The immigration office on Taiwan's offshore defense outpost of Kinmen was upgraded Thursday, as the outlying island's Shuitou wharf has emerged as the country's third largest port of entry after Taoyuan and Kaohsiung international airports. Addressing the inaugural ceremony for the upgraded Kinmen border affairs office, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah said that since direct shipping services between Kinmen and China's Fujian Province were launched as part of the 'mini- three links' in 2001, the number of passengers traveling across the Taiwan Strait via the Shuitou harbor has grown more than 60 fold. In light of the increase in the number of passengers from 20,168 in 2001 to over 1.28 million in 2009, Jiang said, the National Immigration Office (NIA) under the Ministry of the Interior decided to upgrade the Kinmen border affairs office from a division under its Kaohsiung Harbor branch to a full-fledged NIA branch to provide better services for cross-strait passengers. NIA Director-General Hsieh Li-kung said the upgrading of the Kinmen immigration office symbolizes a new stage of immigration services and border safety control in Kinmen, which lies closer to China's Fujian Province than to Taiwan proper. 'From now on, the number of immigration officers at the Shuitou port will be 24 instead of six, ' Hsieh said, adding that the number will increase further if passenger volume continues to rise. Jiang, who arrived in Kinmen Wednesday on an inspection tour, said the Interior Ministry will do its best help develop Kinmen into an international tourism island. Given its special historic background as the Republic of China's defense outpost against communist invasion in the late 1940s and 1950s, Kinmen has great potential to become a popular new international tourist destination now that cross-strait relations have improved significantly, Jiang added. 