Daegu Immigration Office struggles to cope with foreigner influx

Visitors to the Daegu Immigration Office fill out forms and wait their turn on June 4. The office usually sees a high volume of visitors but there is only a handful of officers to serve them, creating a bottleneck. / Courtesy of Maeil Ilbo

By Ko Dong-hwan

Daegu is regarded as one of South Korea's “international cities” ― with its airport offering overseas connections, and a rising population of foreign residents. But the city isn't living up to its reputation.

Foreign residents in the North Gyeongsang Province city haven't been happy visiting the immigration offices because the seriously short-staffed authority is struggling to handle the rapidly growing expat population.

The city recorded almost 39,000 foreign residents while the province had almost 75,000 at the end of 2015, according to the Dongbuk Regional Statistics Office. The city and province showed a 38 percent and 48 percent increase, respectively, on 2011 figures. That growth is continuing.

But the city immigration office has reduced staff, from 49 in 2010 to 45 in 2017. As of this month, those handling civic complaints and requests numbered 12. Among them, only six attend to visa issues, where queues are the longest. They took care of over 100,000 cases in 2017 alone, or one officer for 400 cases a day.

The Daegu Immigration Office in Dong-gu has a limited number of officers to look after over 110,000 foreign residents from the city and neighborhoods across North Gyeongsang Province. / Courtesy of Airportia

The city immigration office said although it established an additional office in Gumi and handed its branch office in Ulsan over to a different jurisdiction, visitor volumes did not decrease.

A Vietnamese woman, 24, from Yeongju in North Gyeongsang Province, took the earliest train at 5 a.m. to come to the city immigration office but still had to wait at least three hours. As of June 4, the office's civic complaints and requests bureau saw a queue of 32 for hours from 10 a.m., according to the city's local daily Maeil Ilbo.

The Ministry of Justice decided to send 14 monitoring officers to the city immigration office to help its field officers. But the ministry has not mentioned any increase for the civic complaints and requests bureau.

“The 14 incoming officers will form a new monitoring squad that will finally give room to breathe for field officers,” a city immigration office staffer said. “We will keep knocking on the door of the ministry to increase the civic complaints and requests bureau as well.”