Thailand has a relatively long history of immigration from the '90s till nowadays. From then till now, the increasing number of immigrants and local childbirth resulted in the rapid expansion of the overall population of Bangkok, with both positive and negative effects. Over the period from 2000 to 2010, the foreign-born population increased by a factor of ten from 263 000 to 2.5 million people.
With millions and millions of immigrants coming in every year, the local Bangkok is a huge cultural diversity. Just like the Chinese town in America, you can find a variety of different cultures from different countries and different ethics all over the city of Bangkok. They can be different clothes, foods, and special events. This is a positive effect because it speeds up the process of internationalization around the globe and it helps people to understand different cultures, learn to try and adapt different things and habits.
Also, with millions and millions of immigrants coming in every year, Bangkok has an incredible amount of workforces(especially young) which results in the fast and rapid growth of the economy which furthermore increases the average salary of each worker. A joint report by the OECD Development Centre and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggests that immigrants have made a huge contribution to Thailand’s economy(especially Bangkok). According to the findings of the report, foreign-born and native-born workers integrate very differently in the labor market. Immigrant workers are relatively young and active in many fast-growing occupations, which seems to confirm that immigration mostly responds to demand labor. They are also younger than their native-born peers, and more likely to be employed, filling some of the labor gaps arising from the aging of the Thai workforce.
However, the growth of immigration is not always having good outcomes. With millions and millions of immigrants coming in every year, traffic has become a severe problem in Thailand. Every year, tens of thousands of new cars purchased by immigrants give more pressure to the local traffic system, which adds to a total of 9.7 million automobiles. Big traffic jams are constantly occurring on the main road of Bangkok. There is a big problem with this phenomenon, a big population will inevitably have drivers with bad driving habits that will worsen the situation of extremely high traffic volume. This is mainly the cause of this traffic jam phenomenon.
On the other hand, the industrial and local machinery plus the effect of heavy population density causes severe environmental problems. First of all, air pollution in Bangkok is extremely bad. According to AQI(Air quality index)’s report in 2019, Bangkok is 7th worst air polluted city in the world, which is very, very bad. Local PM2.5 density reached 152 just as I am writing this essay. Bangkok faces problems with air, declining wildlife populations, deforestation, soil erosion, water scarcity, and waste issues. All these problems severely affect local citizen’s health and the health of wild animals.(I know they are not related to the topic, but since I love wild animals, I am going to write about it anyway:)
All in all, with the increase of the total population in Bangkok, there are positive impacts as well as negative impacts on the city. For a positive impact, immigration provides a huge contribution to the local economy of Bangkok and also provides a huge and positive cultural diversity to this international city. However, the rapid increase in population also causes a lot of big issues like environmental pollution as well as bad traffic conditions.
