EDITORIAL
The vow this week by police to get to the bottom of a Vietnamese-run extortion gang is welcome but not actually reassuring.
The promise came after the brutal murder of a suspected mafia leader by illegal Vietnamese workers who supposedly tired of the man attempting to shake them down for money. Police say the killers butchered him. Officers detained four men accused of the murder. But Bangkok's deputy police chief said both the alleged gang leader and the illegal workers were living in Thailand thanks to bribes paid to police.
This honest statement by Pol Maj Gen Thitirat Nongharnpitak, Metropolitan Police Bureau deputy commissioner, is at the core of the problem. The vast majority of illegal aliens stay beyond the reach of the Immigration Bureau and Department of Employment in a cosy financial arrangement with the police.
A clean-up of foreign gangs preying on illegal workers can only occur if police turn themselves in. Judging by the past few decades, the chances of this are slim. The number of illegal aliens in Thailand has grown substantially. Authorities have been overwhelmed in recent years by an influx of illegal workers from neighbouring countries. That is barely the start of the problem.
The truth is the traditional Thai culture of welcoming strangers, along with the giddy success of tourism promotion, has run up against the law of unintended consequences. Among millions of honest visitors and foreign workers have come many desperate people, and thousands of criminals.
Over the years, police records and news stories show African and American drug traffickers, Middle East smugglers, European human traffickers and Asian gangs and their mafioso have been involved in dozens of illegal activities, many quite horrendous.
Many foreign groups are overseen by a network of exploiters _ violent criminals "protecting" illegal immigrants. Often, such protection rackets have their roots in local police units. According to Pol Maj Gen Thitirat Nongharnpitak, police were willing to ignore the presence of every illegal Vietnamese immigrant, at a rate of 500 baht per month per head. The police worked with the Vietnamese "mafia" running the protection racket. The Vietnamese man found dismembered last week was allegedly the leader of a protection racket who shook down fellow Vietnamese one time too many.
The solution to finding illegal foreigners and regulating them must start with the protection racket.
But it is questionable whether the police are up to the task. Their status as insiders who profit from "protecting" foreigners means it is generally in their interest to ignore organised criminals, and punish simple workers who are relatively innocent and often victimised.
The solution conceivably lies in a special taskforce under labour and immigration authorities.
Manpower is an obvious problem, but the taskforce would work with much information that is public knowledge, such as where to find foreign overstayers, suspected criminals and illegal aliens. Undocumented foreigners often are dupes of protection rackets, but illegal residency is not a victimless crime.
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/03/27/tame-trade-in-illegal-aliens/
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