How many foreigners in formosa?

anyone know how many foreigners(westerners) live on the island? in taipei and other cities?

from what country would you say the majority hail from?

Bloody Good Question,

The problem with government stats is that they count passports; for example the number of Americans is about 45,000 but this includes many Taiwanese holding U.S. passports. Counterbalancing that in part is the number of foreigners who live here but don’t have legal resident status.

My guess for the number of foreigners in Taiwan (excluding ethnic Chinese, mail-order brides, Japanese and the 300,000 workers from S.E. Asia ) would be around 30,000. Perhaps half that number would be in the Greater Taipei area.

While many people have the impression that Canadians outnumber other nationalities, this is a myth. Americans take the top spot. It’s simply that Canadians are …

It seems that the number of British people has been increasing in the last two years or so, while the number of US people has been going down, leaving mostly the “long-timers”. (It seems this way, anyway, and I have nothing against either group–just an observation. I’d like to make that clear).

As for factory workers, six years ago the Thai restaurants near the Yung-Kang industrial area were PACKED on Saturday and Sunday. Now, there are few people at those places. Where Thais have gone home, people from The Philippines and Indonesia have come in. (There’s even an Indonesian restaurant in Tainan now–food: not bad). I met some people from the Philippines near my house and they were pretty nice. Also, their English is AMAZING!

I’ve heard that the job market in Britain is kind-of rough recently, so more of them are likely to shop around the whole world looking for work. That’s a possible reason Maybe US citizens are afraid to travel after the whole 911 thing. Whatever the reasons, anyone is welcome as far as I’m concerned.

coolingtower

This is a bit dated, but:

[quote]Taiwan had 336,000 foreign residents at the end of 2000, a tenfold increase from the end of 1990, according to statistics released recently by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics (DGBAS).

The foreign population statistics are among the results of the census of Taiwan’s household and population conducted by the government late last year.

The huge increase in the foreign population during the decade was attributed to the government’s policy of allowing foreign labor beginning in 1991, the DGBAS indicated. As a result, Southeast Asian countries were the largest source of foreign residents at the end of last year, accounting for 84.4 percent of the total number.

Of Southeast Asian nationals in Taiwan at the end of 2000, Thais led in number with 140,000 (41.7 percent of the foreign population), followed by Filipinos with 75,000 (22.3 percent), Indonesians with 34,000 (10.1 percent), and Vietnamese with 24,000 (7.1 percent). In contrast, Japanese took up 3.4 percent of all foreign residents and U.S. citizens 2.8 percent at the end of 2000, much lower than the 26.4 percent and 23.8 percent, respectively, recorded at the end of 1990.

Of the foreign residents at the end of 2000, 234,000 (69.6 percent) were aged 25-49, followed by those of 15-24 years old with 83,000 (24.7 percent).

In terms of geographic distribution, 56.2 percent of the foreign population lived in the northern region of Taiwan at the end of 2000, followed by the central region with 22.9 percent, the southern region with 19.7 percent, and the eastern region with 1.1 percent. [/quote]

taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/20011 … 214b7.html

There are about 10,600 US citizens resident in Taiwan as of the end of 2003. That is from official NPA statistics. I forget the total figure for all foreigners.

Do Thais just blend in too well and are indistinguishable from Taiwanese? Because while I’ve seen plenty of Filipinos and Indonesians walking around town on Sundays, I’ve never noticed a substantial Thai presence amongst the blue collar laborers. They don’t even have their own karoake pubs like the Indonesians and Filipinos do. I guess they have their own special place to hang out, their own “Little Isaan Street” like you have “Little Manila Street” and “Little Java Street” (well, the whole one block of it, right near the bus stations in Tainan), but you never see it.

There are a few Thai restaurants in the yangmei - Longtan area. We have a few Thai karaoke places in Yangmei.

[quote]The problem with government stats is that they count passports; for example the number of Americans is about 45,000 but this includes many Taiwanese holding U.S. passports. Counterbalancing that in part is the number of foreigners who live here but don’t have legal resident status.

[/quote]
Where do you get your numbers from?

[quote]The Bureau of Consular Affairs states that there were 38,000 American citizens registered with the American Institute in Taiwan for the year of 1999.
[/quote]