FARMINGTON – LuLu Yen, a Taiwanese journalist banned from the United States after violating her tourist visa, has been granted a new tourist visa to return to this country.

The Justice Department said Huei-Ju “LuLu” Yen violated her visa when she accepted a stipend for columns she wrote for the twice-weekly Franklin Journal in Farmington.

When customs officials searched her luggage at Detroit Metropolitan Airport Jan. 25, they found Yen’s newspaper columns and a $100 check from the Franklin Journal for two months’ expenses.

A tourist visa prohibits visitors from working for any monetary compensation.

Yen was denied readmittance to the United States in January and banned from re-entry for five years.

The newspaper received about 60 letters and dozens of e-mails in support of Yen that were forwarded to U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Snowe and Collins announced Thursday that the American Institute in Taiwan had granted Yen a tourist visa to return to the United States.

“We are pleased that this has worked out for the best – for both LuLu and those who advocated for her return. We welcome her back and thank the American Institute in Taiwan for their help on her behalf,” Snowe and Collins said in a joint statement.

The senators and their staffs had worked since January to secure a visa from the Department of Justice through the American Institute in Taiwan.

The 23-year-old Yen didn’t know that she was violating her visa when she accepted the stipend for expenses, her boyfriend, Ben Fletcher, said at the time. Fletcher, whose family lives in Auburn, is a student at the University of Maine at Farmington.

After Yen was deported, Fletcher followed her to Taiwan and is still there with her, doing independent work in international studies as a UMF student.

Yen had received less than $250 total in compensation for expenses for her columns.

Bobbie Hanstein, the Franklin Journal’s editor and an advocate of Yen’s, said Thursday she was amazed when she learned earlier that morning that Yen had been granted a visa. Hanstein said she had been told it could take years.

“I was shaking, I was so emotional,” Hanstein said. “I was just so amazed.”

“I think it’s really important to credit the community, because I think that it was really the community that made this happen,” Hanstein said. “It’s a caring community.”

Hanstein said the last she heard, Yen was dreaming of coming back to the United States.

They had been hoping Yen would get a visa because Fletcher wanted to come back and complete his studies in Farmington, Hanstein said.

Yen had come to the United States with Fletcher in July 2003 and stayed with his father, Ralph Fletcher, in Auburn until they moved to Farmington.

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