Immigration authorities crack down on crimes interfering with boarder management

Immigration authorities nationwide seized about 8.9 metric tons of narcotics and 712 tons of precursor chemicals last year, the National Immigration Administration released on Tuesday.

The also confiscated 3,278 firearms of various types, and smuggled goods worth 220 million yuan($220 million), the authority said.

NIA has adopted multiple measures to crack down on crimes that interfere with the national border management, and worked with the country's top courts and the Ministry of Public Security to improve the prevention and control system for fighting crimes that obstruct border management, said Lin Yongsheng, a spokesman for NIA.

According to NIA, immigration authorities nationwide handled 32,300 criminal cases of the obstruction of border management and detained 117,800 suspects, including 158 backbones for people smugglers, in 2022.

They also investigated 67,000 foreigners who illegally entered, resided or worked in China.

In the past year, the immigration authorities nationwide conducted about 9.6 million inspections of entry or existing flights, trains, boats and vehicles and 115.7 million inspections of people, it said.

The Immigration authorities have also promoted the standardization and facilitation of immigration management and government services, issuing about 1.1 million passports, more than 1.7 million permits for travel to and from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and approved 4.323 million endorsements, according to Lin.

Since the optimization of immigration measurements on Jan 8, immigration authorities have resumed customs clearance at land and water ports in an orderly manner, and resumed accepting and approving entry and exit documents for Chinese and foreign nationals, he said.

"We accurately predicted the growth of the main population and key ports of entry and exit, and fully opened more than 3,200 documents application windows and border inspection channels at 53 ports," he said.

Currently, the authorities inspect about 501,000 inbound and outbound travelers each day on average, an increase of 48.2 percent before the implementation of the new policies. They also accepted and handled about 341,000 entry-exit documents each day on average, an increase of 129.4 percent before the optimization.