Taing Vida

About 160,000 illegal Vietnamese immigrants have been living in Cambodia, officials said yesterday, while 1,200 illegal immigrants were deported in the first six months of this year as a result of an ongoing assessment.

Immigration Department chief Sok Phal said that in recent years, an increase of mostly Vietnamese illegal immigrants had more than doubled the number of known undocumented migrants in the country.

He said that a census carried out in 2002 found about 70,000 living here, rising to 100,000 in 2010.

read more: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/immigration-vn-has-swelled-govt-says

Nothing new about influx of Vietnamese migrants. What is new is the willingness of the government to acknowledge it. Which in turn relates to the rising influence of China in Cambodia and a cooling of relations between Viet Nam and China. Viet Nam is no longer the most important patron.