For 12 months Zhang Lianyun gambled that she could be anonymously absorbed into the Marshall Islands population, but her luck finally ran out at Christ-mas when she became the latest statistic in a crackdown on Chi-nese overstayers.
The dragnet sweeping through the capital Majuro is in the hands of Assistant Attorney-General Jack Jorbon, who has the task of eradicating the hangover of an ill-fated passport sales program.
In the past year Jorbon has charged about 30 Chinese overstayers among an estimated 250 -- or 1 percent of the Marshalls capital -- whose visas have expired.
Many have been in the central Pacific island nation for several years, largely as a result of a mid-1990s passport sales program that drew the Marshalls, which has diplomatic relations with Taipei and not Beijing, to their attention.
At least 2,000 passports were sold before the program was terminated in 1996 following complaints from the US State Department about passport purchasers attempting to illegally use the documents to enter the US.
Many Chinese who bought their citizenship set up businesses in Majuro, attracting other compatriots who arrived on 30-day visitor visas and then stayed on.
The combination of lax immigration policing and the potential to enter the US by marrying a Marshall Islander made it an attractive destination.
For Zhang and others, the risk of staying on in the Marshalls, which has a strategic partnership with the US under a Compact of Free Association, outweighed the threat of jail if caught.
Immigration officers say she was among three Chinese nationals arrested at Christmas after staying in the country despite being given two weeks to leave in mid-June.
Jorbon said the big challenge is to get overstayers to leave, especially as no action had been taken against them for many years and the return airline tickets they arrived with had long expired.
"The crux of the problem is they say they have no money to buy an airline ticket," Jorbon said, adding the government did not want to pay for deporting overstayers.
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
RSS