MOI denies interviewing of spouses from China will be discontinued

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on March 17, 2006. According to this article, government officials in Taiwan recently denied a local media report, which suggested that the Ministry of the Interior would discontinue the procedure of interviewing Chinese spouses at immigration check points and instead would carry out random inspections upon entry to Taiwan.

According to the media report, an anonymous official said that after the establishment of an immigration administration under the Ministry of the Interior, the ministry would remove all the interview stations based at the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, Kaohsiung International Airport, and ports in the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu. The move would be to conform to international standards and to accommodate demand.

However, officials from the Ministry of the Interior recently announced that even after the establishment of the immigration administration, the government would not abolish the current interview system because it serves to lessen the chances of Chinese nationals using marriage as a ploy to enter Taiwan illegally. In fact, the interview mechanism is likely to become more comprehensive after the immigration administration is instituted.

Official statistics show that Taiwan's current immigration office and police agency have interviewed some 109,000 Chinese nationals since the policy was enforced in September 2003.