There is a deep anger in the foreign community.
As tourists flood in from Japan and South Korea since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, and the government actively courts Chinese tourists by the hundred thousand, immigration authorities hand out insult after insult to people whose skins are a bit too brown.
Last week it was the turn of an Indonesian PhD student at Academia Sinica. Her parents were flying in to attend her graduation. They had applied using the online visa waiver system for Southeast Asians, and had been issued travel certificates.
Photo: CNA
When they arrived at Taoyuan Airport, the father was refused entry into Taiwan, although he had been issued a certificate by the system (people who have been migrant workers here are forbidden from ever using that certificate system, a fine thanks for helping build Taiwan). The certificate, the authorities informed her, was essentially meaningless. The mother did not want to leave the father alone, and so they both returned the following morning.
SHAMEFUL TREATMENT
The authorities could have handled the issue in many ways, humanitarian ways, or at least, efficient ways. For example, the authorities could have notified them a few days earlier via the contact information in the system that the father could not enter Taiwan. Instead, they waited until the parents arrived at the airport, then flatly informed them nothing could be done. To complete the circle of contemptuous indifference, they were told no hotel room could be found, and so the parents overnighted in Taoyuan Airport.
Their agent said that others had encountered the same arbitrary refusals. Shameful.
Among Taiwan’s immigration authorities it seems no one ever looks at what they are doing and thinks: “this could reflect negatively on Taiwan.”
Brown people simply don’t count for them.
My friends from non-“white” countries report that to obtain scholarships, they have to show that their parents have large sums in their accounts, irrespective of their own age and assets. In several countries systems arose for short-term loans to address this demand. Instead of dropping it, the government went one step further and decided to ask for print-outs of bank account information going back a year.
Hundreds of people who may become persons of influence in their own countries have had this experience with Taiwan’s immigration authorities. But tell us again about your Southbound Policy, Taiwan.
The contrast between the island’s presentation of itself as a vibrant democracy and oasis of human rights and the reality of its suicidally discriminatory immigration policies is painful for those of us who live and work here.
Last week at Ej Insight, Mark O’Neill wrote of the plight of Hong Kongers coming to Taiwan, unable to get permanent residency. Over 1,000 nurses, O’Neill reported, have come from Hong Kong and are unable to obtain residency to work, a situation so serious the Control Yuan is investigating. Taiwan has a chronic shortage of nurses, it should be noted.
Hong Kong visas should not be an issue, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese wives already here.
I was in Taipei last week, chatting with a talented and perspicacious friend of many years. He has two Taiwanese children, a boy and a girl, by his Taiwanese wife (“We both have two children,” he says to me, “more than the average!”). He works with an organization that presents research on Taiwan, he has numerous publications on Taiwan’s history and democratization and he regularly talks on Taiwan.
Used to, that is. Now he grudgingly gives what he does, because of his deep anger over the citizenship rules.
“Taiwan ought to be throwing ID cards at people like us,” he says, shaking his head.
I am quite familiar with that head shake. It’s a sign language common to foreigners.
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP?
In recent years, he has fallen increasingly silent, like me. We are both driven by the same deep anger over the lack of progress in Taiwan’s citizenship laws for the last three decades and the institutionalized racism of government agencies that deal with foreigners, especially those whose skins are too brown.
Neither of us has taken out citizenship, though both of us could probably qualify for one of the special paths to dual citizenship. Like many people I know in that situation, we have quietly decided it is unfair to our friends living ordinary lives, working and raising Taiwanese children, who have no access to a special path to dual citizenship.
All foreigners, especially migrant workers, who work so hard, should have a simple path to citizenship: stay here five years, keep nose clean, take out citizenship. We should not have to exhibit some kind of special record on Taiwan’s behalf, like so many trained, high-status monkeys.
I came to Taipei that day to record a program with one of the local TV stations. I had a chance to speak with another long-term foreigner there. He just gave the head shake while we talked about the citizenship laws, implying that Taiwan gets what he now grudgingly gives, no more.
Weeks ago, the government announced that perhaps there would be changes: the spouses of Gold Card Holders might be allowed to work, in a couple of years when the government finally gets around to amending the laws it should have amended a quarter-century ago.
The spouses of ordinary people running businesses, working or just living? They can forget it. Their status is not high enough to warrant such exalted treatment. As for migrant workers, the few lucky ones who qualify as “intermediate skilled labor” can obtain an APRC after… 12 years.
I encounter the smoldering anger at this treatment, and at the even more contemptuous treatment of our brothers and sisters in the migrant worker community, whenever I interact with long-term foreigners. The reason why it is not better known, and seldom discussed, is because it manifests as silence and withdrawal.
It is hurting support and advocacy for Taiwan.
More than that, this behavior is a national security issue. Not only is Taiwan offending people who might otherwise have positive views of it, but its immigration policies beg the question of why the US or any other country should intervene to protect it, since it has decided to commit suicide.
Given this, private and especially public statements from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) on Taiwan’s immigration and visa policies may help spur the government to act. Reports in the international media may help as well. Unfortunately, Taiwan seems to respond only when it is shamed before the outside world.
Meanwhile, as I write this, the students’ parents are returning home. Their flight took them from Indonesia to Taiwan via Kuching and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Long hours in aircraft, only to face disappointment when they arrived and sadness as they depart.
Almost a metaphor.
Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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