Thai government urged to offer amnesty to illegal migrants and their employers

10 Comments

1. 

   Issan John

   Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 10:12 am

   Yesterday, reportedly “PM Prayut Chan-o-cha said the authorities will allow undocumented migrant workers to obtain a temporary ID card in order to offer them a reprieve during the ongoing virus outbreak.”

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2. 

   James Pate

   Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 11:08 am

   Amnesty for the workers! Nothing for the employers!

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3. 

   John Brown

   Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 11:52 am

   This doesn’t work unless they also lockdown strictly (a “scientific lockdown”) and take away illegal migrants’ and their employers’ and traffickers’ incentives to carry on – which an amnesty on its own only bolsters.

   In situations where people are willing to slightly add to collective cost in order to obtain large personal benefit, what’s necessary is to re-design the inventive model correctly – not just add or remove punitive elements based on political climate. A general amnesty will not help unless there is either an accompanying deterrent or deprival or opportunity to help funnel the flow. Otherwise you end up incentivizing people to aim not for amnesty but for continuing to evade public health requirements and taking amnesty as the backup plan when caught.

   A correctly-implemented and -enforced, only-essential services-allowed lockdown not only fixes outbreaks at any scale rapidly (exponentially – at the inverse rate of unchecked transmission), it also breaks the supply chain incentive to continue smuggling in illegal workers, as the transport would become highly visible and the end result fruitless anyway (there is no drought on work and pay).

   This only works temporarily, of course, while the lockdown is in place. But after outbreaks are fully contained, the amnesty would also need to end for other reasons.

   We should be so lucky that policy-makers can arrive to a systemic view of the landscape they’re trying to re-design.

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   • 

     Issan John

     Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 4:07 pm

     I think you’d be pushing your luck trying to justify a lockdown to “break the supply chain incentive to continue smuggling in illegal workers”!

     I realise you’re keen on a lockdown to stop the virus spreading, and if it could be justified for that reason I’m sure people would accept it (IF), but I can’t see any way that anyone’s going to accept a lockdown if they think it’s being done (even in part) to stop illegal immigrants being smuggled in.

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4. 

   John

   Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 12:01 pm

   They have to use illegal workers because the legally registered ones are too busy running their own businesses.

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5. 

   Toby Andrews

   Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 2:51 pm

   I’m guessing now, but I think they had amnesty anyway.
   Does a building site full of workers ever have an inspection? I doubt it.
   There are so many foreign workers in Thailand that there must be some sort of bribe system in play.
   The Thais will not enforce laws that prevents them using cheap labour from over the borders, legal or not.
   If the Thais are paid enough, they will even let a rich man’s son kill a policeman and escape justice. Witness the Red Bull outrage, and still not arrested – not even on the Interpol wanted list!
   Thais have the morality of lizards.

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   • 

     Issan John

     Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 4:11 pm

     NO, Toby A, there’s no amnesty.

     Some of your comments are very fair, but as always you destroy any validity you have with your broad brush racism and bitterness because they wouldn’t let you stay here any more.

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     • 

       Toby Andrews

       Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 6:25 pm

       Yes two days after I crossed the border to Cambodia, Thailand closed the border.
       Just to keep me out!!!
       The order must have been out, as soon as that person leaves – shut the borders!
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       lol

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       • 

         Issan John

         Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 10:28 pm

         I doubt it was “just to keep [you] out”, Toby – not extending your visa was probably more than sufficient.

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           Toby Andrews

           Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 11:08 pm

           I never tried to extend my visa. I saw what the Thais would likely do and fled.