Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s initiative to launch a new department to tackle immigration issues is welcome, if not long overdue.
If approved, the new department will have wide-ranging responsibilities related to national security, public welfare, and legal rights for all residents, both Thais and foreigners.
These include matters such as residency permits, work authorisation, citizenship applications, and civil registration.
The Interior Ministry will ask the cabinet and parliament to pass the law sometime this year.
Under the proposal, all state agencies under other agencies such as the Police Immigration Bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the department that handles political refugees in the National Security Council, the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, which handles human trafficking, will move to work under a new department under the Interior Ministry.
Experts and activists who view immigration policy as hawkish, disarrayed, and outdated have welcomed the idea of having a separate department to handle all immigration matters.
Currently, immigration policies in Thailand are treated as national security issues, supervised by the National Security Office (NSO) and implemented by the immigration police.
Under the current scope of the NSO, illegal entrants are considered a “threat” to national security and are primarily subjected to incarceration and deported.
Within such a hawkish direction, it makes it harder for the Thai government to deal with complex issues such as asylum seekers and political refugees.
This can be seen with the issue of Myanmar political refugees. Right after the coup in February 2021, many political refugees were deported to Myanmar as requested by the Myanmar military government.
During the Prayut Chan-o-cha government, Thailand sent them back on the grounds of violating the immigration law.
Such a martial attitude continues despite the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act 2022 becoming active two years ago. Look no further than the deportation of about 40 Uyghurs to China early this year.
The Thai civilian-elected government stuck with the immigration law while ignoring the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act 2022, which bans the country from sending political refugees back to their original countries.
Mr Anutin’s initiative is welcomed as a fresh approach that is overdue. However, the government cannot assume that workforce restructuring and a new department will be a magic pill that cures all problems.
Real effort is required, as is a broader understanding of the issue. The government and lawmakers must adopt a new outlook and policy that treats immigration as a border movement issue, not national security.
Amidst all this, rampant people smuggling and the influx of illegal entrants who run proxy businesses and work illegally in Thailand is evidence of ineffective immigration monitoring and corruption among officials.
Without tackling corruption among officials, immigration problems will never go away.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/