Little evidence remains of the December 2004 tsunami on the
palm-fringed white sand beaches that stretch for 200 kms north from
the Thai resort island of Phuket to the Myanmar border.

International holiday makers have flocked back to one of the
world's top tourist playgrounds rebuilt mainly by migrant labour
from Myanmar less than three years after the disaster levelled
hotels and fishing villages alike, leaving over 8,000 dead and tens
of thousands displaced.

For Aye, a 28-year old Burmese migrant who earns THB 100 (USD 3)
a day as a bricklayer in the resort of Khao Lak, the tsunami
brought tragedy when her younger brother, who worked on the same
building site, died.

"Our boss recognized the tsunami and drove us from the site to
high ground in time. But my brother was collecting building
materials in a pickup with another man and they both drowned," she
says.

"When we came back to the site we saw their bodies laid out on
the beach, but the police told us that we couldn't take them as
they had to be formally identified at the police station. But we
were afraid that they would arrest us if we came back," she
explains.

A year later, encouraged by an older brother from Myanmar and
with help from IOM/Ministry of Public Health community health
workers, Aye went to the Phang Nga Thai Tsunami Victim
Identification (TTVI) morgue to provide a DNA sample and formally
claim her brother's body from hundreds stored in refrigerated
containers – many of them other Burmese migrants whose
families were also too afraid to claim them.

For the estimated 2 million Burmese migrants working both
legally and illegally in Thailand, fear of arrest and deportation
to Myanmar – a country in economic and political turmoil
– is a daily reality. The lack of economic opportunities back
home means that even the worst jobs in Thailand's flourishing
economy are an opportunity that few will pass up.

"If they are deported from (the southern city of) Ranong, they
can usually find a way to come back. But if they are deported from
Mae Sot (further north), there is a much higher risk of being
robbed or ending up as forced labour for the Burmese military,"
says Aye's sympathetic Thai employer in Khao Lak.

Like many Thai employers, he values the Burmese as good workers
whom, he says, work harder and for less money than their Thai
counterparts.

But a complicated and relatively expensive registration process
for migrant workers in Thailand means that many Burmese and their
Thai employers still avoid legal registration – leaving
employers liable to prosecution and workers uninsured and exposed
to potential abuse.

IOM Thailand's labour migration programme manager, Vipunjit
Ketunuti, who manages a USAID-funded IOM project that informs
migrant workers, employers and local government officials about
labour migration law, rights and obligations, says that confusion
and lack of information has led some provincial Thai governments to
introduce new legislation that is actually exacerbating the
problem.

"Employers and migrants who respect Thai law and register with
the authorities should be encouraged and protected. But new
legislation introduced in four border provinces this year to
improve the regulation of migrant workers will likely be
counter-productive," she says.

In Phang Nga, where Aye works, and on the holiday island of
Phuket for example, registered migrants are now subject to an 8:00
pm to 6:00 am curfew. If they are picked up by the police at any
time without their identity papers, they risk immediate
deportation.

They are forbidden to travel outside the province in which they
work without special permission and are not allowed to drive cars
or motorcycles. They are also banned from gathering in groups of
more than five people and not allowed to own mobile phones without
the prior approval of their employer.

"The legislation requires employers to only hire registered
workers and to provide them with decent accommodation. But while
employers may face small fines for non-compliance, legally
registered migrants are now theoretically at greater risk of
deportation than before," says Ketunuti.

For many low-paid Burmese migrant workers already reluctant to
pay an annual registration fee that represents over a month's wages
and wary of using the Thai public health services to which it
entitles them, that may tip the balance between working legally or
illegally in Thailand.

In addition, few legal channels exist for Burmese workers
wanting to work in Thailand, so most enter the country illegally.
Thailand has not offered irregular migrants the opportunity to
register and regularize their status since 2004.

Migrants who are already registered and have work permits are
allowed to renew them annually for THB 3,800 (USD 112), of which
THB 600 is for a medical check up and THB 1,300 for health
insurance.

But many Burmese migrants rely on middlemen to process their
applications, increasing the cost by as much as 50 per cent –
representing another disincentive to renew their work permits each
year. "Some unscrupulous employers also see an upside in hiring
irregular migrants who exist on the margins of Thai society, living
with the risk of summary deportation and powerless to negotiate
their terms and conditions of employment," says IOM regional labour
migration specialist, Federico Soda.

But the Thai authorities are acutely aware of the social, public
health and other risks associated with marginalizing some 1.5
million irregular migrants and their families living in Thailand
and driving them underground, according to Ketunuti.

"Marginalizing a generation of migrant kids by excluding them
from education or excluding migrant communities from national
preparedness plans to combat a bird flu pandemic or a second
tsunami are now widely recognized as issues that have to be
addressed by government," she notes. "IOM's migrant rights project
in Thailand is designed to support government efforts to cope with
these challenges. By bringing together government officials,
employers and migrant workers through sharing information and
building trust, we believe that we are contributing to a more
transparent system that will eventually optimize the obvious
economic benefits of labour migration, while protecting the human
rights of migrants and their families to an acceptable
international standard," she adds.