In the wake of an offer to allow Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, a legislator yesterday said Beijing should show good will by taking back the 2,223 illegal Chinese immigrants currently detained here.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator and caucus whip, Peter Lin (
He said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
He said if China really wants to show good will to the Taiwanese, it should help solve the problem as soon as possible.
Lin said according to the Immigration Office under the National Police Agency, three detention centers located in Hsinchu, Ilan and Matsu currently hold hundreds of Chinese immigrants. Detained within the facilities are 711 males and 1,512 females.
Lin said the immigrants are waiting for boats to take them back to China. They are waiting indefinitely, as the Chinese government has purposely delayed their repatriation.
The government spends a lot of money every year to care for the detainees, and this situation could potentially be made worse by an influx of Chinese tourists, who may abscond while visiting Taiwan, Lin said.
In addition, according to law enforcement officials, there are 480 Taiwanese criminals on the lam in China, including Wu Tse-yuan (伍澤元), former Pingtung county commissioner who was found guilty of corruption; Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄), a former Kaohsiung City Council speaker found guilty of vote-buying in a council speakership election; and Eddie Liu (劉偉杰), a former employee of the prominent Taiwanese law firm Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law, who embezzled NT$3 billion, Lin said.
According to Immigration Office of the National Police Agency, 38,617 Chinese people have traveled to Taiwan after the their government allowed tourists to come to here by application, in a trial period which began in 2002 and was discontinued in March.
Lin said National Security Bureau Deputy Director Wang Chin-wang (
According to Lin, Wang said that easing the travel ban on Chinese tourists would have some impact on the nation's security.
Lin said the government should therefore not allow Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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