Starting on Oct. 1, foreign nationals visiting Taiwan have to fill out an online arrival card three days before entering the nation’s borders, as paper forms are being phased out, the National Immigration Agency announced yesterday.
The policy would expedite foreigners’ passage through immigration while reducing waste, the agency said.
Introduced on May 5, the online arrival card, whose format aligns with international trends, has been well-received, it said.
Photo courtesy of the National Immigration Agency
The arrival card is available in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian, it said.
Travelers can opt to upload a basic information page from their passport, which the system would reference, reducing the time needed to complete the form, it added.
One person can fill out forms for up to 16 people, including tour groups or families visiting Taiwan, which further reduces the customs clearance process, the agency said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Immigration officials can access information on the online arrival card once the traveler is standing at the gate awaiting clearance to expedite the process, it said.
Airline companies are to receive QR codes that are to be displayed at airports and harbors, allowing travelers who have not completed their form in advance to scan them, ideally before their passport is checked at immigration, to facilitate the clearance process, it added.
In other developments, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) yesterday said that passenger traffic at Kaohsiung International Airport has recovered to 89 percent of the volume before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The figure is higher than that of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, which has only reported a 76 percent recovery rate, he said.
There are 33 routes flying from Kaohsiung International Airport this summer, with 362 flights flying out of the airport per week, Hsu said.
Citing Civil Aviation Administration data, he said that Kaohsiung saw 1.8 million travelers passing through the airport from January to April this year, which is about 92 percent of pre-pandemic traveler volume.
With the onset of summer, the airport could return to about 98 percent of pre-pandemic traveler volume, he added.
Commenting on flights to Europe, the US and Australia, Hsu said he had visited United Airlines, which said that it was assessing the possibility of flying from Kaohsiung to San Francisco with a stopover in Tokyo, starting on July 11.
Most trans-Pacific flights from the US to Taiwan usually arrive before 9pm and there should not be a curfew issue, he said.
With the exception of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, every other airport in Taiwan has a curfew to prevent noise affecting nearby residents.
Hsu said he is working with airlines to develop new routes to Vietnam, Japan and Malaysia, which would link southern Taiwan to the rest of the world.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS