The Ministry of Interior on Wednesday released a report saying it had issued more than 70,000 immigrants with permanent residence cards in Cambodia since 1994 – the year the Kingdom first adopted the Law on Immigration.
The findings were announced in the ministry’s report assessing applications made by foreign nationals for permanent residence cards, as well as evaluating its campaign to revoke false and irregular documents from migrants.
Minister of Interior Sar Kheng presided over the ceremony on Wednesday launching the report with participation from senior ministry officials and the National Police.
“The campaign to revoke illegal documents has been carried out to strengthen the effectiveness of law enforcement and prevent foreigners who have settled in Cambodia for a long time from causing chaos and negatively affecting security, public order, social safety and human rights.
“I support and agree with the report’s conclusion and evaluation that considers the foreigner census and the revoking of foreigner’s illegally possessed administrative documents as a big success for our government,” Sar Kheng said.
The report said that since 1994 the authorities have revoked more than 37,000 illegal Cambodian documents possessed by foreigners from 10 nationalities.
Meanwhile, there were applications for permanent residence cards from 71,991 foreigners, encompassing 32,735 families.
The majority of the applicants were Vietnamese, followed by Laotian, Thai, Burmese, Chinese, Indonesian, Nepali, Bangladeshi, Tanzanian and German citizens.
Adhoc spokesman Soeng Sen Karuna said the campaign to revoke fake documents was not a complete success as some officials involved in issuing false letters and documents to foreign nationals were not punished.
“There was a loophole that allowed those documents to be issued, and there could be corruption in issuing those documents for foreigners.
“In these cases, the ministry must investigate and impose administrative punishment and criminal punishment related to issuing fake documents,” he said.
