The government’s aggressive campaign to encourage foreigners to visit, do business and study in the Philippine resulted to the increase in the number of registered foreigners during the first semester of the year, it was learned on Thursday.

Bureau of Immigration (BI)-Alien Registration Division (ARD) chief Danilo Almeda said the number of foreigners listed at his office numbered almost to 58,000 as of June this year, compared to only more than 12,000 who were registered in the same period in 2009.

Almeda disclosed that during the first quarter of the year, the number of BI-registered aliens increased by 365 percent and their number surged further during the second quarter when their number jumped by 559 percent.

“As a result, the number of registered aliens from January to June totaled 57,939, compared to the 12,669 listed during the first semester of last year,” Almeda said in his report to Justice Undersecretary Jose Vicente ‘JV’ Salazar, the officer-in-charge of the bureau.

Almeda said that as a result of the meteoric increase in registered aliens, the BI collected for the government more than P53 million in fees for processing the alien certificates of registration identity card (ACR I-Card) of the foreigners.