Media reports said that five Taiwanese who work for companies in India were denied permission to leave the country and have been awaiting approval of temporary residence permits since February because they were mistaken for Chinese citizens.
Pai Tsung-ching (白聰慶), a Taiwanese engineer, made an online post in which he said his application for a temporary residence permit in the South Asian country was referred to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs for review after his nationality was mistaken for Chinese by India’s Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO).
Indian regulations require foreigners who plan to stay in the country for more than 180 days to register with the FRRO in Bangalore or face a denial of their requests for permission to exit, while People’s Republic of China (PRC) passport holders are subject to a much stricter review by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs.
The mistake came from the nationality column in his passport, which reads Republic of China (ROC), Pai said, adding that four other Taiwanese were also in the same situation.
Pai left a message on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Facebook page last week recounting his experiences and asked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MOFA) help so that they can return to Taiwan.
In Taipei, MOFA said yesterday that the Indian government plans to issue instructions to local authorities next week to prevent a recurrence of the mistake that has left the five Taiwanese stuck in India for more than four months.
MOFA spokesman James Chang (章計平) said yesterday that the ministry has attended to the cases and found that they were all isolated cases, as the problem had not occurred before January of this year.
An immigration officer with the FRRO who was new to the position mistakenly referred the cases to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs for review, as he was not familiar with its immigration rules, Chang said.
New Delhi has promised that the mistake will not happen again and that it would issue instructions to local governments to alleviate the confusion, he said.
The five Taiwanese should be able to return to Taiwan in one or two weeks, Chang said.
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