Personnel from 12 government agencies on Thursday traveled with the National Immigration Agency’s (NIA) mobile unit to Pingtung County to tout the expansion of services to immigrants in remote areas.
NIA Deputy Director-General Ho Jung-chun (何榮村) said the NIA mobile unit is scheduled to visit Pingtung County every three months to process new immigrants’ applications for resident visa extensions and to provide consultations.
Since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs joined the government mobile service in October last year, it has also been serving Taiwanese, who can now submit applications for biometric passports to the mobile unit and receive the documents on the same day, Ho said.
He said the mobile service team would now be able to answer questions on topics such as health insurance, employment and social welfare, since the Pingtung County government, legal consultants and the ministries of Health and Welfare, Transportation and Communications and Labor have joined the service.
On Thursday, the mobile team processed visa extension applications and provided consultations for 52 immigrants and received passport applications from 50 Taiwanese.
Government statistics indicated that there are about 500,000 immigrants in the nation, 67.6 percent of whom are from China, Hong Kong and Macao, 28 percent from Southeast Asia and 4.4 percent from other nations.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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