An online petition asking lawmakers to suspend the review of a draft amendment that would reduce the number of years required before Chinese spouses can obtain Taiwanese citizenship garnered 10,000 endorsements just 12 hours after it was posted.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has proposed allowing Chinese spouses to obtain Taiwanese citizenship after four years of marriage, rather than six.
The petition to stop the proposed amendment was launched by Tu Cheng-che (杜承哲), a doctor at Cheng Ching Hospital’s thoracic surgery division.
Photo: Taipei Times
“I saw many people talk about the bill online and was furious about it. I was worried that if the bill was passed, it would exacerbate the strain on medical resources available to patients in Taiwan,” Tu said yesterday.
He and fellow medical professionals have seen many Chinese spouses bring their relatives from China to hospital emergency rooms, asking for full-body checkups, Tu said.
“They [Chinese spouses] even tell their relatives that healthcare in Taiwan is free and is easily accessible, and that healthcare providers in Taiwan would not deny a request for a full-body checkup,” Tu said, adding these are not isolated cases.
Given staffing shortages in medical institutions across the country, lawmakers should think twice before proposing an amendment that could affect the medical resources available to the public, he said.
“I will send the petition, as well as relevant appeals to lawmakers at the legislature’s Internal Administration [Committee], as well as its Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee and urge them to halt the review,” Tu said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said the draft quickly drew opposition from young people as it was introduced when China unilaterally adjusted the M503 aviation route and boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat following the deaths of two Chinese who were being chased by Taiwan’s coast guard on Feb. 14.
“Another issue is equality,” Wu said, as foreigners are required to renounce their original citizenship to acquire Taiwanese citizenship, but the Beijing government does not agree to Chinese giving up their citizenship.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
The Sports Administration yesterday demanded an apology from the national table tennis association for barring 17-year-old Yeh Yi-tian (葉伊恬) from competing in the upcoming World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash tournament in Las Vegas this July. The sports agency said in a statement that the Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association (CTTTA) must explain to the public why it withdrew Yeh from the WTT tournament in Las Vegas. The sports agency said it contacted the association to express its disapproval of the decision-making process after receiving a complaint from Yeh’s coach, Chuang
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
RSS