The National Immigration Agency (NIA) is debuting a number of new measures today that should make it easier for foreign nationals to enter the nation or stay for extended periods of time, the agency said in a statement yesterday.
Foreign students and overseas Chinese students studying in Taiwan can now apply online for Alien Resident Certificates (ARC) and for extensions or changes to their registration certificates.
Online applications for ARCs are to take five days, instead of seven, the agency said.
Taiwanese expatriate students who do not hold household registration in Taiwan and want to apply for an ARC are no longer required to attach a parental consent form, the agency said, adding that the processing time for online applications has been cut significantly.
Foreign nationals can now check online if they are barred from leaving the country by providing their Alien Citizen Digital Certificate Number, the agency said.
Chinese traveling via direct ferry between China and the Kinmen or Matsu can make use of streamlined procedures, the agency said.
Chinese nationals holding a permit for travel to Taiwan from China’s Fujian Province are no longer required to present a so-called G note detailing the date and purpose of their travel upon arrival in Kinmen or Lienchiang counties, it said.
The processing time for applications by Chinese citizens to visit via direct ferry for academic, sports, religious, artistic, cultural or business purposes has been cut from five to three days, the agency said.
Inspection of customs documents has been simplified for Chinese nationals and Hong Kong and Macau residents holding an chip-embedded ARC card, the agency 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:
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