Home Minister says that since January, 7,975 immigration operations have caught more than 20,000 illegal immigrants.

KUALA LUMPUR: An official from the Immigration Department says that since January of this year, 76,477 foreigners have been checked during actions at hotspots to enforce immigration laws.
“From January till today, we have carried out 7,975 operations in hotspot locations.” When asked about it by Datuk Dr. Nik Muhammad Zawawi Salleh (PN-Pasir Puteh) in Dewan Rakyat on Wednesday (June 26), the Home Minister said, “A total of 76,477 foreigners were checked, and 20,207 did not have any documents on them.”

According to Saifuddin, the Immigration Department has made profiles of 224 places in the country where illegal immigrants are most likely to be caught. These profiles are based on information gathered over a number of years.

Along with that, he said that 456 employers were also arrested during the raids for illegally hiring foreign workers.
He said that the 20,207 people were sent back to their home countries after their offices gave them the necessary paperwork.

He said that the country’s immigration centers could hold up to 19,000 people but are only holding 13,000 right now.
Saifuddin also said that 86,900 illegal immigrant workers were sent back to their home countries after turning themselves in to immigration officials.

He said that most of the people who were sent back to their home country were from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. “To date, a total of 79,231 illegals have voluntarily surrendered themselves,” he noted.

He said that illegal immigrants who turned themselves in to the police would be compounded before being sent back to their home country. So far, RM40,000 has been collected in compounds.

According to a study by the Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) and a person named Nixon, Nik Muhammad, there were six million illegal foreign workers in the country as of 2022. Saifuddin disagreed with this.

When Saifuddin told KRI that he had checked with them, they told him that they did not do that kind of work and did not know the person Nik Muhammad had named.
Regarding the plan to loosen visas, Saifuddin said that since January 1 of this year, a total of 950,000 tourists from China and 443,000 tourists from India have come into the country without a visa for 30 days.

Visitors from China and India can enter the country without a visa starting December 1, 2016, and this rule will stay in place until December 31, 2017.
He said that 40 million tourists had come into the country between January of last year and April of this year, based on figures from immigration.
30 million of these people had come into the country through Johor and the KL International Airport, he said.