This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

201016Z Apr 06

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 10 BANGKOK 002293 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR G/TIP, DRL/IL, CA/FPP, CA/VO/KCC, EAP/MLS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ELAB KCRM CVIS KFRD SMIG PHUM TH
SUBJECT: LABOR EXPORT IS BIG BUSINESS IN THAILAND 
 
REF:  Bangkok 1695 
 
¶1. (U) Summary:  The recent experiences of Thai farm workers in the 
U.S., combined with evidence of widespread fraud in the H2A visa 
process (reftel), highlight the plight of Thai workers abroad who 
are frequently exploited by labor supply agencies (both Thai and 
foreign) that charge heavy and illegal recruitment fees.  Workers, 
academics and government officials indicate that effectively all of 
Thai laborers' first and often second year earnings go to repaying 
initial recruitment fees of their employment contracts.  In many 
cases, workers do not receive the lengthy contracts and terms they 
are promised, and return home in significant debt.  In the worst 
cases, they are shipped abroad again to pay off their recruiting 
debt, have their entire salaries confiscated, or are vulnerable to 
being trafficked.  End Summary. 
 
¶2. (U) Recent labor problems experienced by Thai workers in the U.S. 
and other countries, combined with evidence of widespread fraud in 
the U.S. H2A visa process (reftel), have highlighted the plight of 
Thai workers abroad who have been exploited by labor supply agencies 
(both Thai and foreign) charging heavy and illegal recruitment fees. 
 The total number of Thai workers abroad ranges from 350,000 to 
400,000.  Media stories in the past year have noted strikes by Thai 
workers protesting conditions in Taiwan, and groups of Thai workers 
in the U.S. fleeing farms in North Carolina to seek work elsewhere 
or, in some cases, to apply for T visas as victims of trafficking. 
Although the number of Thai guest workers in the U.S. (approx. 
8,000) is small compared to Thai workers in other countries (such as 
Taiwan, with over 100,000), interviews with workers, academics and 
government officials suggest that recruitment agencies are using 
similar tactics, regardless of destination, to ensnare workers in a 
cycle of false job promises and long-term indebtedness. 
 
¶3. (U) The export of Thai labor is not without benefits - studies 
suggest that annual remittances from Thai workers abroad total 
almost USD 1 billion per year.  However, returned workers, academics 
and former and current government officials indicate that Thai 
laborers abroad cannot pay off their initial recruitment fees until 
at least the second or third year of their employment contracts.  In 
many cases, workers do not receive the lengthy contracts and terms 
they are promised, and return home to indebtedness and/or loss of 
collateral for the loans they took out to pay an agent to arrange 
for work abroad.  (In the case of the U.S., the H2 visa category for 
temporary, seasonal work does not allow for multiple year issuances. 
 U.S. agents apply for extensions of validity for these workers, but 
there is no guarantee that they will be issued.)  In the worst 
cases, workers are shipped abroad again to pay off their recruiting 
debt (while incurring a new debt), have their entire salaries 
confiscated, or are vulnerable to being trafficked. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
FORMER MP RECOUNTS EARLIER INVESTIGATION 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) The prevalence of exported Thai labor is not new, but 
expanded immediately following the 1997 financial crisis and the 
ensuing high unemployment rate.  The first high-profile effort to 
investigate labor recruitment fraud was led in 2001 by the 
then-chair of the House Labor Committee in Thailand's Parliament, 
Premsak Piayura.  Emboffs met the former MP at his monastic retreat 
on the outskirts of Bangkok on March 28.  Premsak had been in the 
headlines earlier that month for quitting his position in PM 
Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party, refusing to run in the recent snap 
elections of April 2, and choosing to enter temporary religious 
service as a monk. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Seated outside his prayer hut in the forested retreat, 
Premsak outlined the wide-ranging web of labor recruiting agents, 
sub-agents and foreign companies that his labor committee determined 
had conspired to charge workers massive up-front recruitment fees 
well in excess of legal limits.  The system, he said, had been in 
place for a number of years, but accelerated after the Asian 
financial crisis of 1997 when rural workers were desperate to find 
work abroad.  Sub-agents, he said, recruited workers at the village 
level and referred them to district or provincial agents working for 
a recruitment company based in the region or, more likely, operating 
out of Bangkok.  In some provinces, labor officials allowed 
recruiters to set up shop inside provincial government offices.  The 
maximum recruitment fees charged to workers, Premsak said, varied by 
destination country as follows: 
 
Destination Baht     (USD) 
------------------------------------ 
United States 1,000,000    (25,000) 
Canada    300,000     (7,500) 
Taiwan        200,000     (5,000) 
Israel    150,000     (3,750) 
Malaysia     80,000     (2,000) 
 
¶6. (SBU) The recruitment fees Premsak outlined are well in excess of 
the legal limit under Thai law, which allows recruiters to charge no 
more than one month per year of the workers' eventual salary as a 
recruiting fee, plus fixed expenses for passport, transportation, 
medical exam and technical skills test.  The total fees are not 
supposed to exceed 65,000 baht (56,000 for Taiwan).  (For the U.S., 
the U.S. company must pay for transporation and housing.)  Premsak 
said workers were willing to pay excess fees in the belief that they 
could earn wages substantial enough to support their families 
through remittances.  Workers recognized, however, that they would 
spend at least the entire first year of work abroad paying off the 
debt they accumulated to pay the initial recruitment fee. 
 
¶7. (SBU) In most cases, workers pay the fee through loans obtained 
from banks, illegal loan agents or relatives, and by posting their 
house titles or land deeds as collateral.  This did not concern 
workers anticipating multiple-year labor contracts.  Premsak said he 
interviewed workers who were promised minimum three-year contracts 
to work in the U.S., believing they were renewable for two periods 
to comprise a total of nine years' work - clearly illegal under the 
U.S. H2A and H2B visa regulations which allow ten-month contracts, 
extendable up to 36 months.  Workers had been carefully coached to 
lie to visa interviewers and Ministry of Labor officials, believing 
they shared the recruiters' interest in subverting employment laws. 
However, in many cases (including in the U.S.), the workers arrived 
in the destination countries to find different employment 
conditions, worked in different occupations than those for which 
they had been hired (e.g. seafood processing, when they had been 
hired as carpenters), or were frequently moved amongst multiple 
employment sites.  In other cases, workers were never given jobs and 
did not leave Thailand, despite having paid the recruitment fee.  In 
one case, workers who thought they were going to Israel were dumped 
off by plane in Hat Yai in the South of Thailand. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Calling his labor investigation the first real corruption 
scandal of Thaksin's administration, Premsak said the labor system 
flourished under post-1997 economic policies which encouraged the 
import of cheap migrant labor from Burma, Laos and Cambodia for hard 
physical work in Thailand, allowing Thai workers to seek work abroad 
for less strenuous work at higher wages.  To adequately regulate 
labor export, he suggested that, at minimum, relevant labor laws be 
amended to impose much harsher penalties for transgressors and 
require a more stringent vetting process for labor migrants, as well 
as better complaint handling procedures to properly compensate 
cheated workers.  As labor committee chair, he said he had proposed 
such amendments to the 1975 Employment Law, but that "nobody wants 
to touch it, it's a gold mine." 
 
¶9. (SBU) Concerning the labor export systems of other governments, 
Premsak said there appeared to be three broad categories of public 
versus private management of the process: 
 
-- Regulating it strictly on a Government-to- 
   Government basis, whereby governments take on the 
   task of identifying jobs overseas and recruiting 
   workers. 
 
-- Allowing complete private company management of job 
   matching and labor recruitment, which runs the risk 
   of unscrupulous agents flouting the regulations. 
 
-- Having a mixed publicly/privately managed system 
   which allows private companies to manage labor 
   export but with stringent government oversight. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Premsak said he favored the third of these options, which 
is ideally what should be in place in Thailand, but believed that 
the country's recruitment network more closely resembled the second 
'laissez faire' category.  The government was not eager to implement 
a fully government-controlled system (which he said operated in 
Vietnam) due to the immense bureaucracy that would be required to 
manage the petition process, visa process, transportation and other 
requirements. 
 
¶11. (SBU) Premsak, whose term as labor committee chair ended in 
2004, said that he had fended off numerous attempts to replace him 
by fellow parliamentarians who had business ties to the recruitment 
agencies.  In one case, a fellow MP directly owned an agency; in 
others, the agencies were owned by relatives of MPs.  His 
committee's investigative efforts in 2001 succeeded in forcing the 
firing or transfer of eight senior officials in the Ministry of 
Labor, including the then Permanent Secretary and Director General 
of Employment.  These officials, he said, were tolerating the 
recruitment agencies' flouting of labor export regulations, and in 
fact had greatly assisted them by setting up "one-stop recruitment 
centers" inside government-run provincial labor offices.  (One 
academic we interviewed confirmed Premsak's account, saying a major 
piece of evidence in the firings was the presence of large amounts 
of money deposited in officials' bank accounts from labor supply 
companies.)  Premsak said he doubted that the overall system has 
been changed since he stepped down, and expressed disappointment 
that the new labor committee has been less vigilant in following up 
complaints. 
 
-------------------------- 
ACADEMIC STUDIES IN ACCORD 
-------------------------- 
 
¶12. (U) Credible academic studies buttress Premsak's findings.  A 
2000 study by the Asian Research Center for Migration at 
Chulalongkorn University concluded that: "Between 1996-1998, more 
than 15,000 workers were cheated by unlicensed employment recruiting 
agencies and illegal brokers.  This resulted in losses of USD 463 
million ... the most common deceitful practice is to charge workers 
a fee but never find them a job."  Explaining the nature of the 
recruitment system, the study continued: 
"The current system is totally market driven, with minimal input 
from government in regulating private recruitment agencies.  Most 
job seekers comply with agency demands and are willing to pay high 
fees to get jobs.  Many agencies are run by, or backed up by, 
politicians who use their influence to abuse the system, sometimes 
resulting in job seekers being cheated.  There is an urgent need for 
the Thai government to intervene, otherwise only the recruiting 
agencies, and informal money lenders who help to raise the fees for 
the workers, will gain any benefit from labour migration ... illegal 
agencies in Thailand work with illegal agencies, brokers or 
employers in destination countries." 
 
¶13. (U) The Chulalongkorn study found that almost 90 percent of 
workers who were sent to Taiwan paid recruitment fees exceeding the 
legal limit of 56,000 baht.  Many paid 150,000 to 200,000 baht, in 
accord with the estimates given by Premsak.  The study's 
cost/benefit analysis showed that workers who migrated to Taiwan, 
Malaysia and Singapore did not break even until a year into their 
employment contracts.  The study cites the two principal Thai legal 
instruments governing migration for employment (The Immigration Law 
of 1981 and the Law of Employment Recruitment of 1985) as 
insufficient to protect job seekers due to inadequate penalties and 
lack of government oversight of labor supply companies. 
 
¶14. (SBU) A leading labor academic involved in this study told 
Laboff she believed that up to two-thirds of labor recruiting 
agencies in Thailand were owned by politicians or their relatives. 
She said most bureaucrats in the Ministry of Labor were honest, but 
under extreme pressure from senior-level officials to keep the flow 
of laborers moving.  Separately, an NGO labor expert said it was 
well known that the overseas employment department was the only 
place in the Ministry where officials could earn money on the side, 
and that many senior officials did so. 
 
¶15. (SBU) Economists at the Thailand Development Research Institute 
(TDRI) second Premsak's contention that a major economic "push" 
factor encouraging Thais to work abroad is the suppression of wages 
by the importation of cheap migrant workers (mostly Burmese) into 
Thailand.  TDRI researchers told Laboff that Thailand's wage 
elasticity for unskilled workers is extremely low, with the minimum 
wage of less than USD 5 per day relatively constant during 
Thailand's economic recovery from the 1997 crisis.  TDRI calculates 
that the rate of wage increases for unskilled workers in Thailand is 
depressed by 1.14 percent per year for each 500,000 migrant workers 
imported.  The estimated 2 million migrant workers in Thailand 
(mostly Burmese) therefore depress the wage increase rate by 4.56 
percent per year. 
 
¶16. (SBU) Economists hasten to add, however, that migrant workers - 
as in other countries - provide a much needed service to the Thai 
economy by working in physically strenuous industries such as 
fishing or construction that Thais now shy from.  Unskilled or 
low-skilled Thai workers, as a result, are seeking work abroad, 
where they can earn salaries ranging from 3-4 times higher in 
Taiwan, to 10 times higher in Japan, and even more in the U.S.  The 
TDRI study echoed the contention heard elsewhere, however, that 
workers are unlikely to earn back the money spent on recruitment 
fees until the second or third years of their contracts.  Those 
workers who returned after only one year abroad, the study said, 
were no better off than before, and in many cases faced a 
debilitating debt burden. 
 
----------------------------- 
REAL LIFE CASES REVEAL ABUSES 
----------------------------- 
 
¶17. (SBU) On March 26, Laboff and FSN met in Minburi, a suburb of 
Bangkok, with a group of seven workers who are part of a larger 
group of 300 workers who have filed complaints with the Ministry of 
Labor after losing recruitment fees of 100,000 baht each (USD 2,500) 
when promised jobs in North Carolina failed to materialize.  The 
seven workers were recruited in 2004 from a range of rural provinces 
and were assessed the preliminary fee to "pay for H2A visa petitions 
and applications."  The workers were told their contracts would last 
three years, renewable to nine years, and that their salaries would 
reach 100,000 baht a month.  They said their recruiting agency, Siam 
Overseas Co., told them in early 2005 that heavy snow in the U.S. 
had forced cancellation of their farming jobs, and they were asked 
to pay 4,000 additional baht to acquire an H2B visa for work in 
shrimp processing.  The workers said that they refused to pay this 
fee and, asking for a refund of their original fees, the entire 
group of 300 filed complaints with the Ministry of Labor and the 
Royal Thai Police.  One worker who hired a lawyer was able to 
recover his 100,000 baht fee, but the other six workers received bad 
checks (copies of which were provided).  (The Ministry of Labor 
advised Laboff on March 28 that the case is still pending.) 
 
¶18. (SBU) In April 3 interviews in Khon Kaen in Northeast Thailand, 
a group of 10 workers described becoming indebted to a Thai 
husband-wife team that recruited them to work in Taiwan.  The 
husband, who represented 10 different labor supply companies, 
charged labor broker fees of 200,000 baht each while the wife 
operated an illegal finance company that loaned workers the money to 
pay their recruiting fee, with land deeds used as collateral. 
Several of the workers showed pay slips reflecting the usual 15,840 
Taiwanese dollars/month in gross pay (USD 490), with deductions for 
continued agent fees that left the workers with 11,000 net.  Those 
net wages were direct deposited into bank accounts set up by the 
labor broker and his wife, who held the ATM cards and took further 
deductions before remitting the remaining USD 20-50 a month to the 
Thai-based relatives of the workers.  The workers themselves 
returned to Thailand to find themselves in heavy debt due to 4-6 
percent interest charged and compounded monthly on their initial 
recruitment loans. 
 
¶19. (SBU) According to the parliamentary aide who accompanied 
Emboffs to these meetings, the police chief of the labor broker's 
home district of Phuu Kiaw, in Khon Kaen province, was transferred 
from his position after attempting to investigate the case.  Only 
the intervention of Premsak, who represented Khon Kaen as an MP, and 
a sympathetic public prosecutor have brought the labor broker to 
account, and a civil trial is pending on three charges: 1) illegal 
labor recruitment; 2) illegal financial schemes; and 3 ) usury. 
Lawyers representing the workers said they hope to rescind the 
200,000 to 450,000 baht debt burdens of the 10 workers and to regain 
their land titles, but they do not expect jail terms for the 
perpetrators.  The banks involved in creating the workers' deposit 
accounts and providing ATM cards to the labor broker are not being 
charged. 
¶20. (SBU) Also in Khon Kaen, Laboff interviewed two workers recently 
returned from Malaysia, where they said they worked in construction 
jobs for Hong Zi Construction Co., obtained through paying 80,000 
baht fees to a Thai recruiting agency named Sincere International. 
(Both workers provided copies of their employment contracts.) The 
first worker said he went to Malaysia to help pay off a 140,000 baht 
debt he had acquired through working in Taiwan.  Once in Malaysia, 
he said, he was asked to turn over his passport to his employer and 
to sign blank contract documents for the construction firm.  He 
returned to Thailand in March, 2006, after being refused his first 
paycheck.  The second worker, at the same firm, said he was also 
denied pay, had his passport confiscated, and was only provided food 
during a four-month period in which he and fellow workers were 
denied access to telephones and worked only intermittently due to 
heavy rains.  He said he fled the work site in his fifth month and 
was subsequently imprisoned by Malaysian immigration authorities 
until relatives bailed him out.  Lawyers for these two workers said 
they were currently working on cases for 70 other workers who were 
approached for 1 million baht (USD 25K) to work on drilling sites in 
the U.S. 
 
¶21. (SBU) Separately, a visit by Conoff and ICE agent to speak with 
a group of returned workers from Nakhon Phanom province confirmed 
the 1 million baht fee for workers to work in the U.S.  These 
workers paid 350,000 baht (USD 9K) up front to local agents in 
Thailand to be included in the group and were to pay an additional 
650,000 (USD 16K) baht over the next three year's to pay off their 
debt.  Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the workers were met at the 
airport by the U.S. company's agent who took the workers' passports. 
 After waiting for two weeks, the workers were sent to a farm in 
Hawaii, instead of to their authorized job site in Arizona.  After 
their visa expired several months later, the group was picked up by 
DHS/ICE and sent back to Thailand before being able to pay off any 
of their loan.  Some of this group filed a complaint with the 
Ministry of Labor against the Thai agent and got back 300,000 baht 
from the Thai agent after agreeing to drop the complaint.  Others in 
this group did not join the complaint and reportedly paid an 
additional 300,000 baht fee to be included in future group going to 
the U.S.  The Ministry of Labor suspended the Thai agent for a short 
period of time, but the suspension was subsequently lifted and this 
agent continues to be one of the most active recruiters in Thailand. 
 
 
------------------------------------------ 
THAI LABOR OFFICIALS: WE'RE DOING OUR BEST 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶22. (SBU) In a meeting with Laboff, the Director of the Overseas 
Employment Division of the Ministry of Labor, Supat Gukun, defended 
Thai officials' responses to accusations of overseas labor 
exploitation.  Supat, who had just returned from visits to U.S. 
labor recruiters in Los Angeles, said he was unaware of significant 
existing problems with U.S. companies, and that it was the USG's 
responsibility to vet job petitions properly when they are filed 
with the U.S. Department of Labor.  Supat expressed concern about 
recent H2A visa denials by Bangkok consular officers: "We can't 
understand why you'd approve a job petition but then deny an H2A 
visa," he added.  He showed Laboff copies of sample worker 
registration forms with the Ministry, which he said proved workers 
were paying labor recruitment fees within the law's limits.  Supat 
said he had no means to verify whether workers or agents were 
truthfully reporting fee payments on the forms, saying the Ministry 
could not act where there was no proof of wrongdoing. 
 
¶23. (SBU) Supat said that if workers complained about their 
experiences abroad, they could be explained by several factors: 
 
-- Lack of education and inability to understand 
   contract language or financial terms. 
-- Pressure from U.S. unions and Mexican labor groups 
   opposed to the importation of Thai agricultural 
   workers. 
-- Unrealistic worker expectations about salaries. 
-- Worker discomfort with unusually hot weather and 
   strenuous conditions in the U.S. South. 
-- Reliance on informal recruiting agents rather than 
   registered ones. 
 
¶24. (SBU) Supat said his Ministry went to great lengths to educate 
prospective workers about the recruitment process and conditions 
they would face abroad, whether in the U.S., Taiwan or elsewhere. 
Supat added that foreign labor supply companies brought DVDs to 
worker seminars to demonstrate job conditions at various work sites. 
 He said he had heard of instances where workers in the U.S. were 
moved amongst different job sites, but said the workers went along 
voluntarily.  (Regardless, these moves between jobsites generally 
have not been authorized under U.S. law.)  In some cases, workers 
left their job sites themselves, illegally, having been attracted to 
higher paying jobs working in Thai restaurants, he added. 
 
¶25. (SBU) Supat, who had previously been a senior Ministry labor 
representative in Taiwan, said that recent problems involving Thai 
workers in Taiwan had been resolved.  Supat blamed an August 2005 
riot of 2,000 Thai workers in Kaohsiung, Taiwan (and a subsequent 
work stoppage by 600 workers in March 2006) on a core group of 
individuals who had spurred other workers to revolt over lack of 
access to television and mobile telephones.  He said that the 
Ministry was continuing to approve worker petitions for employment 
in Taiwan at the same rate as before, and that workers were 
responsible for checking with one of 75 labor provincial offices to 
obtain the names of registered labor recruitment agencies. 
(Comment: Supat made no mention of a Thai parliamentary review in 
November 2005 that concluded the rioting Thai workers in Taiwan were 
exploited by Thai labor officials as well as Taiwanese employers. 
The report said that "not only senior labor officials were involved, 
but some politicians as well," but did not disclose names.  A Thai 
labor official was later removed from his Kaohsiung office under 
suspicion of accepting bribes to keep quiet about worker 
complaints.) 
 
¶26. (SBU) Supat said workers that have complained about excessive 
recruitment fees, or excessive interest on loans to pay for such 
fees, were usually going through unregistered companies or informal 
networks of unscrupulous individuals.  He cited the Ministry's 
website (www.doe.go.th) devoted to addressing worker complaints, 
which had recorded only a 3 percent dissatisfaction rate among 
overseas workers.  In most cases, follow-up interviews with workers 
revealed no proof of malfeasance by the 268 registered labor supply 
companies in Thailand, only 100 of which are considered "active". 
¶27. (SBU) Supat said that the Ministry held 5 million baht deposits 
from each of the 268 registered labor agencies to serve as reserves 
for handling valid compensation claims from workers.  He said he 
could not recall any recent instance where these deposits were 
tapped to provide compensation.  Asked to name any punitive measures 
at all that the Ministry has taken in response to labor agency 
improprieties, Supat said the Ministry had suspended three agencies 
within the past year, for periods varying from one to six months, 
and had permanently canceled the registration of one company, Siam 
Overseas, which had defrauded workers of recruitment fees without 
providing jobs (see para 16.)  Supat said the Ministry was working 
with Siam Overseas to provide compensation to the over 300 workers 
affected, but had not yet tapped the company's 5 million baht 
deposit with the Ministry.  Another of the suspended companies is 
ACCO, the largest local recruiter for workers to the U.S., which was 
suspended after a group of workers did not get their full salary and 
were sent back to Thailand after only several months (see para 30.) 
 
¶28. (U) Visits to Thai officials in provincial labor offices yielded 
similar views.  The town of Udorn, north of Khon Kaen, is described 
by Thai officials as the top province for sending workers abroad, 
and the evidence is on the town's streets as soon as you enter. 
Signs advertising labor recruitment services are common, 
side-by-side with signs advertising loan services to pay recruitment 
fees.  Offices advertise loans to pay recruiting fees for work in 
Taiwan and Qatar, next door to a recruitment company that advertises 
for 3,000 workers wanted by South Korean auto parts and glass 
factories. 
 
¶29. (SBU) The head of Udorn's provincial employment office said that 
Udorn's youth have always sought work abroad as a cultural norm, to 
follow friends and family and earn money.  The excitement of leaving 
a small town to work abroad, or in Bangkok, was a large part of the 
allure.  Recruitment fees were high, he said, but if all went 
according to law, the workers still benefited and wouldn't keep 
migrating if it wasn't profitable.  The official said that 
government regulates recruiting fees closely with licensing 
procedures.  In cases where excessive fees are charged, there is 
often collusion between workers and labor agents, with the workers 
actively participating in the subterfuge.  The official noted there 
were 20 recruitment agencies registered in Udorn, that had sent 
2,000 workers during the past month alone to work in destinations 
such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Qatar, and Japan. (Figures 
from Khon Kaen's provincial labor office show similar destinations, 
with worker departures abroad rising from 6,014 in 1999 to a peak of 
11,688 in 2001 and falling to 8,206 last year.) 
 
¶30. (SBU) The Udorn official said he had only heard of one 
Udorn-based firm sending workers to the U.S., and that recruiting 
firms had complained about the practices of one U.S.-based labor 
supply company that had been asking "very high fees" for the right 
to fill farm jobs in the U.S.  (Note:  Our consular section has 
received a letter from the Association of Thai Labor Overseas 
stating that this same U.S. company was charging a Thai labor supply 
company between 400,000-480,000 baht - USD 10-12K - per job.)  The 
Udorn official said most Thai companies shied away from 
relationships with foreign labor companies selling such services "to 
the highest bidder," and referred to the labor recruiting process as 
"an oligopoly" controlled by a handful of firms that use their 
access to job information as a means of boosting recruiting fees. 
"You can solve this problem," he said, "by making job information 
available to the general public."  "Explain to us," he added, "how 
workers can learn of opportunities in the U.S. without having to go 
through select middleman companies that know the farms and the 
petition process." 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Labor Exploitation Becomes Trafficking 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶31. (SBU) The range of severity of these labor exploitation cases 
varies considerably, and many workers clearly believe the recruiting 
debt they experience is outweighed by higher salaries that are 
offered by multi-year jobs overseas.  At the other end of the 
spectrum, however, are those cases that qualify as severe forms of 
trafficking - particularly cases where passports are confiscated and 
access to communications denied.  A number of workers in the U.S. 
have recently applied for T visas as victims of trafficking - one 
egregious case involving an incident in late 2005 where a group of 
Thai workers was offloaded in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone to 
find their own work and resorted to catching wild birds to feed 
themselves (reftel).  Thai parliamentarians are also probing reports 
of trafficking into forced prostitution in Taiwan.  The House of 
Representatives chairperson of the Thai People's Rights Abroad 
Subcommittee, MP Kusumalvati Sirikomart, said an October 2005 visit 
by her committee to Taiwan found that "many Thai women decide to 
work in massage parlors after incurring debt of as much as 400,000 
to 500,000 baht," owed to recruiting agents who ostensibly were 
placing them in domestic housekeeping jobs.  An accompanying MP also 
said he had interviewed Thai prostitutes in Taiwan who were 
force-fed drugs to keep them awake while servicing ten customers a 
day, or up to 1,200 customers for their entire debt period. 
 
¶32. (SBU) Comment:  It is difficult to ascertain the scope of a 
problem that is kept beneath the surface by many of the actors 
involved.  It is quite clear, however, that the relative lack of 
punitive actions taken against labor recruitment agencies is out of 
sync with the number of complaints we have seen about recruiting 
abuses, and also reports of trafficking.  Some workers in Thailand 
are wising up and seeking jobs on their own through self-funded 
travel to neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, but 
still find it impossible to secure work in the U.S. or other 
farther-off places without going through recruiting agents.  One 
returning worker from Singapore who sat next to our Labor FSN on the 
flight to Khon Kaen said "I once paid 140,000 baht for the right to 
work in Singapore.  Only later did I realize I could have done it 
myself for 30,000 baht.  We need to figure out how to do this 
elsewhere." 
 
BOYCE