The Bureau of Consular Affairs yesterday denied a media report that a schoolboy was able to get his passport renewed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at the last minute before boarding on Friday because he is Vice President Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) grandson.
“It was not the prerogative granted to the child and it wasn’t the first time that the bureau’s offices at the airport have fixed passengers’ passport renewal problems,” Bureau of Consular Affairs Director-General Thomas Chen (陳經銓) said.
Chen was responding to a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday that said Wu’s daughter, Wu Tzu-an (吳子安), was given the privilege of being able to renew her son’s passport at the airport while 150 passengers were kept waiting in the cabin.
The China Airlines plane bound for Palau was delayed for 11 minutes as a result of the incident, the report said.
The report prompted criticism from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), who referred to the bureau’s Web site, which states that the bureau does not provide a walk-in service at Taoyuan airport for Republic of China citizens’ applications for passports, visas or document verification.
Saying the statement is still on the Web site, Tsai said the bureau granted the vice president’s family a privilege that was not available to the general public.
Chen said a passport application service at the airport has long been available at the two Ministry of Foreign Affairs Emergency Contact Centers in the restricted area of the two airport buildings, access to which is limited to passengers with boarding passes.
The two offices were set up to provide immediate assistance to passengers, with a 24-hour help line for Taiwanese encountering an emergency while abroad, and emergency issuance of visas and passports, Chen said.
In most situations, passports issued by the centers were given to people who needed to go abroad to help their family members in an emergency, but who lacked passports or whose passports remained valid for less than six months, he said.
There have been cases in which people had applied for or renewed their passports at the airport because the bureau’s offices were closed for the night or for holidays, as long as a rush surcharge of NT$900 was paid, Chen added.
In the case on Friday, Chen said, the bureau’s staff at the airport received a call from a woman through its hotline saying her child had not been allowed to check in because his passport would be valid for less than six months.
The bureau’s staff then met Wu Tzu-an, in a group of six, at the check-in counter and agreed to renew her son’s passport, Chen said.
Although it was not an emergency, the staff agreed to renew the child’s passport because they did not want to disappoint him at the end of his summer vacation, Chen added.
Chen said the bureau’s staff did not know the family’s background when they dealt with the case, adding that the ID card presented as required for a child’s passport application was his father’s, not Wu Tzu-an’s.
Chen said the centers at the airport have issued 330 passports over the past three years: 89 passports in 2010, 133 last year and 108 so far this year.
Separately yesterday, the vice president’s office said that Wu Den-yih did not know about the incident and that he is willing to apologize for the delay of the flight caused by his grandson’s passport application.
Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih and Rich Chang
‘UNITED FRONT’: The married couple allegedly produced talk show videos for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to influence Taiwan’s politics A husband and wife affiliated with the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) were indicted yesterday for allegedly receiving NT$74 million (US$2.32 million) from China to make radio and digital media propaganda to promote the Chinese government’s political agenda and influence the outcome of Taiwan’s elections. Chang Meng-chung (張孟崇) and his wife, Hung Wen-ting (洪文婷), allegedly received a total of NT$74 million from China between 2021 and last year to promote candidates favored by Beijing, contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) and election laws, the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office said. The couple acted as Beijing’s propaganda mouthpiece by disparaging Hong Kong democracy activists
EARLY ARRIVALS: The first sets of HIMARS purchased from the US arrived ahead of their scheduled delivery, with troops already training on the platforms, a source said The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday said it spotted 35 Chinese military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, flying to the south of Taiwan proper on the way to exercises in the Pacific, a second consecutive day it has reported such activities. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the missions, reported just days before tomorrow’s US presidential election. The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. Its arms sales to Taipei include a US$2 billion missile system announced last month. The MND said that from 9am yesterday,
A Control Yuan member yesterday said he would initiate an investigation into why the number of foreign nationals injured or killed in traffic incidents has nearly doubled in the past few years, and whether government agencies’ mechanisms were ineffective in ensuring road safety. Control Yuan member Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華) said in a news release that Taiwan has been described as a “living hell for pedestrians” and traffic safety has become an important national security issue. According to a National Audit Office report released last year, more than 780,000 foreign nationals were legally residing in Taiwan in 2019, which grew to more than
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so