 More than 120,000 Cambodians have crossed back into their own country from Thailand in the past week, bearing a crackdown on migrant workers after last month's coup. Cambodians make up a big part of the two million strong migrant labour force in Thailand's seafood, agriculture and construction industries. But they often work for mega-pay and lack official work permits. They're apparently fleeing after a rumour that illegal foreign workers may be arrested and deported by Thailand's new military rulers. Jo Lowry from the International Organisation for Migration has been at the border and has just returned to Bangkok. Jo Lowry, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Is it actually true that these people may be deported by the Taijanta or has this exodus been triggered by a rumour? No one really knows. There are certainly strong rumours going around in the Cambodian community, which people are listening to and are making their decisions to leave. Certain heads say that for 140,000 people to leave en masse within a week, to leave their jobs and to go back to a country where they don't have any work and there'll be a strain on the services there, for them to leave so rapidly in such numbers, there must be a compelling reason. There are many migrant workers in Thailand, not only from Cambodia but also from Myanmar and Laos, notably. Are they leaving as well or is it just the Khmer workers who are departing? At the moment, the information we have, the large number of migrants leaving are Cambodian. There are some indication there may be smaller numbers of people going back to Myanmar as well. So this is the Iranya-Pretet-Poy-Pet border post. Can you just describe what sort of facilities are there because it's really not sufficient to cope with this number of people, is it? No, it's not. The border post itself is right next to a few large casinos and hotels but just across the border post, there's just a normal Cambodian border town of about 10,000 people, Poy-Pet, and there's a limited amount obviously of shelter, water, food, healthcare. So we're something that as best we can. There are organisations providing water, providing food, talking about setting up places for people to sleep if that's needed. So without the trucking operation, there will be a lot more people. There will be tens of thousands of people there now but thankfully it's down to a few thousand and people are getting out quite quickly. And where are those trucks taking people to? They're taken to the provincial capitals to places like Batan Bang and Siam Reap and to the capital, Phnom Penh itself. And then people have to get back to their home, towns and villages under their own steam. And of course the concern is that when they get there, there won't be much waiting for them. And a lot of them have paid money to brokers to get jobs, fruit picking or in construction in Thailand, low pay jobs, jobs that pay about eight to ten dollars, US dollars a day. And so they've also taken on a large debt, perhaps up to a thousand dollars to get these jobs and that debt has to be paid back. Yet they're going back to no work and perhaps no services either. Yeah, it's going to put substantial pressure on those small towns that they're going back to, isn't it? Because these are probably the breadwinners for many families. Exactly, yeah. The whole economy in this region relies heavily on migrant labor, not just for workers themselves to fill jobs but also on the remittances they sent home. And of course those remittances have dried up completely now. And IOM does work globally with people who've come back from situations like this, with returning migrants. And we have experience in helping them with reintegration and re-assimilation into their communities, helping them set up small businesses and so on. So we stand ready to do that if the need arises. That's going to be a big job to do quite suddenly though, I'd expect it unexpectedly. What about the industries that these people are leaving in Thailand? How will they be affected by this sudden exodus of their workforce? Well, some of it's seasonal, you know, agriculture and so on, but there's a lot of construction projects going on in Thailand right now and I guess they'll have to find local solutions to that. Are you now gearing up for an increasing exodus, as I said, if people from the Burmese community, for example, start doing the same thing? Well, that's a big if, we just don't know if that's going to happen or not. What we do know is that there's approximately 150,000 to 180,000 undocumented Cambodian workers in Thailand and about 140,000 of them appear to have already crossed the border, at one border crossing. Are you expecting that some of those people might return to Thailand when and if the situation normalises? Hard to say, I mean, it would be, they would have strong motivation to do that economically for sure and people will take, as we know from the scenes in Europe and other parts of the world, people will take extreme measures to get somewhere where they believe they can better the lives for themselves and for their families. Joe Lowry, thank you very much for joining us.