{"id":231334,"date":"2019-09-17T22:39:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T02:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=231334"},"modified":"2019-09-17T22:39:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T02:39:24","slug":"more-than-320-chinese-arrested-in-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/09\/17\/more-than-320-chinese-arrested-in-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 320 Chinese arrested in Philippines"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the Chinese were arrested Monday in Puerto Princesa city in Palawan province, \u201cwhere they were caught in the act of doing their illegal activities.\u201d (Pixabay Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u00a0\u2014 The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0immigration bureau says its agents, backed by troops, have arrested 324 Chinese accused of involvement in illegal online gambling and other crimes in a raid on eight hotels and other establishments in a western province.<\/p>\n

Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the Chinese were arrested Monday in Puerto Princesa city in Palawan province, \u201cwhere they were caught in the act of doing their illegal activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morente said Tuesday that they would be deported for violating the conditions of their stay in the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0and working without authorization.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Philippines, backed by the Chinese government, has launched a crackdown on large numbers of Chinese who mostly entered the country as tourists and then worked for online gambling operations, which are illegal in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitial reports indicate that most of these aliens are overstaying and undocumented,\u201d Morente said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The raiding teams seized hundreds of laptops and cellphones from the Chinese, many of whom failed to show passports or other travel documents, immigration officials said.<\/p>\n

Immigration intelligence official Fortunato Manahan Jr. said the raids were an offshoot of complaints from local officials over the presence of many illegal Chinese workers in Puerto Princesa. Authorities conducted weeks of surveillance before Monday’s raids.<\/p>\n

Palawan is a frontier island province where the military’s Western Command conducts naval and air patrols to defend\u00a0Philippine-claimed areas in the disputed South China Sea. China, the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0and four other governments have overlapping territorial claims in the strategic waterways.<\/p>\n

Philippine\u00a0defence officials recently expressed concern over the presence of large numbers of Chinese near local military camps.<\/p>\n

Morente said there would be no letup in the immigration bureau’s campaign against the illegal foreign workers \u201cwho use the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0as a venue for illegal activities, particularly unauthorized online gaming activities, cyber fraud and investment scams that prey on unsuspecting victims who are mostly abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week,\u00a0Philippine\u00a0immigration agents arrested 277 Chinese in a raid on an online investment scam syndicate that defrauded hundreds of people in China.<\/p>\n

The arrests Wednesday in the Ortigas financial district in Pasig city in the Manila metropolis came after the Chinese Embassy provided information about the fraud, Morente said.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Chinese Embassy said many Chinese have been illegally recruited to work in the gambling industry in the\u00a0Philippines, often without work permits. The online gambling operations cater mostly to Chinese in mainland China.<\/p>\n

The embassy said Chinese money was flowing illegally into the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0involving crimes such as money laundering and that many Chinese recruited to work in the online gambling operations were confined, physically abused and had their passports taken.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0Amusement and Gaming Corp. has stopped issuing licenses to offshore gambling operations while contracts and security and legal issues are reviewed. The gambling regulator said the\u00a0Philippine\u00a0government collected nearly 12 billion pesos ($235 million) in revenues from the operations from 2016 to last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA,\u00a0Philippines\u00a0\u2014 The\u00a0Philippine\u00a0immigration bureau says its agents, backed by troops, have arrested 324 Chinese accused of involvement in illegal online gambling …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":177008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-jim-gomez","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231336,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231334\/revisions\/231336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}