief has instructed immigration police at all checkpoints to intensify their screening, especially among suspect groups," Pongsapat said.

In June, Labour Minister Suwat Liptapanlop announced there were more than one million illegal workers in Thailand, many of them posing "a threat to national security".

Non-governmental organisations, which expressed alarm over what they described as a major crackdown in 2003, say there are up to 2 million legal and illegal foreign workers in Thailand, the vast majority of them from Burma.

--AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, THE NATION 2004-01-04

[george]

Bangkok Post on the same subject:

280,000 migrants nabbed

Immigration authorities last year arrested more than 280,000 illegal alien migrants, most of whom were Burmese nationals, said the deputy chief of the Immigration Police Bureau.

Pol Maj-Gen Pongsapat Pongcharoen said of the 280,937 illegal migrants arrested at 54 checkpoints across the country, 189,486 were illegal migrant workers and the rest were illegalmigrants.

He said most of the illegal migrant workers were from Burma, Cambodia and Laos.

Of the 91,451 illegal migrants, 52,781 were Burmese, 23,700 Cambodians and 6,098 Lao.

Of the 189,468 illegal alien workers, 115,633 were Burmese, 54,738 Cambodians and 19,115 Lao.

Of more than 20 million people who entered Thailand last year, 1.5 million were Malaysian nationals and 1.1 million were Japanese.

--Bangkok Post 2004-01-05