IHT: Variations on a theme: Thai women and foreign husbands

[Mr Lucky]

International Herald Tribune: Variations on a theme: Thai women and foreign husbands

Here we go again....can't believe IHT is printing this tripe.

According to the article, "About 15 percent of all marriages in the northeast are now between Thai women and foreign men."

So, in a city of over 1 million, like Khon Kaen or Korat, with maybe 100,000 women of marriagable age, 15,000 of them are finding foreign husbands. Believe it?

[Nicke]

Well, I know we have 6000 Thais living in Sweden (That number from a couple of years ago) and maybe 4500 of them are women.

May be possible.

[snakebite911]

Originally Posted by Nicke

Well, I know we have 6000 Thais living in Sweden (That number from a couple of years ago) and maybe 4500 of them are women.

May be possible.

I just checked the official statistics from Norway, 1395 thai men and 7293 women are registered.

[Nicke]

Thats the number for those with permanent visa I guess, then its a big number who stay on 3 or 6 months visas, then come to Thailand for 3 months and then back.

I will look for an updated number for Sweden now.

[Nicke]

I cant find upto date total numbers, but for Thai immigrants to Sweden 2005:

1726 females (and 479 men), 1332 of them between 18-64 years.

I saw a number for 2003, 11244 Thais in Sweden while 20% of them were men

Also saw immigrants stats for 1996-2003, 500-700 Thais a year and increasing steadily to reach 2000+ Thais 2003.

So my estimate is that we maybe have 18,000 Thais living in Sweden now.

[Mr Lucky]

Wow. Those are some amazing numbers. If you assume the 1,332 women are staying to get married, and Norway, Germany, England, the US, Australia, NZ, etc. are drawing off similar amounts of TGs, that could come to more than 10,000 girls a year.

Too bad reliable stats are hard to come by in Thailand. I'd be curious to know whether they might someday face a crisis similar to China's: too many men and not enough wives.