As I noticed, a lot of expats and “foreigners” have been moving back to where they come from lately. So it makes me question if the life living in Taiwan is as good and comfortable as people claimed to be…any thoughts?
1 Like
No not really, it’s just a normal migration of people, they have their own lives and reasons.
12 Likes
Op do you have any statistics?
2 Likes
Likely more people leaving than coming , there are very good monthly stats on this from NIA.
1 Like
Different strokes for different folks. I think living here is great!
6 Likes
Mobile covid-refugees. Also, why put foreigners in quotation marks?
1 Like
The country is locked off right now, difficult for people to come in. Taiwan economy is moving to a good place. Google’s biggest R&D hub outside US in Banqiao and they plan to open another office in banqiao in 2023.
Probably just a momentarily thing, when we are back to normal times will be more people coming here
4 Likes
Plenty of expat foreigners, American, European or Japanese, have moved away from Taiwan since May. Most of them say it’s due to their family member getting diagnosed with some serious health issue.
1 Like
It’s multiple factors, quarantine requirement is a huge drag for me personally also.
China/Geopolitics .
Western countries already getting back on track with no quarantine is hugely attractive. Much of Asia is still undergoing lockdowns and quarantines. I found out recently Austria has been living with almost no restrictions since July…And here we are its almost half way through October…
2 Likes
Here you can see the monthly updated stats by the NIA. Probably have to compare manually monthly by monthly to see the change.
https://www.immigration.gov.tw/5475/5478/141478/141380/184316/
Taiwan’s overall immigration numbers have been steadily dropping.
4 Likes
I didn’t know death is considered attractive. The US and most European countries are in the top-50 when it comes to daily new deaths from COVID-19.
Western countries are already moving past covid.
I check the news back ‘home’ and it’s not in top ten news items recently. It’s all about the economy, jobs, housing, taxes, local politics.
They didn’t handle the pandemic well but vaccination was good and society is moving on. Jobs are very plentiful, much more than Taiwan in many cases. Quarantine is a bitch to deal with, my colleagues in western countries are going back to more regular work patterns, flying around etc.
In fact I heard many Taiwanese are flying in and out for work regularly but for me that is a horror show (getting locked up in hotel rooms for weeks).
1 Like
Yeah Taiwan messed up vaccination. We will be back to normal soon though
I don’t think having more than 100 person dying each day of a transmissible disease is called “moving past” it, more like pretending it’s isn’t there. There are only 43 AIDS related deaths per day in the US in 2019. More than 600 people died in the US from COVID yesterday.
1 Like
The vast majority of deaths are unvaccinated. The only solution would be to reintroduce social distancing measures to protect people who refuse to take the vaccine. It would never end.
3 Likes
Back on topic!!
Comparing Taiwan foreign resident numbers then and now- Sept 2019 to Sept 2021
https://www.immigration.gov.tw/5475/5478/141478/141380/?Page=2&PageSize=20&type=&alias=
6 Likes
Basically pre covid and now. It’s normal people leave and less people come in to replace them.
Don’t think will be the trend post COVID though.
Taiwan is back, baby!
3 Likes
Another one. It all depends on the China threat in my opinion.
There was quite an uptick from 2017 to 2019 for some countries. So there has been a relatively large number of people moving here and moving out again, if you were part of those expat coummunities it would be very noticeable. I guess most of them are students.(students have been blocked coming in till recently). I didn’t include gender split but France shows an increase because more females moved here recently.
What Taiwan should pay attention to is long term hollowing out of its hinterland, why they don’t encourage SEA immigrants boggles the mind.
1 Like
Yeah those numbers are so small, barely even matters. Does seem that numbers of Western foreigners was on the rise pre-COVID though.
As long as we dont have a war, im pretty bullish about Taiwan. If anyone listens to Tsai’s speech on 10/10, she was mentioning how right now going through an economic transformation. No longer relying on a single market and now all the companies moving back.
The Taishang are no joke, some of these companies are really big. They went to China in the early 90s as small companies and are coming back as very big ones. Thats the reason they are building science parks across the country now and rushing to put up office buildings. Taipei has a pitiful amount of free office space, because suddenly there is demand unseen since the 90s. As Tsai pointed out, Taiwan is now the leader of the Four Little Dragons again(although now one of the dragons is practically dead.)
Not just Google but Amazon and Microsoft are investing heavily in Taiwan. Amazon Ring R&D center has now moved from the States to Neihu. Gogoro is going to IPO soon, and in the billions, something unthinkable for a Taiwan startup a decade ago.
As companies and countries move away from China, Taiwan is one of the only partners for hard/deep tech like AI and IOT.
But you are right, a lot is dependant on Cross-Strait stuff. As long as there isnt a war I see Taiwan becoming more international in the next five years.
Also agree that companies should try to attract more SEA talent. So many companies in Taiwan talk about SEA markets as a big opportunity, but the dont have any staff from those places. Just deep-rooted prejudices in many cases. No Taiwan company would consider entering Japan without Japanese speakers and preferably Japanese staff.
5 Likes
Where can I buy put options?