10-04-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Taiwan's immigration chief retires early amid mainland spouse rules backlash
Taiwan 's immigration chief will retire early amid a backlash over the island's tighter regulations on spouses from mainland China.
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Bill Chung, director general of Taiwan's National Immigration Agency (NIA), will step down on April 15, three months earlier than his original plan, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported on Wednesday.
The NIA had come under fire for enforcing a government policy that critics said would destroy thousands of families.
According to Taiwanese media reports, the agency had notified a number of mainland-born spouses of Taiwanese residents that they had three months to provide documentation that they had abandoned their mainland nationality.
The documentation is a requirement under a 2004 revision to the island's immigration law, and the NIA said that if the spouses did not comply, their Taiwan residence permits and household registration could be revoked and they would have to return to the mainland.
