Management of foreign residents must be overhauled

It’s surprising to learn that nearly one in 10 murders here is committed by a foreign resident.

According to the National Police Agency (NPA), foreign murder suspects numbered 103 last year, accounting for about 8 percent of an estimated total of 1,298 suspects nationwide. Given that foreign residents account for only 3 percent of the total population, this percentage is alarmingly high.

Moreover, serious crimes such as murder, rape, and arson accounted for 31 percent of illegal acts committed by foreigners compared with 22 percent for Koreans.

The number of foreign residents has grown 30 percent from 1.06 million in 2007 to 1.39 million at the end of March this year, while the number of foreign suspects jumped 85 percent from 14,500 to 26,900 during this period, showing how significant crime perpetrated by the foreign population has become.
The number of crimes committed by non-Koreans also more than quadrupled from 5,221 in 2002 to 22,543 in 2010.

It’s perhaps natural that the number of incidents of foreigner perpetrated crime has risen in correlation to a rise in the number of migrant workers and families here. Yet the latest statistics suggest a situation that has become so serious that experts are urging the government to take stern measures.

The salient feature of foreigner crime rates is that they are high in immigrant communities. These are usually located on the outskirts of Seoul or cities in Gyeonggi Province, and often become hideouts for illegal immigrants and criminals, raising fears that they could become slums and a hotbed for organized crime.

Nonetheless, there is criticism that Korea’s media outlets tend to highlight foreigners’ crimes excessively, fanning fears of xenophobia. Indeed, the crime rate for foreign residents was 1.92 percent compared to that for Koreans at 3.77 percent, according to the NPA.

At any rate, it appears true that foreigner perpetrated crimes have increased at a faster rate in the last decade than before and connected to this was the abolition of fingerprinting foreigners. The Ministry of Justice has still to obtain the fingerprints of 520,000 out of 980,000 registered foreign residents for a database it is compiling.

The policy of fingerprinting foreigners was abolished by the Roh Moo-hyun administration in 2003 after accusations that it violated the human rights of foreigners. However, The Justice Ministry revived it in July last year as the foreign crime rate surged.

The government should take a wide range of effective measures to deter crimes by foreigners in order to avoid later regrets. First of all, our system of managing foreign residents, criticized for being lax and having loopholes, must be overhauled extensively. Specifically, law enforcement authorities need to tighten management of establishing foreigner’s places of residence as to confirm if they actually live in their registered domiciles or not. It also makes sense to bar foreigners who are apt to commit crimes from entering the country.