Immigration officers must be professional and sensitive when asking questions when interviewing foreign spouses, lawmakers said yesterday, urging the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to provide better training to interviewers.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said his office had received numerous complaints about couples facing rude questions during immigration interviews.
“One of my constituents said he was asked if his bride was a virgin. Such information is absolutely none of the NIA's business,” he said at the legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee meeting.
Another KMT lawmaker, Justin Chou (周守訓), said he met a man who was asked to name the color of his wife's underwear. Other couples have complained of being asked about details of the first time they had sex.
NIA Director-General Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) said all interview officers had been trained to distinguish between genuine marriages and those who try to take advantage of the system. He promised to look into the complaints.
Lawmakers also questioned the NIA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the high visa rejection rate for foreign spouses.
NIA and ministry statistics show that the rejection rate, especially for women coming from China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, was 25 percent in the last three years.
Hsieh said the figures reflected the agency's efforts to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country through fraudulent marriages.
To better protect the rights of female interviewees, the agency has assigned more female officers to conduct the interviews, it said. Moreover, to ensure fairness, some couples may be interviewed several times by different officers to avoid the possibility of bias, the agency said.
Ministry figures showed that at the end of February, the total number of foreign spouses in Taiwan — not including those from China, Hong Kong or Macau — stood at 140,041.
Lo Yu-chung (羅由中), director-general of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, said that from 2006 to last year, 25 percent of the visa applications by foreign spouses were turned down by Taiwanese embassies and representative offices abroad.
Last year alone, the Hanoi office rejected 35 percent of such applications, Lo said, adding that the visa refusal rate for Taiwanese offices in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines were 36.2 percent, 33.8 percent and 18.3 percent respectively.
Since the establishment of the NIA in January 2007, the agency has helped identy 302 people involved in human smuggling, Hsieh said.
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
RSS