Thai government urged to deter new-round migrants registry

BANGKOK, October 10 (TNA) - Thailand's sub-committee on the integrated management of immigrant workers has suggested that the government deter its new-round registration of illegal immigrant workers but speed up finding out appropriate measures to import legal migrant workforces instead for the sake of national security in the long run. Prawit Kiangpol, Director-General of the Thai Ministry of Labour's Department of Employment, told reporters that the sub-committee agreed on the suggestion at its Tuesday's meeting in Bangkok and also called for the government's deportation of existing illegal immigrant workers to their home countries if they failed to come out for an official nationality verification service which ends on December 14, 2012. An activist of the Migrant Working Group, Adisorn Kerdmongkol, meanwhile, expressed his support for the sub-committee's suggestion, but proposing that the Thai government's nationality verification service for the existing illegal immigrant workers be extended for another 6 months to one year, reasoning that illegal immigrant workers who are deported may sneak into Thailand again, which will cause more problems to the nation. According to official figures, about 1.3 million of illegal immigrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia, out of a total of some 1.7 million of them, have already applied for the Thai government's nationality verification service so far. (TNA)