In the time it took Hong Kong to deport 1,319 people, Macau kicked out 6,000
Number of deportees from world’s richest gaming hub up 16 per cent year on year, dwarfing equivalent number for city’s much bigger neighbour
Macau deported a massive 6,016 people in the first two months of 2018, marking a year-on-year jump and dwarfing the number of people kicked out of Hong Kong during the same period.
The surge – to an average of 100 deportations per day – came as the world’s richest gaming destination welcomed a huge influx of visitors over the busy Lunar New Year period.
Macau’s Public Security Force said the numbers meant a 16 per cent increase on the same period in 2017 and that 5,698 of the deportees – or 94.6 per cent – were from mainland China. In the whole of 2017, a total of 30,836 mainland Chinese nationals were deported from the city.
Just 1,319 people were deported from the much larger Hong Kong over the same period, according to figures from the Hong Kong Immigration Department. Macau relies more heavily on deportation to deal with relatively minor crimes than its near neighbour does, because of its different legal system, its smaller size and its fewer prisons.
Macau officials did not give the reasons for the deportations, but it is understood many of them were related to crimes in and around the city’s casinos.
Also among those deported in January and February were 13 people from Hong Kong and 14 from Taiwan.