Entangled in Red Tape

The jobs are waiting for Burmese refugees, but the road to them is full of obstacles

While working on a university graduation thesis at Mae La refugee camp in Thailand’s Tak Province, Burmese student Moe Zaw Oo interviewed a 20-year-old woman resident who ventured outside every day to earn 50 baht (US $1.50) laboring on a nearby farm.

“When she returned to the camp in the evening she also had to sell vegetables for the farmer. She was expected to sell them all or lose her job,” said Moe Zaw Oo.

Unknown numbers of refugees slip out of Mae La and other camps in this way to work illegally on Thai farms and estates for as little as 40 baht ($1.20) a day, risking arrest and deportation.

“The Thai authorities tend to turn a blind eye,” said one camp administration official. “Local businessmen actually come looking for cheap labor at planting and harvest times.”

These officially unacknowledged workers in the grey area of the Thai labor market make a sizeable contribution to the agricultural economy of the Thai-Burmese border region. Thailand’s former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a successful businessman, recognized the value of this “hidden” labor force and signaled readiness to work out a way to incorporate it somehow into the Thai economy.

The 2006 military coup that removed him from power wiped the idea from the political agenda. But Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrat-led government has indicated interest in an arrangement that would allow refugees to leave the camps on a temporary basis to take up employment outside.

Initial negotiations are now under way between Thai government ministries and organizations concerned with refugee support and labor rights. The proposal to allow refugees to work outside the camps is straightforward enough but raises one potential sticking point—the status of registered refugees within the complicated structure of laws and regulations covering Thai labor rights and obligations, health and social security.

The proposal landed on ministers’ desks just as the Thai government was preparing new legislation covering the employment of Burmese migrants working illegally in Thailand—so-called “irregulars.”

The legislation is rooted in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Thai and Burmese in June 2003, under which “irregular” migrants would be allowed to work legally in Thailand after their nationality had been verified by the Burmese authorities. The “verified” migrants would be issued with temporary Burmese passports and Thai visas.

The arrangement was stalled by Burmese government demands for verification to be carried out at offices inside Burma. It took five years before the two governments could agree on the establishment of nationality verification offices in three Burmese border towns—Tachilek, Myawaddy and Kawthaung

In July this year, the arrangement finally came into effect. But, as so often in the complicated world of bureaucracy, “the devil lies in the details.”

In an attempt to explain the new procedure to migrant workers, employers and local labor offices, the Bangkok office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is distributing a “migrant information note,” describing the step-by-step process.

Employers and migrant job applicants have to follow an exhaustive 13-step procedure, involving the completion of a small pile of forms, which travel a circuitous route through several offices, finally arriving on the desks of nationality verification officials in Burma.

The Burmese authorities check the applications and draw up a list of migrants who qualify for nationality verification. The candidates, together with their prospective employers (or nominees), then report to one of the Thai Border Operational Centers which have been established in Chiang Rai, Mae Sot and Ranong.

The offices issue the migrants with documents to support their applications for Burmese temporary passports, which they submit personally at the Myanmar (Burma) Temporary Passport Issuance Office in either Tachilek, Myawaddy or Kawthaung.

Back once more in Thailand, the Burmese migrants reenter the maze of Thai bureaucracy, finally reporting back to their prospective employers with valid visas and work permits.

Thai and Burmese fees amount to more than $70, excluding cross-border transport fares.