The government is strengthening border security to counter an apparent rise in illegal activities by people entering the nation through expanded visa-free entry programs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday.
A Control Yuan report released on Friday found that sex and drug trafficking cases involving Thai nationals have risen Thai citizens became eligible for visa-free entry in August last year.
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) has compiled a list of suspicious people and has taken measures, such as strengthening border checks and controls, to prevent the illegal movement of contraband and people, and police forces nationwide have also stepped up their enforcement operations, ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said.
However, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of these checks, since they have been in place for most of this year, a ministry source said.
A potential indicator of illegal activity is making frequent trips to Taiwan and staying for most of the 30 days allowed, Lee said.
The government expanded the visa-free program as part of its New Southbound Policy aimed at building closer ties with nations in Southeast and South Asia.
People from Thailand and Brunei were given visa-free treatment in August last year on a trial basis. The government announced in April that the program was to be extended to July 31 next year because it had succeeded in raising visitor numbers from those two nations.
During the first nine months of this year, nearly 200,000 Thais used the program to visit Taiwan, 255 (0.12 percent) of whom were alleged to have engaged in illegal activities, Lee said.
Of the 193,200 Thais who visited last year, only 18 (0.0093 percent) were alleged to have committed crimes, Lee said.
A nine-month trial of a visa-free initiative for Philippine nationals was launched on Nov. 1 and is to run until July 31 next year.
The government will determine whether to continue the programs after the trials end, Lee 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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