帝国的边境

Travel for most non-westerners usually includes enduring suspicion, humiliation and degradation at the discretion of an interviewer during the visa application process. The visa interview isn't merely a matter of a country exercising its sovereignty, controlling its borders and immigration, but rather is a dominant country's disciplinary strategy towards weaker countries and an empire's system for supervising the citizens of the world.
　　Taiwan has been politically and economically dominated by the United States since the Cold War period. [1] Furthermore, misleading images of America's value constructed by mainstream media were fully internalized by various domains of Taiwanese society long ago. Because of this, Taiwanese people make the U.S. their first choice for studying abroad, sightseeing and immigration.
　　However, in order to apply for an American visa, Taiwanese citizens must produce considerable documentation ensuring they will not reside in the United States illegally, as well as provide fingerprints which are maintained in U.S. government security files. There is also an interview at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), [2] where many applicants have been subjected to discriminatory language and humiliation, and then denied a visa for unclear reasons. A proportionally higher number of applications submitted by young, unmarried women and people unable to provide proof of adequate financial resources are denied. When refused a visa, the applicant is handed a document which includes the sentence "today's decision cannot be appealed."
　　Humiliating treatment during visa application interviews at AIT is common knowledge among Taiwanese citizens, although no one has discussed this situation publicly before now.
　　Conversely, American citizens do not need a visa to enter Taiwan, nor do they need to provide fingerprints, undergo rigorous background checks or attend interviews. Although this kind of colonial master/servant relationship exists, the Taiwanese government has never registered a formal complaint. Since a constructed simulacrum of America's value has been internalized into the collective thinking of Taiwanese society—to the point of forming subconscious self-censoring mechanisms—when visas are denied, people start to wonder what they have done wrong, or feel they are not up to American standards.
　　In late September of 2008, I also encountered difficulties applying for a U.S. visa, and subsequently established the blog The Illegal Immigrant to protest the verbal abuse I suffered at the hands of an AIT interviewer. [3] The blog was open to Taiwanese people who wished to share similar stories of verbal abuse at AIT, and subsequently several-hundred responses were posted to the blog.
　　Postings not only reflected humiliating treatment and hundreds of denied visas, but also suggested that the Taiwanese authorities needed to take a closer look at their own border policies towards others. Spousal immigrants and migrant workers from developing countries are particularly vulnerable to similar prejudicial and inhumane policies when arriving in Taiwan. Of course, there were also many posts supporting America's value, and maintaining that this colonial-style institution and unequal visa-granting relationship have a basis in law. Based on the posts to my The Illegal Immigrant blog which narrated experiences of denied visas and questioned the Taiwanese government's imperial-style monitoring and discriminatory policies toward the other, I produced the video Empire's Borders I.