The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday denied any political motivation for requesting that Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) present English translations of documents relating to legal cases he has been embroiled in as part of his request for a US visa.
Consulate personnel do not take the political affiliation of applicants seeking US visas into consideration, but they do require a record of any criminal charges brought in Taiwan or the US, AIT spokesperson Amanda Mansour said when asked about Fu’s claim that he had been denied a visa on political grounds.
Fu was denied a visa because he failed to present the required documents, the AIT said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
“All visa applicants are equal under the law,” Mansour said. “Those who have criminal charges in the United States or Taiwan must provide documentation that those charges have been cleared before being issued a visa.”
Earlier in the day Fu told a news conference in Taipei that he had been scheduled to fly to the US on Aug. 25 to forge sister city ties with Temple City, California, but on Aug. 22 the AIT asked him to submit English translations of documents on all legal cases involving him over the past 20 years.
Fu, a former member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) who is now an independent, said that the request was not justified and accused the US of interfering in Taiwan’s domestic affairs.
The Democratic Progressive Party government was collaborating with the US to “oppress” him, he said.
The AIT processes tens of thousands of visa applications and requesting translated criminal records is standard procedure, Mansour said.
“Generally, such documentation must be provided in English,” she said. “Visa officers do not ask about or consider political affiliation when adjudicating visa applications.”
She also advised that potential US visa applicants refer to the AIT Web site for eligibility requirements for different types of visas.
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
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
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