Bangkok: Many refugees from Myanmar who have lived for years in crowded border camps in Thailand are now stepping into a new chapter of life as they join the Thai workforce under a recent government policy that grants them legal work rights.

For decades, these camps along the Thai Myanmar border housed tens of thousands of people who fled conflict in Myanmar. Many were born in the camps and had never been allowed to take up formal jobs. That reality is now changing after Thailand approved a plan allowing more than eighty thousand refugees to apply for legal work permits.

Among them is Tun Min Lat, who spent almost twenty years in a camp before moving to an orchard in eastern Thailand. He now works legally in a longan farm and earns a stable income for the first time in his life. Similar

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