Justice and Human Rights Thailand Project #34579

Help Stateless children achieve Thai citizenship

by CORD Ministries International

Project Report | Apr 20, 2021
Citizenship 2021

By Heather Askew | Project Leader

cases in Fang

Our citizenship cases have seen some great progress and some setbacks this year.

Mae Fah Luang: We have one family with 5 cases in this province. We helped the mom get her ID card last year, and started working on the 4 kids next. The 3 younger kids have completed the application process and are just waiting for the government to assign them a social security number, which should be done by June and we will get to take them to take their photos and get their official cards. The oldest son still has some issues with his paperwork, so it's taking a bit longer to get his processed.

Mae Suay: We have a family of 4 in this province. The mom has 3 kids and none of them have their citizenship. The issue with this case is the mom is a drug addict with outstanding fines for drug use so it's been very difficult to get her to show up for appointments and get the paperwork she needs. If she doesn't follow through, it's not possible to get the kids citizenship, which means they aren't eligible for health care and it will make school much more expensive when they get older. It's a bit of a catch 22 situation: her drug use is inhibiting getting citizenship, but without citizenship, she can't access drug rehab. We are doing what we can to support the rest of the family caring for the children and trying to get their help to get her to the offices to move the citizenship case forward.

Chiang Dao: We have 1 case here of a college student. She just graduated from university, so now she is able to submit her college degree and get her citizenship card. We just need to have the village chief sign the paperwork and turn in her degree.

Fang: We have had 5 cases in this area with 4 families. One of the students got her card already, hooray! Three of the cases are kids in 1st, 5th and 9th grade and they have all completed the application process and are waiting on their ID number from the government. Our final case is in the early stages and we are trying to track down all her paperwork. She is a college student in our scholarship program, so if we aren't able to get her paperwork together, we will wait for her to graduate and do the same thing as our student in Chiang Dao.

We are going to take on the case of one of the college students from the class we taught at Lanna Theological College who grew up in an orphanage. It will be complicated, but we have hope we will be able to track down the people who have the paperwork we need to do his case.

Finally got her ID card! (7 year journey)

Family case in Mae Fah Luang

Permalink

Jan 4, 2021
Citizenship update

By Heather Askew | Project Leader

Sep 10, 2020
Ups and Downs of citizenship

By Heather Askew | Project Leader

Fang trip

This update has ups and downs just like all things in life.

After several years of trying to go through the system to get Andrew* his citizenship, we have come to the end of possibilities. We had hoped that we could do a DNA test with his aunt to prove his relation and thus get his citizenship granted. However, we recently learned that even if the DNA test comes back positive, which is unlikely given that they are different genders and generations, because of the way in which his aunt got her citizenship, he will still not be eligible. For a nephew to follow a non-parent, they must have been born in Thailand, not moved here and then gotten citizenship after 30 years of being in country, as his aunt was. So, now we are putting all our efforts into getting funding for his spinal surgery to correct his severe scoliosis. Without citizenship, the costs will be significantly higher. We were able to get Andrews resident card, however, so if he continues his studies until he graduates college in 10 years, he will then be eligible to get his citizenship that way.

Now for the good news: We have two other cases we have been working on, one of a mom and her 3 kids registered in Mae Fah Luang province, and another mom with two kids registered in Fang.

We started working on the Mae Fah Luang case about one year ago, and the mom got her citizenship card in June of 2019. Then, we were able to start on the case of her three chidlren. We got all the paperwork in for the kids in July and they scheduled interviews with the village chief and elders for November, so we will return then. The travel to MFL is 5 hours each direction, so we usually hire a van to take us all so we don't fall asleep on the trip!

We also took the family of one of our foundation's staff to see whether we can get her kids citizenship. It turns out that the mom has been in Thailand long enough to have gotten citizenship for herself, but she missed the deadline to apply. Luckily, her kids are still eligible. Her daughter was born at home so doesn't have a birth certificate. We got a form to do a DNA test, and just have to wait for the results to come in. Her son has all his papers in order, so once the DNA comes back, both kids will get their citizenship cards. This is actually our easist case so far! This is our first case in Fang, which is about 3 hours from Chiang Mai.

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.