CYBERJAYA: The crackdown on social visit pass abusers has led to the arrest of 451 foreigners up until July 15, says Immigration director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban.
He said that a total of 7,105 operations had been conducted by the department as of July 15, with a total of 41,596 foreigners detained for various immigration offences.
"From those numbers, statistics also showed that 451 foreigners had been arrested for misusing their social visit passes in the same time frame.
"Statistics also showed that the department had arrested 1,279 people in 2023, 2,644 in 2024 and 2,630 last year for abusing social visit passes," he told reporters after attending the 104th Immigration Day celebration on Tuesday (July 21).
Zakaria also dismissed claims that the alleged abuses involved mainly Chinese nationals, saying Immigration data did not support such assertions.
"Our statistics show that the cases involve people from various countries. There are Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Myanmar nationals and others. The cases are not dominated by any single nationality.
“From early this year, we had already set that this would be the year of enforcement. And we will increase our operations and enforcement efforts on those that abuse and misuse their immigration documentation,” he said.
He added that the department had also taken action against 1,127 employers for hiring and harbouring undocumented foreigners.
