This photo taken on Jul 1, 2026 shows Karen refugees from the Mae La refugee camp along the Thai-Myanmar border arriving at a district office to register for Thai ID cards issued to foreigners granting them permission to work, in Prachinburi province. (Photo: AFP/Lillian SUWANRUMPHA)

NAKHON SAWAN, Thailand: Next to a mound of black earth, Myanmar refugees feed soil and rice seed into a clacking conveyor machine that arranges them into ready-made planting trays for Thai farms.

The farmworkers are among their Thai boss's newest employees, with a fresh sense of job security after Thailand began permitting Myanmar refugees living in camps to work legally and granting them non-citizen identity cards.

"I do not tire from the work. I can do it," Ney La Jaw, 25, told AFP.

He spent much of his life confined to the Mae La refugee camp, the largest of nine temporary shelters along the border with Myanmar, according to the United Nations.

But he now lives and works more than 200km away on a farm in Thailand's Nakhon Sawan province, earning around 3,000 baht (US$90) per week - a life-changing sum for many refugees.

"I send all of my money home to my mom" in the camp, he said.

After decades of being barred from leaving the camps and working legally, Myanmar refugees and their children began receiving non-citizen Thai ID cards in June, a step away from statelessness and towards gainful, legal employment.

About 4,600 people from Myanmar living in camps have sought permission to work legally from October 2025 to July this year, the Thai interior ministry said.

They are a fraction of the about 80,000 ...