I have a curiosity, and I’ve personally never done this in Taiwan before. You know how a 立委 is basically like a lawmaker/MP? Back home, I used to routinely contact my local lawmaker’s constituency office whenever I ran into some kind of government or regulatory issue—from my parents’ pension application getting stuck to questions about basic telecom regulations.
I even once contacted the Transportation Department and cc’d my local lawmaker about something that really puzzled me: Canada is, as far as I knew, the only country in the world where has an active ban on airline check-in luggage service at Taipei Main Station. It was my first time in Taiwan, and I asked why this policy existed. They wouldn’t really tell me the reason. My local lawmaker said that if she had time, she would raise it in Parliament. Nothing ever happened, though—it’s been about a year now.
So I’m curious: Do expats in Taiwan actually contact their local 立委’s service office when they run into government red tape or some kind of administrative problem? Or is that something that mainly Taiwanese citizens do?
I’m genuinely curious because, where I’m from, contacting your elected representative’s constituency office when you have a problem with a government agency is actually pretty normal.
If we aren’t citizens, then they aren’t our representatives. It used to annoy me when non-citizen foreigners did this in Australia, I was a public servant and had to draft some Department responses, so I’m not about to do the same here.
The appropriate channel would be via our missions/trade offices. But given the geo political setting some of the grievances either don’t want to be heard or communicated.
We IMMIGRANTS/foreigners do contact legislators and they at times (depending really on their best judgement) help. But, they choose their battles “wisely”, we cannot vote and many topics are quite resents by the citizens who do vote (especially the elders who are the ones who vote the most). However, public service is quite different here from other countries, so the best bet is to have an Executive Yuan person to assist.
thanks for explaining that legislators are like MPs, never came to me.
Just because non-citizens cannot vote doesn’t mean that they’re not being represented by the elected legislators.
In a democracy, legislators are elected to represent the entire population (not just those who voted for them). Same with the president: They’re elected to serve their country - not just their voters (of course, quite some prominent examples of presidents doing the opposite….).
Of course, an individual legislator might consider topics only affecting non-voters of lesser priority to them - but saying that people who lack voting rights should not be allowed to voice their concerns is not my understanding of a working democracy.
(Another example are children / minors: Should they not be able to write to legislators just because they haven’t reached voting age? Should legislators be “annoyed” if a 16-year old writes to them because “they cannot even vote for me!”…?)
Yeah, typically not the case here - resident foreign nationals were not even included in the official population statistics last I checked. Relevant officials were puzzled when I mentioned that this was different to immigration friendly nations
Having said that, there are groups out there who do contact legislators on behalf of the resident foreign national cohort. See eg Crossroads. Practically, individual case studies seem to have more impact as part a set of them presented together, rather than bombarding legislators one by one. Still learning this space though.
No, they only represent their citizens. Some choose to take on causes of foreigners, but they don’t respresent them.
In the anglosphere there is the concept that MPs represent the whole constituency regardless of citizenship, but that is how a democracy gets hijacked at one extreme, and otherwise it ends up causing even more delays as so much time is spent replying to these queries.
In Italy MPs represent themselves and party interests. They don’t even pretend to be at the service of the people. The only ones who do not have party pressures are life senators (a relic of the Kingdom constitution), i.e. former presidents of the Republic or illustrious citizens as appointed by the President for life. But usually are less than 10, and rarely participates to actual sittings, it’s seen more as an honour than actual lawmaking unlike Canadian Senate or UK House of Lords.
So I am very well used not to even consider contacting a legislator for an issue, it’s useless. Like in Italy, TW is a place for administrative litigation (albeit Italy is much more active in that, TW still has a sort of deference to the government and judges tend to side with the gov, but not a rule and quite a few big wins already came, like same sex marriage started as an administrative litigation which then became a constitutional case).
Sovereignty of the Republic of China belongs to all citizens.
vs. Article 62:
立法院為國家最高立法機關，由人民選舉之立法委員組織之，代表人民行使立法權。
The Legislative Council is the nation’s highest legislative body, composed of legislators elected by the people, representing the people in exercising legislative power.
Not all people can vote - but a legislator’s job is still to represent all of them.
Thus, a legislator that disregards a request in principle solely because the requestor lacks the right to vote would not be acting constitutional to my understanding. Of course, they don’t have any duty to act on every request - and the level of representation will be higher for those to whom they’re actually accountable to (= their voters) - but their representation still includes people who lack voting rights.
If legislators would not represent foreign residents in any way, there wouldn’t be ARC, APRCs and basically no rights for foreigners at all. The fact those exists speaks in favor that - at least some legislators - do consider and represent foreign residents. For sure, not always the way we like - but it’s still considerable more representation than none.
Personally, I’d see that as an issue and not as an indicator of a democracy that’s working as intended. The primary interest of any MP should always be the nation and it’s people first - party interests should come second.
never said Italian democracry is an example haha. Could be worse, yes, but could be much better.
人民 means people, yes, but really since the People is explained before as the people who vote, then it’s citizens. This is really much an ethnostate still, parliament is for the citizens, foreign residents here, even permanent, are still out of the equation, especially since we are not that many anyways.
Is it right? not really, but this is the current state.
I’d still treat that as a rather pessimistic view.
Yes, the influence individual foreigners have on the legislative processes in Taiwan are close to zero (if not zero). (But I’d bet that this is similar for most individual Taiwanese citizens, too).
But overall, I still wouldn’t say that interests of foreign residents are not considered at all in Taiwan. The recent changes regarding labor insurance, disability care etc. for foreign residents are an example of this.
Sure - things could be better, but it’s not like foreigners live in a “vacuum of rights” or something…
the recent development for non-citizen residents in TW are very positive. Slow, but steady progress. I am optimistic, but no one can be in a rush here, they love to mull as we know.
The constitution was written here really just thinking about the Chinese populace, then really worded with the additional articles to mean only people living in the Free Area. Other pieces of legislation added then non-citizen protections and rights (mostly the Immigration Act, the Consumer Protection Act and other similars and then the integration into TW law of the various Human Rights covenants and conventions, but would not use the Constitution here as source of rights for foreigners, it has never been tested for non-citizens.
here we are going down a VERY DEEP rabbit hole of TW constitutional theory, but I have not seen nor are aware of any case where a non-citizen tested (i.e. argued a case) using any of the Rights clauses of the Constitution here. Hence, the Constitutional Court (methinks) has yet to actually put black on white that the People written in the Constitution means every single human notwithstanding of citizenship or residency status and not just the ROC nationals (further narrowed down then to really now who we call Taiwanese thanks to the additional articles). We can argue that all the time the Constitution talks about 民 really refers to citizens, not residents, which are the persons who are the depository and source of sovereignty in the Country.
This almost makes sense given that there is no distinction whatsoever between the 民 when referring to rights and duties. Most definitely duties such as defending the country applies only to citizens, but then rights should apply also to non-citizen, but the Constitution makes no difference.
Hence, the need for additional legislation expanding the constitutional guarantees, using the Constitution as a foundation to expand and extend rights also to people not originally comprised into the 民. And the way they made this for instance in the immigration act is quite clever, talking about 對居住於臺灣地區之人民, so explicitly tying the definition of People based on residence in the Taiwan area instead of People as the body of citizens. This also helps in kinda discriminating a part of the People, i.e. the technically ROC nationals without residence in the Taiwan area (read Chinese, HKer and Macanese), while including non-citizens with residency in the Taiwan area. Then let’s remember that the strongest pieces of Human Rights legislation were only added into TW law in the 2000s (ICERD, ICCPR etc…) by kinda ratifying the treaties of those UN covenants signed by TW (the ROC really) when still a member.
So what you’re saying is that for example children should also not be represented by legislators because they cannot vote for them…?
I do not see an inevitable limitation because of this: “People” vote for representatives who then represent these “people” - but voting rights are regulated in another article and then limited to citizens of legal age, i.e. only some of the people actually have a right to vote.
It is an interesting topic for sure!
Thanks for typing this out.
Maybe we should split up this discussion into a new thread (@olm ?)…?
No, it annoyed me as they weren’t citizens, and the volume of work it required was ridiculous.
Also, they were almost always from 1 of 2 countries in South Asia, It was almost like the first stop for people from those countries is the MP’s office. Conversely, the majority of applicants from East Asia didn’t engage in this type of behaviour.
I’m not sure you appreciate how many people and how much time is utilised by just one of these queries.
Unless it is something extremely important I wouldn’t engage in this behaviour in a foreign country, if I have an important query I would bring it up with my own representatives, and (quasi) consular services. I am very much of the opinion that we are guests here unless we naturalise.
Nothing ever happened, though—it’s been about a year now.