Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) yesterday said that Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) never gave up his US citizenship.
Kuan told the legislature that Huang obtained a US green card as a dependent on March 15, 1988, and took an oath to become a US citizen on Feb. 15, 1994.
Huang filed a missing passport report after he used his US passport for the first time; and he did not tell the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) — in the postscript column of a visa application form — that he wanted to give up his US citizenship because he had to assume public office until he applied for a visitor’s visa on April 7, 2008, Kuan said.
However, Huang never went to AIT to complete the process to give up his US nationality, she said.
Huang served as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator between 2002 and Oct. 15 last year. He resigned his legislative post and was elected Taitung County commissioner on Dec. 5.
The Nationality Act (國籍法) bars public officials from holding dual nationality and obliges those who have foreign citizenship to give it up before assuming public office. They must present documents proving that they have given up their foreign nationality within one year of assuming public office.
Should the allegations prove true, Huang could be the latest politician to get into trouble for having retained US citizen during their term of public office.
Former KMT legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) was sentenced to two years in prison on fraud and forgery charges in her dual nationality case on Feb. 4. The ruling is not final.
KMT Kaohsiung City councilor Huang Shao-ting’s (黃紹庭) elected status was annulled by the Central Election Commission (CEC) on Sept. 25 because Huang held US citizenship. The CEC gave the same punishment to former Taiwan Solidarity Union legislator George Liu (劉寬平) for holding US nationality during his term between. Feb 1, 2005, and Oct 15, 2007.
“Why is the dual citizenship controversy never ending? Isn’t this a serious matter?” Kuan asked Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義).
Wu told Kuan he was saddened by the allegation and said he would investigate the matter.
In a telephone interview with SET-TV yesterday afternoon, Kuan said she obtained the information from a source in the US, adding that it was the same person who provided her with information about Lee and others.
Kuan said that although she wondered why the source provided her such information every time the KMT administration and China became too close to each other, the information from the source had so far always turned out to be true.
“Huang should be immediately investigated by prosecutors and the CEC,” she said.
Huang told a press conference in Taitung that he gave up his US citizenship in January 1996 after deciding to run for public office.
Meanwhile, Kuan accused the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of malfeasance after the term “Taiwanese” was not listed as a category in the US Census this year. She said US Department of Commerce officials told Taiwan’s representative office in Seattle that the department could include “Taiwanese” as a category, but somehow it never happened.
“[The ministry] must have compromised after the policy angered China,” Kuan said.
In previous censuses, overseas compatriots could write “Taiwanese” on the form, but not every state allows the practice, Kuan said, adding that only 140,000 people who identified themselves as “Taiwanese” were given recognition.
Wu voiced support for overseas compatriots identifying themselves as “Taiwanese” in the census form and vowed to find out why the US reneged on its promise.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS