The Ministry of Labor in June significantly increased quotas for migrant workers in four employment sectors, namely manufacturing, construction, agriculture and institutional care. More recently, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) has announced a long-term care workforce policy that would allow people older than 80 years old, or between 70 and 79 with cancer at stage 2 or above, to apply to employ a foreign home caregiver. As soon as Hou proposed this policy, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government followed suit by promising similar reforms. One stance that the KMT and DPP have in common is that of bringing in larger numbers of cheap and useful foreign migrant workers.
It is not uncommon to hear about migrant workers in Taiwan being exploited and deprived of their rights. This is especially true of home caregivers, who live in their employers’ homes all the time, making it difficult to monitor whether labor regulations are being followed and to intervene if necessary. These foreign caregivers are paid less than the going rate for Taiwanese long-term caregivers and are subject to labor conditions that Taiwanese workers would find unacceptable. Foreign workers are also burdened with high agency fees. Some of them are even abused by their employers, have their movements restricted and are subject to hardships due to language barriers. When it comes to elections, migrant workers have no right to vote and are not in a position to speak out. However, a society that ignores migrant workers’ rights cannot be a truly equal one.
For families in need of home care, the relaxation of application criteria might seem to be a great boon, and it might indeed be a short-term solution. However, if migrant labor quotas are drastically expanded, over the long run the ultra-low cost of their services will inevitably depress the employment opportunities and labor conditions of Taiwanese caregivers.
In recent years, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has instituted policies aimed at improving the pay, conditions and social status of care service workers, such as by providing them with diversified training channels, salary increases, enhancing their professional image and strengthening their career development.
However, hastily relaxing the application criteria to employ foreign caregivers makes these efforts look like mere window dressing.
Along with the social and economic development of migrant source countries and the increasing pull of other countries that need migrant labor, such as Japan and South Korea, Taiwanese society must eventually face the reality of a tighter supply of migrant workers. We must face up to the real cost of the longstanding distortion and underestimation of the demand for long-term care service personnel.
No matter whether Taiwan continues to fund long-term care through taxes or whether it starts funding it through social insurance instead, we must consider the fairness, accessibility and affordability of long-term care services.
Since 2017, the government has been promoting its Long-term Care Plan 2.0, with a focus on the development of community and home care, and the past few years have indeed seen a significant improvement in the provision of public services. Of course, we must keep up our efforts to build service systems and make them more efficient to cope with the challenge of a rapidly aging population, especially with regard to the care of moderately and severely disabled people.
However, the policy direction has already been shown to be feasible and sustainable, so we should not take the retrograde step of relaxing application criteria for private foreign home care.
Taiwan’s demographic structure means in the future there will be a shortage of workers not only in long-term care, but also in all other labor-intensive industries. The way we think about migrant labor policies needs to shift from “importing cheap labor” to “allowing necessary immigration.” Migrant workers should receive equal treatment with Taiwanese, and their human rights protections should be improved. Migrant workers should receive professional training and go into jobs that match their skills and aspirations. They should be able to start their own families and careers and ultimately become naturalized Taiwanese.
After all, Taiwan is already a society of immigrants. At different times, people from different places have come here in pursuit of a better life and opportunities.
Governments should welcome immigrants and protect their labor rights along with those of everyone else. By helping one another and by standing in solidarity, we can work together to build a diverse and free democratic country.
Cheng Ya-wen and Yeh Ming-jui teach at the Institute of Health Policy and Management at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
RSS