Today I went to the telephone company office (Zhong1 Hua2 Dian4 Xin4) to apply for a second phone line for my house in Miaoli County. But the guy at the counter said that I could not apply for a telephone line unless I am accompanied by a Taiwanese person, just because I am a foreigner! He said that this is a “new policy” and the reason for the policy is that “foreigners can leave the country any time”!
Then he told me that the new policy states that a telephone line can be in the name of the foreigner, but when the line is applied for, a Taiwanese person must accompany the foreigner at the telephone company and the Taiwanese person must already have another telephone line in his/her name. In addition, the Taiwanese person must bring one photocopy of each side of his/her ID card, and he/she must sign a form that says that if the foreigner doesn’t pay a bill on time, then the guarantor is obligated to pay the foreigner’s bill!
I was really shocked because during the 7 years that I have been in Taiwan, I have gotten a total of 8 telephone lines in my name (one or two lines in each house or apartment that I have lived in), and the telephone company has never before told me that I needed to have a guarantor.
This is very blatant racial discrimination! I have a resident visa (ARC card), so it’s obvious that I’m not going to leave the country just because I want to avoid paying my phone bill! And it really sounded ridiculous when the guy told me “foreigners can leave the country any time”. That doesn’t make any sense at all because Taiwanese people can also leave the country any time!
Welcome to the All New Anti-Foreigner Taiwan !! If you wait here long enough, some apologist will come along and try and explain all this away…
Is this the only place in the world where you have to be a citizen to get a telephone line ? Even in Da Lu (which the Taiwanese so love to criticise), a foreigner can get a phone line.
I suggest you bring this to the attention of your representative office here. If not, start considering which newspaper to approach. Start collecting quotes: the “foreigners can leave the country any time” is a classic example of infantile Taiwan “logic”…
Awful shame you’re in the sticks, because when I got this “all foreigners are scum so we won’t give you a phone line” shit, I just went to another Chunghwa Office. Guess you may not have that option. Eventually, however, this problem will have to be resolved, as I predict all Chunghwa Offices will start doing this sooner or later. But of course by that time the foreigner-friendly DPP government will have stepped in to solve this ridiculous issue, and Chunghwa will get a well deserved reprimand.
Why not try writing to Chen Shuibian ? If he’s not completely off his rocker, he will see this as wrong and do something about it. I don’t know about you, but I was not even given the chance to prove me financial standing, or in any way address the “flight” issue. This was not a financial issue, it was simply an issue of my being a foreigner. Even if I had been the CEO of IBM, I would not have got a phone line.
One of my occasional hobbies is wasting hours of Chunghwa staff’s time arguing about racial discrimination…I sympathize completely with you as I’m in the same situation with them and Taiwan Dageda about cell phones and ADSL (a customer of theirs for years, but now suddenly “not good enough” to use their services alone).
I’ve had some success from going upward in the food chain. Ask to see the supervisor, and then ask to see HIS supervisor, and so on. You may waste a whole day doing this if you are really tenacious. Good to have a thick book with you. They are usually rather taken aback when they claim “he’s in a meeting” and you just say, “Oh, I’ll wait. No problem.”
I would love to get some organized media going on this one, though.
[quote=“ironlady”]One of my occasional hobbies is wasting hours of Chunghwa (Zhonghua) staff’s time arguing about racial discrimination…I sympathize completely with you as I’m in the same situation with them and Taiwan Dageda about cell phones and ADSL (a customer of theirs for years, but now suddenly “not good enough” to use their services alone).
I’ve had some success from going upward in the food chain. Ask to see the supervisor, and then ask to see HIS supervisor, and so on. You may waste a whole day doing this if you are really tenacious. Good to have a thick book with you. They are usually rather taken aback when they claim “he’s in a meeting” and you just say, “Oh, I’ll wait. No problem.”
I would love to get some organized media going on this one, though.[/quote]
So would I. However, I did waste an entire day waiting for the elusive “boss” of the office on Ren’ai Lu, before going all Taiwanese and taking the path of least resistance (going up to Xin Yi Qu). Any media efforts on this front must take the form of “Do business in Taiwan ? You’ve got to be joking ! Foreigners can’t even get a phone line !” If we let this lie, what right do we have to criticise the perceived “apathy” of the Taiwanese ?
I agree this is a lame deal, but do we really need to call it “racial discrimination”? Nationality and race are, as it’s been pointed out in another thread, two very different things.
[quote=“Poagao”]I agree this is a lame deal, but do we really need to call it “racial discrimination”? Nationality and race are, as it’s been pointed out in another thread, two very different things.[/quote]Is one less insulting than the other ? What do these people see when they say you’re not worthy of a phone line ? They just see someone who’s not Taiwanese, are they thinking of nationality or race, or both ? I don’t know. They just see someone different, and therefore untrustworthy. Do they decide to give you service or not before they see your ID or after ?
Race and nationality are different, it is possible to show cases where it is clearly racism, or xenophobia, but the line is sometimes a bit blurred. It’s all ‘discrimination’, and therefore bad.
Have you never had problems getting service, Poagao ?
They may be equally insulting, but one is certainly more accurate. I have a land line, adsl, a mobile phone, several bank accounts, a checking account, four major credit cards, et al., and no, I’ve never had a problem getting them despite not being racially Asian. Sure, it can be annoying when people assume that white people can’t be ROC citizens, but considering the numbers at the moment, that’s not too surprising. I wouldn’t call it racism, though.
I applied for and received a telephone line from Chunghwa in late June and an ADSL connection with Seednet in May. All in my name without a guarantor. I have an ARC. I did this in Taipei but I admit that I took the strategic step of going to a service center that I thought would have less experience dealing with foreigners (the one at the Legislative Yuan). I suspect that the office in Miaoli is the problem.
I think there is racial discrimination involved, but it is not directed at foreigners from Europe and North America. The real target is the large numbers of foreign laborers and illegal Chinese immigrants. The secondary problem is the ID card problem. A valid ARC should be equivalent to an ID card number for routine things such as telephone line applications and Internet applications. Here’s a real laugh–while Taiwan is spending millions of promoting toursim, foreigners can’t apply for mountain permits over the Internet. Why not? No ID. There are hundreds of other small inconveniences like this,
Why not do what the Taiwanese do? Organize a small protest in front of Chunghwa Telecom someday at lunch. Ask TV stations to show up and prepare a letter (Chenqingshu) detailing how other countries including China allow foreigners to get phone lines.
No. The “purpose of visit” issue has to do with public endorsement of political candidates. Practically, this means you can’t be on stage during a political rally. We are not going to be deported if we go to Chunghwa Telecom and politely ask that we be allowed to apply for telephone service.
I think I can get the local press to cover it. It will be much more effective if the local press covers it–nobody reads the foreign press in Taiwan except,well,foreigners.
What I meant by the illegal chinese immigrants comment was that the presence of illegal immigrants is sharpening the sense among lower level bureaucrats that foreigners need to be ‘managed’. This leads to ridiculous requirements like the one we are dealing with now. It occurs to me that they Maypr’s Office in Taipei might be able to help us.
You guys have a good idea. Shame I am not in Taipei. If you win with one place you should make a list of other places to protest. Then the next time someone has a hassle they threaten to call you lot to sort things out, problem solved. Either that or ya’ll get deported.
I’m willing to go to Taipei if we organize a protest, but only if I was sure that there would be at least 100 people protesting. If there’s only 10 or 15 people protesting, then we would probably just be ignored.
Maybe it would be better to write a petition because then it would be more convenient so more people would get involved. I think the petition should be written in Chinese, and all the signatures should be signed by hand (not computer generated).
By the way, about “racial discrimination” vs. “nationality discrimination”:
Okay, I admit that I should have called it “nationality discrimination” instead of “racial discrimination”, but actually it’s almost the same thing because how many Caucasian people are Taiwanese citizens, other than Poagao?
How about an organized phone-in? We get a list of the telephone numbers for various Chunghwa offices and on some fixed day, everyone calls as many as possible within a certain period of time. Not too visible but at least there’s no travel involved.
Is the American Chamber of Commerce doing anything about this? :shock: Oooohhhh, I DO like a good joke!!
That’s a good one. Everyone go out and get a phone line installed so that you can call to protest not being able to get one…
I got a line installed, and ADSL, no problem a few months ago. But I do agree about all this blatant xenophobic discrimination. This is bad for Taiwan, and the folks at the top need to address it for their own good. Protests, and anything else you can do to raise awareness can only be good for the general environment as well as dealing with specific problems.
How about an open letter posted as a forum thread? Everyone replies to endorse it, then a formal press release goes out drawing the world’s attention to an issue that needs to be addressed.
I would also be very interested in taking part in a demonstration outside of Chunghwa Telecom’s offices. I also have a connection with a congressman back in the States. If we drafted a letter of complaint about discrimination I can guarantee that his office would put a call in to AIT or the American Chamber of Commerce and ask that they at least “review” the issue. Anyone willing to formally start making plans to protest?
As long as the method of protest is not grounds to get me ejected from Taiwan as a trouble maker. Aliens, even permanent residents, are not protected by the constitution … Well, it seems like that is more and more the case even in the States.
Even though they may really be discriminating based on nationality (or rather lack of it), they can quite easily and reasonably argue otherwise.
The standard reasont hese people give if pressed is that it has nothing to do with nationality or residency, but rather household registration. They’ll say that they use the household registration system to recover bad debts, so if you don’t have household registration then they’re not going to give you an account/credit etc.
I agree that this is bad, but think that if you really want to do something about it, forget about the racism/discrimination thing for now, and see how you’re going to counter this ‘it’s because you don’thave household registration’ argument.
:shock: 
Oooohhhh, I DO like a good joke!!