Sitting at a Phnom Penh café with an iced coffee, watching the usual chaotic mix of tuk-tuks and motorbikes jam up the intersection, you really get a sense of just how transient and mixed the crowd is here. But the latest figures from the General Department of Immigration show just how strictly things are being managed behind the scenes. Over the three years since the 7th mandate government took office, authorities have quietly shown the door to more than 70,000 undocumented foreigners—spanning nationals from 96 different countries.
Walking around the city, whether you are poking down a small lane to visit a rental flat or dropping by a neighborhood shophouse, you run into all kinds of faces every day. Yet the immigration office keeps a very clear ledger of who is legal and who has proper residency paperwork. When the checks show something is off, the deportation orders and plane tickets follow quickly, with no messing around.
Local reports indicate these sweeps and deportations are far from over, and street-level oversight is only getting tighter. For anyone trying to make a living out here, keeping your papers in order and staying on the right side of the law is just basic survival. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before an inspection catches up with you and you are packing your bags.
