People traveling to the US with minors who are not their own children must have a letter of consent signed by the child’s parents, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a statement yesterday to remind people of the entry rule following a recent case of a Taiwanese couple being detained by US customs for bringing their six-year-old grandchild to the country without a letter of travel consent.
According to the Chinese-language United Daily News, a man surnamed Wu (吳) said he and his wife were detained by US customs officials at San Francisco International Airport for an hour after they were unable to produce the required documents.
During the detention, customs officials searched their luggage and contacted their daughter living in the city, asking her to clarify whether the couple might be involved in an act of child abduction or human trafficking, Wu said.
The daughter said that she had suggested that the customs officers talk to her elder brother, the father of the child, but the suggestion was not accepted.
The US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has demanded that travelers who escort a minor without the child’s parents have a letter from both parents indicating that they have permission to travel with the minor, the ministry’s statement said.
If the child is accompanied by only one parent, the parent should have a note from the other parent, the statement said.
The US applies the rule to all travelers from all countries, not specifically to Taiwanese, and some other countries have similar entry regulations, the ministry said.
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:
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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