Immigration crackdown in southern China puts Myanmar migrant workers on edge

Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.

Undocumented Myanmar migrant workers in southern China are living in fear amid an increase in raids by Chinese authorities on farms and factories near the border, workers and labor activists say.

The arrests increased after 500 workers at a factory in Yunnan province protested against poor labor conditions in early March, migrant workers told Radio Free Asia.

Ever since, Chinese police have made daily arrests of at least 30 Myanmar migrant workers in the border towns of Ruili and Jiegao who are undocumented or carry expired border passes, which people use to cross the border without a passport, the workers told RFA Burmese.

Win Naing, who landed a job at a toy factory Ruili in early January, was issued a border pass so that he could commute to work, but it was short-term and has since expired.

But now he’s too afraid to go outside, and isn’t sure when he’ll next see his his wife and three children, who are just across the border in Myanmar.

“Since we stay inside the factory, we don’t have to worry as much about being arrested, but we can’t leave at all,” said Win Naing, who earns around 1,500 Chinese yuan (US$210) per month, considered a decent salary. “Without passports, we have to work and live very cautiously.”

Most of those detained are being held in prisons in Ruili and nearby Yinjing village, they said, although some have been deported and banned from re-entering China “for several years.”

People are desperate for jobs

Every day, nearly 10,000 people wait at the border in Muse, in Myanmar, for a chance to cross into China and authorities only issue passes to about 700 of them.

Short-term border passes are good for one week of entry into China, and when they expire, holders must reapply for one in Muse. But those who make it across often overstay their pass, said a resident of Shan state’s Kutkai township named De Dee, who is working in Ruili.

That puts them at risk of arrest during frequent police inspections in places such as the Htike Li and Hwa Fong markets, where Myanmar migrants are known to live and work.

“Chinese officials conduct checks on the streets and even inside homes,” she said. “Around 30 or 40 migrant workers are arrested each day.”

The situation is similar in Jiegao, a migrant working there said on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. He said there are frequently “police cars circling the markets,” while authorities regularly “stop motorbikes and arrest people.”

A migrant working in Muse told RFA that the amount of time undocumented workers are detained in the Ruili and Yinjing prisons varies, as does the lengths of bans on their re-entry to China.

“Some undocumented migrants … are detained for a week, 10 days, or a month,” he said. “Those arrested in early March — mostly women— following the protest were banned from reentering China for about five or six years.”

Those banned from re-entry who need to return to China are forced to pay more than 2 million kyats (US$953) — an incredibly steep cost for the average Myanmar citizen — to do so via illegal routes, the migrant added.

Aid workers were unable to definitively say how many Myanmar migrants have been arrested in China since the protest earlier this month, and RFA was unable to independently confirm the number.

‘There are so many of them’

Attempts by RFA to contact the Chinese Embassy in Yangon about the arrests of undocumented Myanmar nationals in Ruili and Jiegao went unanswered by the time of publishing, as did calls to the Myanmar Consulate in Yunnan.

RFA Mandarin spoke with a Chinese resident of Ruili surnamed Sun who said that police in the town had been targeting illegal Myanmar migrants for at least six months, although the arrests had intensified beginning in March.

“Most of them are men who enter the country and go to the industrial park to find work, including jobs making parts for domestic cell phones and daily-use hardware, with salaries of 1,000-3,000 yuan (US$140-420) per month,” he said.

Sun said that illegal migrants who are arrested “are usually repatriated, but not fined.”

A merchant surnamed Zhang from Yunnan’s Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, where Ruili and Jiegao are located, told RFA that Myanmar migrants also find work in area restaurants and massage parlors.

He said that “because there are so many of them, the Chinese police are not in a position to carry out mass expulsions” and choose to repatriate small numbers of them back to Myanmar at a time.

Translated by Aung Naing and RFA Mandarin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.