Tales from migrant exodus put crisis in focus

In a sweaty hall near the Thai border, rows of people sit, exhausted. 
A woman shouts locations into a microphone: “Kampong Cham! Prey Veng! For the almost 60 people in the hall returning from Thailand at the migrant Poipet Transit Centre, this is the last stop before heading home.
“Banteay Meanchey!” the woman shouts through the microphone. There is a sudden commotion as a group of 14 people rush to the exit, their exhaustion replaced by excitement.
They collect their belongings from the pile of luggage at the front of the hall and then head to the buses that will bring them home.
Throughout the day, eight trucks carrying migrants from Thailand have arrived at the centre, part of an exodus sparked last month by fear of punishment in Thailand. Under a new law, passed at the end of June, undocumented workers could be fined up to $3,000 (Bt100,000) and subject to five years of imprisonment. Their employers, meanwhile, could be fined $23,571 per undocumented worker.
One of the deportees is Bou Sami, 29, who arrived in Poipet barefoot and without any possessions. Sami was arrested by Thai police while he was on a walk to buy a snack.
“They handcuffed me and put my hands behind my back,” he says. “Then they kicked me with their boots and my head hit on the concrete, injuring my forehead ... I didn’t get any treatment.”
He points to the large scar on his forehead – a souvenir of the arrest, he says.
Sami says he had applied for a passport in Phnom Penh in June but his employer asked him to return to Thailand before it was ready and to pick it up later. He ended up in a windowless cell, unable to seek help from his employer, who had his work papers.
The exodus has slowed over the past two weeks – after the Thai government suspended the enforcement of fines until the end of the year – but the stories of migrants from the Poipet Transit Centre draw a picture of the many converging vulnerabilities they face.

Children on the move
In search of income to support themselves and their families, many of those crossing the border to work in Thailand are minors, a group at particular risk for exploitation, abuse and trafficking.
One such worker is Nov Pheakdey, 16, who climbs off a truck and is directed to a drop-in centre for children, run by the children’s rights NGO Damnok Tek. The teenager has been working in Bangkok as a construction worker for about a year.
He receives his salary in one lump sum each year, which means that he has to borrow money from his employer to buy anything.
“I came back last year after I got my one-year salary of Bt30,000, so I visited my mother and she asked me for all of my salary for her to build a new house,” he says.
Such an arrangement, according to Barry Jessen, senior project manager at Samaritan’s Purse, is not unusual and leaves migrants open to a host of problems – like “disease through poor living and nutrition”, trafficking and debt.
Pheakdey says he doesn’t have the funds to go back to Thailand, so he plans to train as a mechanic in his hometown in Siem Reap province.
Long Sanrithy, deputy director of Damnok Tek, estimates that minors made up 10 to 15 per cent of the returning migrants.
Many of them left Cambodia with their family, like 17-year-old Chhuom Noy, who worked at a construction site for $147 a month. Her employer lent her $294 to get papers before she returns.
Waiting for her province to be called, her mother, Prak Nhes, 37, holds her 7-month-old grandchild in her arms. After 10 years of living in Thailand on and off, she is returning to Cambodia again.
“None of my three kids ever went to school,” Nhes says. Next to her is her 18-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. “I can’t afford to pay for their study, and in Thailand I can’t send them to school as we’re undocumented.”

Debt and documentation burden
Lack of money is the main factor behind migrants being undocumented. Almost all migrants the Post spoke with complained they were not able to afford passport fees.
Researcher Maryann Bylander found similar results in interviews with returnees in 2014.
“Most migrations [in Chanleas Dai commune near the border] are financed by loans, creating pressure for migrants to find work quickly upon arrival, and routinely resulting in over-indebtedness when migrations fail,” she writes, adding that mass returns only exacerbate debt.
Migrants the Post spoke to paid between approximately $44 and $90 to migrate to Thailand without documents and to get a job there.
Sami, the man arrested by police, said he has been to Thailand three or four times, paying brokers Bt3,000 each time. 
While many returnees say their employers lent them money to come back legally, they add that the amount was either not enough to cover the costs or that they were told by their employers that passport fees would be deducted from their monthly salaries.
A recent announcement by the Labour Ministry clarified that the cost for a normal passport from the Ministry of Interior was $100, and $200 for an expedited one-day passport.
In reality, however, migrants often pay much more. Mean Sopheap, 19, said her employer at Golf Club King Malay had told her he already transferred $824 to an agency in Cambodia for her to get a passport. “He will deduct my salary [of $147 a month] for six months,” she says.
Golf Club King Malay could not be reached for confirmation.
To get more migrant workers documented, Cambodia’s Labour Ministry has announced it will produce travel documents in Thailand equivalent to five-year passports beginning next month and costing $113. 
The number of Cambodian returnees has now dropped back to normal, according to the International Organisation for Migration. But it remains to be seen how many undocumented workers will get papers before the end of the year and what will happen to those who remain undocumented when the harsh punishments go into effect in 2018.