BANGKOK — Give me your drug dealers, your money launderers, your felons on the lam yearning to breathe free.

Thailand has never advertised itself as a beacon for fugitives, but the world’s wretched refuse — to tweak the noble words inscribed at the Statue of Liberty — seem to show up here in droves.

Millions of tourists, most of them presumably without criminal records, travel to Thailand every year, drawn by the good food, lively night life and crystalline waters. Fugitives come for the same reasons — plus the prospect, for some, of outliving a statute of limitations.

“Thailand has traditionally been one of the top source countries for extradition of criminals to the U.S.,” said one March 2009 cable from the American Embassy in Bangkok obtained by WikiLeaks. The cable lists the variety of fugitives seized in Thailand over the years: child molesters, narcotics traffickers, money launderers and cybercriminals, among others.