The Overseas Community Affairs Council yesterday said that a draft amendment to the Immigration Act (出入國及移民法) has been submitted for review that aims to address difficulties faced by overseas Taiwanese, including those from the Philippines, who have overstayed their visas and not completed the required household registrations.
Compatriots who have overstayed their visas are unable to obtain a National Identification Card or apply for National Health Insurance, according to accounts from overseas Taiwanese.
Overseas Chinese residing in the Philippines also appealed for residency and employment rights.
The council said that the proposed amendment is the result of extensive inter departmental collaboration at seminars and forums over the past few years among relevant government agencies, including the National Immigration Agency, the Ministry of Labor and the National Health Insurance Administration.
On employment rights, the council said that current guidelines allow only those who have Republic of China (ROC) nationality to be employed without having to first apply for a work permit. The council said that the Minister of Labor would make great efforts to make employers aware of this fact.
Regarding health insurance, the council said that National Health Insurance program requires an individual to complete household registration before they can be insured, therefore overseas Chinese from the Philippines who do not meet the requirements might not be covered under the program.
Current guidelines prescribe that Taiwanese nationals from overseas countries can apply for permanent residency if they have lived in Taiwan for over 183 days each year for seven consecutive years.
The requirements have been deemed too stringent by Taiwanese in the Philippines who are pushing for an amendment to the regulation.
In response, the council said that under the proposed amendment, the requirements for Taiwanese from abroad to apply for permanent residency in Taiwan would be relaxed, with the length of stay being cut from seven to five years.
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