Thailand beefed up its border checks this week after 54 illegal Burmese migrants died seeking a better life.
But the move will do little to stop economic refugees like Seng.
"We have a bad government. I cannot save anything from the crops I produce because soldiers take most of it away," Seng, 44, told Reuters in the southern border town of Ranong where the migrants were found suffocated in a container truck.
Without the money he sends home from working on a small fishing boat, Seng's three children would not survive.
"Only when Burma has a good government, will I return to live there," said Seng, who has not seen his family in four years.
The fate of the 120 people smuggled in a stifling hot 20-ft container truck last week - of whom 54 suffocated - has again focused attention on the migrant labour issue in Thailand.
Sharing a 2,400 km (1,490 miles) porous border with Burma, Thailand is home to some 2 million migrant workers, mostly from its western neighbour, and only a quarter of them are legally registered.
With Thais shunning mundane, dirty and dangerous work on farms, fishing boats and building sites, and Burma's generals refusing to fix a crippled economy, Thai officials say the influx of cheap, migrant labour will continue.
"As long as people are struggling to find a better life, we cannot stop them from entering Thailand," Ranong Governor Kanchanapa Keemun told Reuters.
Ranong, which shares a 170 km (105 mile) water and land border with Burma''s fishing port city of Victoria Point, is one of the busiest transit points for migrants, aid workers say.
"Ranong is the biggest supplier of migrant workers to the rest of the country," legal aid worker Suwat Ongsomwhang said.
"If it were a contest, migrant workers would be Ranong's OTOP," he said, referring to the acronym for a government programme promoting well-known products from villages.
