"Our outdated policy is profoundly disrespectful to the leadership of a democratic friend of the United States," he said.
This year marks the first time that legislation requiring high-level interchanges has gone so far in Congress.
Similar resolutions introduced by Chabot in 2004 and last year went nowhere.
In 2004, the legislation did not make it out of the then-named International Relations Committee, and last year similar bills in both the House and Senate did not make it out of committee.
The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), Taiwan's main congressional lobbying organization in Washington, credited a strong grassroots lobbying campaign for helping push the bill through the House.
The organization earlier put the high-level visits at the top of its lobbying agenda for the 110th Congress, association president C.T. Lee said.
"For the past few months, we have mobilized all of our 56 chapters, urging them to contact their members of Congress," Lee said.
The bill is the second pro-Taiwan bill to be passed by the House this year.
In June, the House added an amendment to a US State Department funding bill that aimed to eliminate a set of departmental guidelines that severely restrict the way US and Taiwanese officials communicate in Washington and elsewhere. The amendment was approved by unanimous consent.
However, the Senate Appropriations Committee stripped that and other provisions from the funding bill, and its fate in the upper chamber is still unclear.
In Taipei, the Presidential Office commended the US House of Representatives yesterday for passing the resolution.
"We welcome the passage of the resolution," said Presidential Office spokesman David Lee (
While President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is scheduled to attend a summit with leaders of the nation's diplomatic allies in Central and South America lasterr this month, Lee said that it was unlikely Chen would visit Washington because the resolution still required the approval of the Senate.
Additional reporting by Ko Shu-ling
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