The rise of anti-Myanmar worker sentiment

[reader]

From Khaosod English 

OPINION 

Xenophobia, particularly anti-Burmese sentiment, is spreading in the past few months, particularly on social media in Thailand. Concerned Thai citizens should pause and think as to how we can be part of the solution in mitigating, if not neutralising, such negative bias. If not handled properly and in a timely fashion, the situation could become more toxic and affect not just the relations between the people of the two neighbouring nations but Thai society as well.

When I interviewed Ms Onravee Taengmeesang, a Thai activist who has been working for over a decade to promote warmer ties between people of the two nations, on my weekly Thai-language video programme for Khaosod Thai on Friday, it want greeted by over 1,600 comments on FB, the majority of them expressing dissatisfaction, bias, if not hatred and phobia towards people from Myanmar in Thailand.

“Myanmar is swallowing up Thailand…,” wrote FB user Paiboon Arunthanawanich, in the comment section following the programme. “[Our] medicare budget has to be shared with these aliens. Burmese sell goods in competition with Thais. They bring in Burmese to work here. Look at the places where Thais used to work before… it’s now full of aliens… Then they stage protests, they take away Thai jobs… These problems need to be quickly fixed…”

“Even the world’s Number 1 superpower, America, couldn’t handle migrants. Every country in Europe is beginning to review their policies towards aliens. Local people come first: the national budget, medicine, medical doctors, hospitals, paid by Thai tax payers must first be catered for the Thai people. Those blind optimists and academics should take the 75,000 refugees in and care for them at home,” wrote another comment, by FB user Numnakhon Wanlek.

Continues at

https://www.khaosodenglish.com/featured/2025/02/09/the-rise-of-anti-myanmar-worker-sentiment-among-some-thais/

[vinapu]

familiar non-sense , repeated in countries world over, be it  Afghanis in Iran, Paraguayans in Argentina, Zimbabweans in South Africa and so on. Yet somehow locals are not lining up to take that dirtiest , lowest paid and most dangerous jobs immigrants are supposed to steal from them.

Glad to learn Thailand is part of mainstream bullshit 

[Keithambrose]

7 hours ago, vinapu said:

familiar non-sense , repeated in countries world over, be it  Afghanis in Iran, Paraguayans in Argentina, Zimbabweans in South Africa and so on. Yet somehow locals are not lining up to take that dirtiest , lowest paid and most dangerous jobs immigrants are supposed to steal from them.

Glad to learn Thailand is part of mainstream bullshit 

And UK.

[PeterRS]

I wonder why this topic has become a major one only relatively recently. After all, look at the north of Thailand where there are around 1.5 million of Burmese origin who have been living for many decades - some for centuries, and most from the huge Shan State across the border. For those who do not know much about Myanmar, the Shan State alone is just under four times the size of Switzerland.

Some of the boys rescued from the cave in 2018 were technically illegal Shan immigrants who were granted citizenship after their miraculous rescue. We know also that with the border between the two countries being so long and so porous, illegal Burmese have been crossing it with relative ease. Remember covid in 2022? Thailand had had relatively few cases until a very large cluster was discovered at the main fish market in Samut Sakhon west of Bangkok. About half the 4,000 workers were illegal Burmese with well over half these testing positive. That also led to many calls for immigration curbs, although no call for an end to the corruption which had enabled these illegals to cross.

Yet Thailand's population figures are now getting close to the same crisis levels as seen in Japan and South Korea. Whereas in 1965 the fertility rate was 6.26 and the average age of citizens just 16.2 years, today these figures have plummeted to 1.2 and 40.6. Like it or not, the country is going to be increasingly dependent on immigrant labour for the sort of jobs Thais just will not consider doing.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/thailand-population/