American basketball player William Artino on Thursday evening arrived in Taiwan after last month completing his naturalization overseas, enabling him to represent Taiwan in international competitions.
Artino is one of the few foreigners who received an exemption to retain their home country’s citizenship while acquiring Taiwanese nationality.
The 29-year-old, 2.11m center and his wife arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 7:40pm after disembarking from a United Airlines flight, which departed from San Francisco.
Photo: CNA
Lee Yun-hsiang (李雲翔), deputy secretary-general of Taiwan’s Chinese Taipei Basketball Association (CTBA), said that the organization would help Artino apply for his national identification card, adding that it is possible that Artino could collect his card before Christmas.
Under the Nationality Act (國籍法), a mandatory condition for a foreign national applying for naturalization is legal residency in Taiwan for at least five consecutive years, during which they must have stayed for more than 183 days each year.
The expedited nature of Artino’s naturalization allowed him to bypass the standard minimum residency requirement. He also did not have to give up his US citizenship.
Artino’s naturalization process sets an example that would attract more international basketball players willing to be naturalized to play for Taiwan, Lee said.
The CTBA made clear last week that Artino was recruited primarily to play on the national team, and any club wanting to sign him would have to respect that.
Any contract with Artino to play for a team in either of Taiwan’s professional basketball leagues would have to be between Artino, the club and the CTBA, and stipulate that priority would be given to the national team training and competition schedule, the CTBA said in a statement.
Artino, a post player, has played for a Taiwanese club before, when he starred for the Formosa Dreamers in the ASEAN Basketball League in the 2018-2019 season, averaging 20.6 points and 10.7 rebounds per game.
He also played professionally in Denmark, Estonia and Romania after finishing his university career at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2015 and spent the 2020-2021 season in Mexico’s top professional league with the Panteras de Aguascalientes, where he averaged 17.4 points and 8.8 rebounds a game.
Taiwan has two professional basketball leagues, the T1 League and the P.League+, each consisting of six clubs, in addition to the semi-professional SBL, which is made up of five teams.
Artino arrives as Taiwan has struggled to place some of its top players on the national team, in part because of their contract obligations to clubs in professional leagues in Taiwan and abroad.
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