Cambodian Migrants Facing Lack of Jobs at Home Want to Return to Thailand

Published Sep 22 2021 at 10:42 PM GMT

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Some of the roughly quarter million Cambodian migrant laborers who flooded home from Thailand over the past 18 months when the pandemic killed their jobs are desperate enough for work that they are risking arrest and COVID-19 infection to sneak back across the Thai border to do menial labor, workers and NGOs say.
Unable to find work to support themselves in Cambodia, which has been under a serious of lockdowns to fight rising infections, they are making risky illegal border crossings and working as scavengers and scrap collectors in Thailand.
“I crossed the border illegally,” migrant worker Pen Vin told RFA's Khmer Service in Bangkok.
She and three others spent an entire day trekking through a forest to get to Thailand and was once arrested in Cambodia for trying to sneak across the border and sent home, before heading to the border again.
“I didn't have money to buy food, so I decided to return.