Lawmakers late on Tuesday passed a basic act governing “new residents” to facilitate their integration into Taiwanese society, in addition to authorizing a special commission to be created under the Executive Yuan.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators renamed the bill, which was originally to be called the “new residents’ rights protection act” and changed some provisions after negotiations broke down.
TPP caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) on Monday said that the opposition bloc rejected a deal it inked with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government to protest being accused of “red scare” tactics.
Photo: CNA
The motion to rename and amend the bill passed in a vote along party lines following an evening session at the Legislative Yuan.
The new residents’ bill — which would apply to foreigners, stateless people, and residents of China, Hong Kong and Macau who have long-term or permanent residency in Taiwan via work, possession of valuable skills or investment, as well as foreigners married to permanent residents or Taiwanese and their children — would protect their rights, help them integrate and promote a multicultural society in which all groups prosper.
The Ministry of the Interior is to implement the legislation and establish a level-three government apparatus to oversee new resident affairs and services, including education, employment, care and language training, the bill says.
It mandates the government to provide new immigrants with multilingual services, medical care, guidance for adapting to life in Taiwan, assistance for their children’s education, and protect their personal safety and workplace rights.
Local governments are to create family services centers to advise immigrants on family needs, marriage and childrearing, and to provide legal and mental health resources, it says.
The central government should provide language-learning resources, career consultation and measures facilitating attainment of vocational certificates, it says.
The government is authorized to subsidize media representations of new residents’ culture and language, academic studies on immigrants, and measures to train immigrants in economically valuable skills, it says.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) expressed reservations about the bill, saying that substituting the legal category of people residing in China, Hong Kong and Macau would conflict with other laws.
Naming it a basic act implies that it would subsume the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), MAC Deputy Minister Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told lawmakers during a previous question-and-answer session.
More than 65 percent of people who fit the description of “new residents” are Chinese spouses married to Taiwanese, Liang said.
Another official, commenting on condition of anonymity, said that the bill would benefit Chinese immigrants, but crowd out resources intended to recruit foreign professionals.
Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) in a news release thanked lawmakers for passing the bill and said that it would bolster immigrant workforce participation, the availability of translation services and access to public media.
The bill expands the definition of new residents to include people who obtained residency as a highly skilled worker or due to their occupation, Liu said.
The Ministry of the Interior in collaboration with local governments is to oversee a nationwide effort to review existing legislation to make it more friendly to new residents, he said.
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