The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) rebutted complaints by artist Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁) yesterday, after Chen told reporters that an AIT consular officer had been rude to him when he applied for a US visa last week.
A well-known contemporary artist, Chen has been invited to contribute to the Prospect.1 New Orleans contemporary art biennial next month.
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday quoted Chen as saying that when he went to AIT to apply for a US visa last week, an immigration officer rejected his application and said in Chinese: “I suspect you would stay in the country illegally.”
The AIT said in a statement that Chen’s application for a visa had not been rejected but it could not process the application because Chen had not provided all the information required on the form.
“Regrettably, instead of providing the information we needed to renew his visa, Mr Chen chose to misrepresent his experience to the media. His visa application remains active in our system and he is always welcome to return to complete the application process,” the statement said.
AIT declined to comment on whether any visa officer had been rude to Chen.
The newspaper report said Chen would create a blog to channel his frustration into creative energy by publishing the stories of people who say they have been treated rudely by AIT visa officers.
The collection of complaints will be part of a bigger project on the unfair treatment some Taiwanese allegedly meet when applying to visit the US, it said.
Chen said the project, rather than just being an outlet for his anger, could lead to a dialogue about “unfair treatment.”
Howard Peng (彭煒浩), a graduate of a US college, said he was not surprised by Chen’s experience.
Peng said he had had a similar experience and had heard stories in the same vein from others.
“I felt like they treated me as if I were a terrorist,” he said.
But Jackson Hsu (許玉元), a retired businessman, said he found AIT staff to be amicable.
“If you are going to the US for the right reason, then there is nothing to be scared of,” Hsu said. “The more you act like you have something to hide, the more the officers will suspect something is wrong.”
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