Bureau of Immigration: Chinese top list of deported foreigners

MANILA, Philippines — President Duterte may have close ties with China, but when it comes to deporting foreigners, records of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) show that Chinese are not given “special treatment” as they top the list of most number of deported nationals.

Data provided by the BI showed that 1,510 Chinese nationals were sent back to their country from 2016 to October this year. 

Broken down, data showed that 40 Chinese were deported in 2016, followed by 1,248 in 2017 and 222 during the first 10 months this year. 

BI spokesperson Dana Sandoval said the numbers reveal that they did not show any favoritism or gave special treatment to the Chinese who were found to have violated Philippine laws.

“Deporting illegal aliens is BI’s mandate, no ‘favoritism’ and not giving ‘special treatment’ to anyone. Whatever the nationality is, if the alien blatantly disregards immigration laws, it is our duty to send them out,” said Sandoval.

BI statistics also showed that while there were more Korean nationals who entered the country, they only came second to China in terms of the most number of foreigners deported from 2016 to 2018.

From 2016 to 2018, there were a total of 4,456,375 Koreans compared to the 2,805,762 Chinese nationals who came to the Philippines.

BI records showed that a total of 216 Koreans were deported in the last three years – 59 in 2016, followed by 115 in 2017 and 42 in 2018.

Aside from the Chinese and Koreans, there were also double digit numbers of deported Indians and American nationals. The bureau’s documents showed that 87 Indians and 79 Americans were sent home. 

Following Korea, the other countries in the top 10 list whose nationals visited the Philippines from 2016 to October this year were: US with 2,902,154 in second place; China with 2,805,762; Japan with 1,658,970; Australia with 730,346; Taiwan with 645,122; Canada with 607,235; UK with 596,096; Malaysia with 414,018 and Singapore with 355,816.