China's political stability and fast economic development have made it a desirable destination for illegal immigrants, officials with the Beijing General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection said yesterday.

"Between October 1 and yesterday, we seized 83 illegal immigrants, which is a record for us since our department was set up in 1998," Li Junzhou, the vice section chief of the station's repatriation department, told China Daily.

In comparison, frontier guards caught only 14 illegal passport holders during the same period last year. They caught 22 of them in 2005, Li said.

The frontier station has estimated that the full-year figure for this year would be two to three times higher than the corresponding figure for last year.

Li said the illegal immigrants seized between October 1 and yesterday were from Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia and South America. Some 92 percent of them were from Africa and had had entered China aboard Ethiopian Airlines or China Southern Airplanes flights. The two airlines started operating between Africa and China last year.

Li said the country's political stability and fast economic development had inspired more and more foreign people to travel here to search for work.

"These people are likely to bring back a good image of China and encourage more foreigners to come to China, particularly those from developing countries," he said.

To ease the entry process for legitimate foreign visitors while making it less easy for people to sneak into the country using fake documents, frontier officials last month adopted a Swiss immigration system called DOCU Expert. It allows immigration officials to check the validity of e-passports, which are equipped with microchips containing information about the passport-holder.

The United States asked 20 visa-free countries to adopt e-passport technology after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Japan and Singapore were among the Asian countries that did so, Li said.

"To ease entries into China for foreign guests, a group of frontier inspectors working for the Beijing General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection have been trained to double check suspicious passports in just 10 minutes," he said.

He said China has always dealt strictly with people who attempt to enter the country using false travel documents.

(China Daily November 23, 2007)