Colombia’s new export: Chinese immigrants?

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Colombia saw a huge increase in Chinese visitors earlier this year after it suspended visa requirements for Chinese tourists: 5,589, more than five times the 2006 entry tally.

That’s a a troubling sign for U.S. immigration officials concerned about ‘trampoline’ countries funneling illegal immigrants to the United States.

The Colombian government found that significant numbers of the Chinese who entered vanished with no record of having left the country through official channels. Many others were found crammed a dozen to a room in suburban Bogota hotels, apparently in preparation for being smuggled to the United States.

Some of the well-heeled ‘tourists’ had paid $60,000 to be brought to Colombia, with assurances it was a way station to the United States, according to an official with the Department of Administrative Security, Colombia’s FBI equivalent.

The smugglers sometimes promised to provide the Chinese visitors with fake Japanese passports to facilitate entry into the United States.

So far this year, Colombia has deported 300 Chinese, up from 37 all of last year. And it recently began requiring Chinese to apply for visas. The flow of` “tourists” has fallen accordingly.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota