Beginning today, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) is introducing a new appointment system for applicants for non-immigrant visas to the US, including tourist, business and student visas.
The system will replace the AIT's existing telephone appointment procedure, the institute's consular section chief, Keith Powell, announced yesterday.
The new system will allow each applicant to set a specific time for an application interview and offer assistance in completing the application form. It will allow the institute to handle visa applications more quickly, reducing the waiting period for the interview and the time needed to process an application, he said.
According to Powell, the new system conforms with the US' new biometric enrollment requirements, which will be implemented later this summer.
As part of the US' anti-terrorism campaign, the system of "biometric visas" has already been established in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and other countries. It will come into effect in China this month. In Taiwan, the system will be in place in either August or September, Powell said.
"At that point, everyone coming to the AIT for their visa interview will have two fingers scanned into the system," he said.
As of today, everybody applying for non-immigrant visas must go to the Atos Origin Application Processing Center (APC), the AIT's new service provider, to make an appointment for a visa interview at the institute.
Both the visa application fee of NT$3,400, payable to Taiwan Post Office account number 19189005, and the service charge of NT$240, payable to Taiwan Post Office account number 19832104, must be paid before submitting the visa application to the APC.
The APC is at 6F, No. 6, Hsinyi Rd Sec 4, near the Ta-an MRT station in Taipei. Its business hours are 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday.
After accepting the application for pre-processing, the APC will give each applicant an identification number so that he or she can make an appointment for an interview at the AIT.
An appointment can be made online at www.visaagent.com.tw or by telephone at (02) 2547-4898.
Applicants who live outside Taipei can visit the AIT Web site at www.ait.org.tw, which carries details on how to arrange a visit to the APC and the AIT on the same day.
Applicants who have already scheduled appointments through the old "caller-pay" telephone system for any date until April 2 are not affected.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching