Help Stateless children achieve Thai citizenship

Over the past 3 months, we have had a lot of travel for our cases, but not a lot of progress. It can be very frustrating and feel like we are spinning our wheels when we do exactly what they ask us to do, come back with paperwork in hand and they say it's still not correct! But we have to work within the system. We will be very grateful when Jay finishes his law degree and has a little more leverage to pressure the workers to do their jobs instead of finding ways to deny progress on cases. 

Ying's case was supposed to be sent to Bangkok for final processing, but they couldn't contact her village chief, and missed the deadline for the meeting. Then when we were able to contact him and submit the papers, they said her current residency card needed to be updated with the corrected birthdate information. This is frustrating because when we edited her documents, we asked to do a new residency card for her and they said to wait until it expired in 5 years! But we need an updated on to file for citizenship, so we had to have a few more people sign some paperwork and she finally got an updated one. Now, we have to wait for the next round of cases to get sent to Bangkok and then wait for them to process and assign her a social security number. Then she will finally be a Thai citizen!

We had to take Ploy all the way north to the Thai/Myanmar border to pick her dad up and bring him in to sign papers saying he doesn't have any witnesses so he can't get his birth certificate done and won't be pursuing Thai citizenship. He is content with his residency card because he can still access health benefits. The interview was on Apil 8; they are supposed to process and submit the paperwork within 30 days, but they finally just sent it June 30.  Next we sign papers to resubmit Ploy's case for social security number assignment. We submitted a year ago when her mom signed these papers, but they sent it back saying her dad also had to sign them. 

For Pawina's case, it's very confusing which government office would do this form, with her mom saying she would keep her residency card but not pursue Thai citizenship due to lack of witnesses to create a birth certificate. Heather and Pawina took a road trip to Pai, a few hours away, and found out that the form had to be done in Wiang Hang instead. So, a week later, we took her mom to sign the documents there and were able to get it done in a day. We took the documents to Chiang Dao, where Pawina is registered and needs to apply for citizenship, and they told us it was still not the right wording, even though it was exactly what they had accepted for Ploy's case! So frustrating. Finally, they said they would contact Wiang Hang and make the corrections themselves. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, she will be able to apply for her citizenhip also. 

Dolly's case was in a new place for us: Mae Ai. She and her siblings had no documentation at all, but we were able to speak to several of the government workers there and they helped us create a plan to gather lots of proof that she was born in Thailand so she can create a birth certificate. Then, she will be eligible to apply for citizenship when she completes university. 

These are just a few of the cases we have been working on the past 3 months. Progress is slow and sometimes we want to just give up, but we fight on for our clients. We need to be strong for them when they are out of strength to carry on the pursuit of their human rights. Thank you for your prayers and support!