Migrant workers returning to Burma increasingly prefer the border crossings near Mae Sot and Three Pagodas Pass, Thailand to the southern crossing in Ranong. The new preference is based on increased costs associated with passing through checkpoints near the southern crossings, say brokers and sources on the border.

“The way from Kawthaung [in Tenesserim Divisin, opposite from Ranong, Thailand] is more strict because there is more investigations along that way. And if people go that way they couldn’t finish their trip. If they continue their trip from Kawthaung, there are more check points,” a broker who traffics migrant workers explain. “That’s why the migrant workers use Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass ways for going back home. But Myawaddy is the most way they use.”

Kawthaung authorities have recently increased restrictions on border travel and are refusing workers attempting to cross into Thailand, said a local source. Migrant workers from outside Tenasserim Division are having their identity cards seized, and only have them returned upon their arrivel in Ye Town, in Mon State to the north.

A worker who recently returned via Myawaddy said he had to pay a broker 6,000 baht to travel from southern Thailand to Mae Sot. He said he made the trip in a prison vehicle and it was without event.

After arriving in Mae Sot, the worker said he and other workers crossing into Burma via boats. They arrived at a checkpoing operated by the Battalion 999 of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.

“Workers go back like that every day. But the current situation is more numbers than before. Most arrived in prison vehicles. But the style they are sent back is different from one day to another. Thai immigration officers send them as arrested workers sometimes and other times by brokers,” said a Myawaddy resident who is close to brokers in the town. “They are sent in a rotation, one day by brokers and other day by Thai immigration officers, but all the vehicles are still prison vehicles.”

Migrant workers who cross on their own at the DKBA gat must pay 1,100 baht the resident said, while workers crossing with a broker only have to pay 500 kyat. Each vehicle operated by a broker has to pay 3,000 kyat, and another 30,000 kyat to the Burmese army outside of Myawaddy town.

According to the broker from southern Thailand, migrant workers are returning to Burma because they are finding less work inside Thailand due to the global economic crisis as well as increasing crackdowns by Thai authorities.