"Thai authorities to help migrant workers renew expired permits", 28 May 2019

Senior officials at the Interior Ministry ... said Thai authorities will review expired permits of 300,000 migrant workers.

Chou Bun Eng, a secretary of state and vice chairwoman of the National Committee for Anti-Human Trafficking, ... met with her Thai counterpart to address issues concerning migrant workers in Thailand. “Thai authorities will renew the expired [pink cards] of about 300,000 migrant workers in Thailand,” Ms Bun Eng said...

She noted that prior to 2017, only 30 percent of one million migrant workers in Thailand were legal. Thai authorities have requested cooperation from Cambodia to prevent illegal border crossings and human trafficking.

According to the National Committee for Counter Trafficking, there were about 1.8 million documented and undocumented migrant workers working overseas in the first six months of 2018, ...

The report said that 1,039,797 were documented workers, while 796,869 lacked legal documents. The migrants were working in Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Labour Ministry spokesman Heng Sour said that there are about 450,000 migrant workers with pink cards, and about 300,000 will renew their validity...

“We are working with the Thai government to consider extending migrant workers’ pink cards from two years to the four years as according to the MoU agreement,” he said.

Soum Chankea, coordinator with rights group Adhoc in Banteay Meanchey province, said migrant workers still cross the border illegally into Thailand and are not prevented by police...