Customs officers stopped 5,000 illegal immigrants from entering the country last year, a Ministry of Public Security official has said.

Releasing the official figure, deputy director of the ministry's frontier defense management bureau Zhang Chongde said that another 5,000 foreign nationals had either overstayed their visa period or were found to have entered the country illegally.

"The number is more than the previous years. But the situation is still controllable."

In fact, he said, the crackdown on illegal immigrants had never been better in the last 15 years.

On the other hand, 4,000-5,000 Chinese nationals emigrate to other countries and regions illegally each year, he said.

But illegal emigration by ships to the US, Canada, Japan and Australia has been negligible, Zhang said. "Not a single case of illegal Chinese emigrants taking the sea route to Australia has been reported for nine years."

Zhang's remarks came at a recent seminar on how public security departments were handling proposals from members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body.

From 2003 to 2007, the ministry received 819 proposals on issues such as crackdown on crimes, intensifying public security management and taking preventive measures, enhancing road safety management, fire-prevention, as well as frontier defense and exit and entry management.

"We always pay great attention to such suggestions," Assistant Minister of Public Security Sun Yongbo said.

(China Daily February 13, 2008)