It’s time for the government to rethink its social security and immigration policy as the nation faces challenges such as “new poverty” and an increasing flow of immigrants through marriage, academics specializing in labor, social welfare and immigration issues told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
Wang Yung-tzu (王永慈), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Graduate Institute of Social work, pointed out that while poverty has always existed in Taiwan, rapid urbanization and interconnection in people’s economic lives have created a “new poverty” that needs to be dealt with differently.
“In the rapidly changing economic environment, people have developed different ideas on who is responsible for poverty,” Wang told the forum, which was organized by the Institute for National Policy Research and the Hsu Chao-ing Charity Foundation.
“In 1997, more than 50 percent of the people considered personal factors such as not working hard enough and spending too much money to be causes of poverty,” she said, citing figures from Academia Sinica.
Statistics also show that nearly 48 percent of people at the time believed “no employment opportunities” to be the cause of poverty — but the number increased to nearly 63 percent last year.
Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of people last year said that the government should work harder to create more job opportunities.
“This goes to show that when dealing with ‘new poverty,’ the government should not put responsibility completely on individuals and overlook social factors,” Wang said.
Saying that the government has not offered a complete social security system to help people escape poverty but only tried to hand out pensions, Cheng Li-chen (鄭麗珍), a social work professor at National Taiwan University, said that the government should quit its “patronizing” mentality and provide job training or assistance for families in poverty to participate in economic activities.
Getting rid of the patronizing mentality could also resolve defects in the social welfare system, she said.
“The existing social welfare system is exclusive — only those who are qualified as ‘low-income households’ may receive help,” she said. “In turn, many such ‘low-income households’ would do anything to keep the title so they can receive cash.”
Other academics at the forum focused on immigration. In their joint research interviewing 15 Vietnamese immigrant spouses, National Sun Yat-sen University professors Wang Hong-zen (王宏仁) and Anna Tang (唐文慧) discovered that immigration policy is connected with hidden domestic violence cases involving immigrant spouses.
“Under the current system, immigrant spouses need signatures from their husbands to renew their Alien Resident Certificate, and thus they depend heavily on their in-laws for their legal residency in Taiwan,” Wang said.
“Because of that, many Taiwanese husbands take their immigrant spouses as slaves — many of them are not allowed to leave the house, do household chores all day long, and are not given any allowance,” he said.
He urged the government to reform its immigration policy according to the US model, which he said grants almost every right of a citizen to an immigrant spouse pending to become a citizen.
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to