Five allowed to remain on Kinmen despite dad's death

After many twists and turns, five Chinese were finally allowed to settle in Kinmen yesterday.

Yang Zhengxi (楊正溪), born and raised in Fujian Province and his elder sister Yang Jinhua (楊進花) and two younger sisters Yang Zhengying (楊正英) and Yang Zhenmei (楊正梅) as well as their sister-in-law Wu Wangju (吳旺珠) applied to live with their 78-year-old father Yang Ying-tung (楊應同) in Kinmen in February.

But by the time all the administrative formalities were over and they arrived in Kinmen on Oct. 25, their father had been dead for two months.

The Bureau of Immigration wanted to revoke their permits for settlement in Kinmen and repatriate them.

But before the quintet traveled to Kinmen, they had renounced their Chinese citizenship and returned their identification cards to Chinese authorities in line with the Beijing's nationality regulations.

If they had been forced to leave Kinmen, they would have become stateless and so they appealed their case to the Kinmen County Government.

Yang Zhengxi told Kinmen County Magistrate Lee Chu-feng (李柱烽) that the elder Yang was a Kinmen native who went to Fujian along with the ROC army in 1946 and was trapped there at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

In January this year, he and his oldest and third-oldest sons managed to return to Kinmen to settle and secured ROC ID cards.

"My father had repeatedly asked us to return to Kinmen before he died," Yang Zhengxi told Lee.

With Lee's assistance, the immigration bureau finally agreed to allow the five Yangs to take residence in Kinmen.

"I'm glad that our government has been able to handle the case in a humane and pragmatic manner," Lee said.