Arab refugees in Bangkok long for home amid immigration crackdown

[misskit]

Bangkok - Six years ago, several days after taking his high school exams, Ibrahim and his family fled Syria to Lebanon where they boarded a flight to Bangkok.


Arriving in the Thai capital on tourist visas, they experienced freedom away from the horrors of war in Syria.


But since their visas expired, they have been living as undocumented migrants.


"We thought of Thailand as a transit point," Ibrahim told Al Jazeera, "and that we would stay one or two years. Yet after six years, our lives are stuck in limbo."


In Thailand, Ibrahim's family applied for resettlement in the United States only to wait for two years with no progress.


They then requested resettlement in Canada, restarting the entire process.

In Bangkok, it takes an average of three to four years to complete the resettlement process, leaving many refugees vulnerable and frustrated.


"We'd love to live here, it's like the Middle East. People are friendly and will talk to you, unlike people in Europe who won't say hello," said Ibrahim. "We no longer dream of peace, only of a passport."


Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the Thai Immigration Act of 1979 views anyone overstaying their visa as an undocumented migrant, including asylum seekers and refugees.

MORE. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fe...214711007.html

[Dragonfly94]

welcome to Thailand, they are not as liberally dumb as the west and don't want the country fuked up with people from Islamic shit holes

[Farang Ky Ay]

Maybe the liberal dumbness of the west is somewhat related to the fact that the west is doing war in their Islamic shithole?

All this for human rights of course, nothing related to petrol and gas deposites and routes...