The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) has ordered a retrial of the appeal of a case of a Chinese spouse whose permanent residency application was rejected due to her decades of employment by a Chinese state-owned bank, which the Ministry of the Interior considers “a Chinese political institution.”
Liu Yanhong (劉彥紅), a Chinese woman who married a Taiwanese man in 2013 with her application for long-term residency in Taiwan granted in 2017, applied for permanent residency in Taiwan in 2021.
Her application was rejected by the ministry after the National Immigration Agency found that Liu had been working at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) for more than 37 years.
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The bank is one of the six major state-owned commercial banks of China. ICBC is regarded as China’s fiscal cornerstone and is globally influential. Liu has worked at ICBC’s Xuzhou branch since 1983, in positions including clerk and account manager.
The ministry considers ICBC to be part of “the political party, military, administrative or political institutions or organizations of mainland China.”
It dismissed Liu’s application for permanent residency in 2022 and barred her from making another application within the following three years.
Liu and her husband filed an administrative lawsuit, arguing that she is a rank-and-file employee dedicated to ordinary banking operations and has not been involved in political or national security affairs.
The Taipei High Administrative Court reviewed the case and revoked the ministry’s administrative action against Liu, saying the action lacked factual basis.
The ministry determined that Liu worked at a political institution and dismissed her application, without looking more closely into her position at the bank and her job’s nature and content, or seeking assistance from national security authorities for a joint investigation, it said.
However, the SAC last month remanded Liu’s appeal case to the Taipei High Administrative Court for retrial, saying that ruling was based on an error of law and more facts remained to be seen.
It is part of any permanent residency application review to see if the applicant has worked at any Chinese military, administrative or political institution or organization, the SAC said.
The ministry’s judgement that ICBC is a political institution was not baseless, given that it is a state-owned bank and is affiliated with Chinese Communist Party branch organizations, it said.
The ministry had to evaluate Liu’s application by taking into account her situation, such as her position at the bank and whether her job involves national security, it said.
The SAC also said it was inappropriate that the Taipei High Administrative Court deemed the ministry’s administrative action illegitimate and revoked it without fully investigating evidence, including the complete set of meeting documents from the ministry, as well as opinions from the National Security Bureau and the Mainland Affairs Council.
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