Tag: illegal immigrants

Any guesses on where these Thai tourists went:

A total of 23 Thai tourists have gone out of contact after arriving at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea over the past week, the justice ministry said Monday.

The ministry said 10 Thais disappeared soon after landing at the Muan airport in Muan, 385 kilometers south of Seoul, on a chartered flight from the Southeast Asian country Monday morning. It said all efforts are under way to find the missing Thais.

Earlier, 13 out of 174 Thai tourists who arrived at Muan International Airport last week have not shown up for their return flight and remained out of contact, according to the ministry.

The 174 Thais landed at the Muan airport on a chartered flight last Monday to visit major tourist attractions in South Jeolla Province.

But 13 of them disappeared soon after their arrival at the airport and did not board their return flight slated for Sunday, the ministry said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

There must be enough work for illegal immigrants on Jeju Island for 55 people from Thailand to disappear like this:

The whereabouts of 55 out of 280 Thai tourists who entered South Korea earlier this week through the airport on the southern island of Jeju are unknown, immigration officials said Sunday.

Out of 697 Thai nationals who arrived at the Jeju International Airport from Bangkok through a direct Jeju Airlines flight between Tuesday and Friday, 417 were denied entry and were flown home, according to the Jeju Immigration Service.

Of the other 280 people who have entered the country for a three-day tourism program, 55 have broken away from their tour groups and disappeared, officials said. The immigration office said it was trying to figure out where they went.

Officials said that many of the Thai tourists chose to enter South Korea through Jeju as they have a record of being denied entry through other airports, including the country’s main gateway, Incheon International Airport.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

South Korea continues to work on their illegal immigration problem:

The Ministry of Justice said Tuesday it will allow illegal aliens to re-enter Korea if they voluntarily leave the country by next June.

In an effort to tackle the rapid increase in foreigners who stay here illegally, the ministry also said it will toughen punishment for those hiring people who do not have the proper visas.

From July, people who are caught staying here illegally will be fined and may not be able to re-enter the country for years, the ministry said.

Departure can be delayed under certain circumstances, including recent births, pregnancy or other health conditions, it said.

Korea Times

Just think that if this anchor baby business was going on in a far off US commonwealth like Saipan, how many more of these operations must be going on back on the US mainland?:

A Chinese man, living on Saipan illegally for several years after overstaying his tourist visa, opened a tourist birthing business, using dozens of illegal workers from China as caretakers, according to federal court documents.

The unlicensed business, run out of an apartment complex, catered to as many as a dozen pregnant women at a time, each paying at least $15,000 so their children could be born on U.S. soil, documents state.

Sen “Sam” Sun operates a birthing-tourism network on Saipan that caters primarily to Chinese tourists, according to a criminal complaint filed against him this month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

Sun, who allegedly has been in the CNMI illegally since 2014, after overstaying his tourist visa, was indicted on charges of harboring illegal aliens, unlawfully employing aliens, and money laundering.

He was arrested Nov. 3 on Saipan, the day the indictment was filed, according to an arrest warrant.  [Guam PDN]

You can read more at the link, but some how I doubt the founding fathers intended for anchor babies to be the reason for US citizenship if born on US territory.

Protestors, including Korean-American groups, demand in New York on Aug. 28, 2015, that Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush apologize for accusing Asian people of abusing the birthright citizenship law. (Yonhap)

Here is the answer to the question, a lot:

The number of undocumented immigrants from South Korea in the U.S. has increased eightfold in 25 years to an estimated 190,000, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute.

South Korean undocumented immigrants now number eighth in population, overall estimated to be about 11 million.

According to MPI, about 9,000 South Korean undocumented immigrants — or about 20 percent of the 44,000 eligible for deferred action of childhood arrivals — have applied for the program.

Undocumented immigrants from Mexico top the list in population, at 6.2 million, followed by Guatemala, El Salvador, the Honduras, China, India and the Philippines.  [Korea Times]