Citing humanitarian concerns, the National Immigration Agency yesterday halted the deportation of three teenagers who were born in Indonesia, but raised in Taiwan.
The decision came hours after local media reported on the sisters’ plight.
Taipei Zhongshan Girls’ High School first-year student Hsiao Chiao (小喬) — whose name was changed to protect her privacy — said that she had been ordered to leave the country with her mother and two younger sisters.
When she was five years old, Hsiao Chiao immigrated to Taiwan with her mother and siblings on family visas connected to her father’s permanent residence status, she said.
After he was investigated for bank fraud, her father accepted a deal to be deported in exchange for deferred prosecution, Hsiao Chiao said.
Immigration officials last month told her father that he must leave Taiwan by Feb. 8 and his family must leave a month later, she said.
In a petition submitted to Minister of Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇), who oversees the agency, Hsiao Chiao said that she and her sisters identify as Taiwanese and that they have virtually no ties to Indonesia.
Hsiao Chiao added that she was eligible for permanent residency and would have applied for it, but did not due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An agency spokesman yesterday said that a “temporary hold” was placed on the deportation of the sisters and the mother, and that a panel of experts would be convened to decide what actions, if any, should be taken.
The deportation of the father for his involvement in criminal activity would continue, the official said, citing the Immigration Act (出國及移民法).
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater