Hwaseong City Urges Ministry of Interior and Safety to Include Foreign Residents in Population Count

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Jung Jun-sung] Hwaseong City has urged the Ministry of Interior and Safety to include foreign residents in the population count.

On the 24th, the city visited the ministry and requested amendments to three laws: the Local Autonomy Act Enforcement Decree, the regulations regarding administrative organizations and personnel standards for local governments, and the rules regarding administrative division adjustment procedures.

The city's proposal is aimed at preventing administrative confusion caused by differing population calculation standards among local autonomy law subsidiary ordinances and actively addressing administrative needs for foreign residents.

Under the current 'Local Autonomy Act,' foreign residents are recognized in Article 16 regarding resident qualifications, Article 17 regarding resident rights, Article 18 regarding referendums, Article 19 regarding amendment and abolition of ordinances, Article 21 regarding auditing requests by residents, Article 25 regarding resident recall, and even Article 15 of the Public Official Election Act regarding voting rights.

Additionally, with the Local Autonomy Act, which underwent comprehensive revision for the first time in 32 years, taking effect on January 13 last month, the population calculation standard for metropolitan cities and special metropolitan cities now requires that the number of foreign residents be added to the resident registration population.

However, some provisions of the Local Autonomy Act regarding administrative organizations, personnel standards, and administrative divisions do not include the number of foreign residents, making it difficult for local governments to establish administrative capacity for foreign residents.

In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic that persisted over the past two years, foreign resident quarantine and epidemiological investigation, and vaccination issues emerged as major concerns, and there has been continuous demand for budget and administrative capacity for accommodating the growing number of foreign residents and harmonization with Korean citizens, and stable settlement support.

Meanwhile, according to the '2020 Local Government Foreign Residents Status Statistics' released by the Ministry of Interior and Safety in November 2021, the number of foreign residents in Korea is 2.146748 million, accounting for 4.1% of the total population, and Hwaseong City has 634,930 foreign residents, the third largest after Ansan City and Suwon City.

Mayor Seo Chul-mo of Hwaseong City said, "The realization of local autonomy is ensuring the rights to operate organizations efficiently and make policies together with residents," and added, "I will do my best so that this proposal can lead to an expansion of decentralization of autonomous governance."