Foreign Minister David Lin says that proposed restrictions on visa-free travel to the US will not affect Taiwanese passport holders. Lin was speaking on Wednesday.
Taiwan is one of 38 countries participating in the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP). A bill passed by the US House of Representatives adds new conditions to visa-free travel to the US. Under the bill, citizens of VWP countries will be disqualified from the program if they have visited Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Sudan in the past five years.
But Lin said that Taiwan is working with US authorities to make travel to the US easier for Taiwanese passport holders.
It won’t affect Taiwanese passport holders. We are pushing forward plans to make travel to the US more convenient. The US has a program called Global Entry, and we are working on bringing Taiwan into this program. Global Entry makes entering the US convenient. We hope that it will be easier for Taiwanese people to go to the US in the future. We will talk with the US authorities about the matter of visa-free travel. No Taiwanese passport holder has had any trouble so far.