Former American Institute (AIT) in Taiwan director William Stanton was granted permanent residency yesterday by the Ministry of the Interior after retiring from the post and deciding to stay in Taiwan.
“After learning that Mr Stanton has chosen to remain in Taiwan as a teacher after retiring, I’ve asked the National Immigration Agency [NIA] to assist him in obtaining a permanent alien resident certificate in recognition of his love for Taiwan and a committee [under the ministry] approved the application unanimously,” Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) said at a ceremony to award Stanton permanent residency at NIA headquarters in Taipei.
“I would like to extend my congratulations to Mr Stanton for being a friend of Taiwan who can now permanently reside in Taiwan,” he added.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Stanton thanked the ministry for awarding him permanent residency and vowed to continue his work to improve Taiwan-US relations.
“From now on, I am no longer an AIT director; I’ll become just one of the small potatoes. I’ll be teaching at Taipei American School, and meanwhile, I’ll continue to help deepening relations between the Taiwan and the US,” he said.
Stanton said he feels very close to Taiwan because he learned Mandarin in the country before becoming a diplomat.
During his term as AIT director, Stanton had visited every county and city in Taiwan, including the outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu and Green Island.
“I have been to many countries, but Taiwan is the friendliest of all. I love the people of Taiwan and the life in Taiwan,” he said.
With a doctorate in English literature from the University of North Carolina, Stanton will teach English and US literature at the Taipei American School.
He will teach a class on relations between Taiwan, the US and China to senior high-school students.
Permanent residency is awarded to foreign residents in Taiwan who have made a special contribution to the nation and Stanton is the 47th recipient.
He is the fourth retired diplomat to be granted permanent residency, following former Swedish representative to Taiwan Hendrik Bystrom, former Dutch representative Menno Goedhart and former Salvadoran ambassador Francisco Ricardo Santana.
Last month Stanton was awarded the Order of Brilliant Star by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for his contribution to Taiwan-US relations. Ma also gave the former diplomat, who dislikes driving, a customized EasyCard to use on Taipei’s public transportation network
Additional reporting by CNA
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