I’m not saying your experiences here in the relatively short time you have been here are not valid. But I’ve been here close to 20 years and aside from annoyances in banking (which were all resolved with a bit of determination) I’ve never experienced anything I could rightfully call systematic discrimination. I own a home, own a car, own a scooter, have licenses to drive, an excellent job, my kids attend excellent schools, and I live a very comfortable life here. Some would say many of us have it better than locals.
People I work with, associate with and live around all treat me and my family with kindness and respect.
I think labeling it systematic discrimination is stretching it a bit much.
Fight the good fight, try to change things in the system to make life a bit easier, but do it with an understanding that we are guests here. Until we get citizenship, even APRC holders are guests. I think what is being done now to help resolve the ID number issue is the right direction.
I would have to disagree with you here, people who come here as tourists are guests. The government treating us differently is what is causing all these problems and this sentiment is passed on to other organizations who don’t want to take the trouble of adding our ID scheme because we are just guests… We are RESIDENTS here, we are part of the economy, labor force, society, etc. we must have similar if not the same rights as we put in the same or more effort to try to be part of this country and even jump through hoops to have decent access to products and services.
Totally disagree. We have made Taiwan our home, and will probably die here. Most of us have Taiwanese spouses, send our kids to Taiwanese schools, own property here, pay required taxes. We may not be citizens, but we’re certainly not guests. We’re residents.
Thinking of us as “foreign friends” is abhorrent. We’re not tourists.
We’d be citizens if we actually applied. But unfair citizenship laws make it difficult to do so. There’s otherwise nothing stopping us and the lot of us would be successful in attaining it.
We can do it and we’d be accepted, but for us to give up when the Taiwanese don’t have to is unacceptable.
So, you’re saying that if a Taiwanese person was to move to another country. Maybe even your home country they would have to form a life where they have no permanence and have zero avenue to seek citizenship unless they give up their home citizenship?
I’d say it’s systemic discrimination when most companies put restrictions on legal residents to get services.
If having PR made it so that we had equal access to banking, telecommunication, discounts, disability credits, bus subsidies, electric vehicle subsidies, jobs that were more varied without being told it’s for citizens only, heck even stupid things like being told we can’t enter places of business without a passport since we may have the covid, I’d be happy with that. But one simple card provides many more rights, without it we are just guests.
And in many cases it’s not an oversight, the discrimination is baked into the rules specifically excluding foreign residents.
sorry if what that means is described already in the thread. But im wondering what you are referring to exactly? (not saying you haven’t been systematically discriminated against, but just wondering in what way
We have to give up our home citizenship to get Taiwan’s. when Taiwanese don’t in many countries.
18% tax for the first 183 days.
Btw: I’m married to and don’t suffer much if any of this. But I’m wise enough to see what goes on around me.
Banking.
How we have to have a specific ID number that identifies certain attributes. This enables lots of discrimination. Ie we need our passports for lots of things even if we have been here years.
We pay taxes on winnings from the receipt lotto, where locals will only pay tax over a certain amount. This Im not 100% as I’m yet to hav want winning receipts. all the luck just it’s not good.
Many of the long term ARC holders I have meet have actively ignored lots of the issues. That affect them. Fair enough as it makes their lives happy and easy.
during his 2020 presidential campaign, the former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu once called Southeast Asian workers “chickens” and “Marias.” This is a derogatory name for Philippine workers in Taiwan.
You have been indoctrinated to think like this after twenty years. It’s sad to me . I don’t think I’m a guest and I think I should be a citizen years ago. I’ve made my contribution . The reason you think you are a guest is because of the discriminative unfair policies in the first place.
You seem to have mixed up cause and effect.
You may own a house but getting a loan and decent interest rate is problematic (foreigners expressly not allowed online loans at preferential rates, many banks just point blank refuse ) .
You are actively discriminated against as a foreign national in the banking system.
Taxes , especially for those not married, are applied differently . At any time an employer can start withholding 20%.
There are many subsidies (travel , education ) and jobs you cannot avail of (civil service , govt official) that is limiting your human potential.
Dealing with mobile phone companies .
Prohibited from owning forestry, farmland , registering as farmer, accessing govt training institutes.
You are at a major disadvantage in a legal dispute. You may be deported if convicted of a crime .
No access to senior citizen discount, disabled discount.
Your local politician may ignore you because no vote.
No reciprocal agreement on immigration, Taiwanese dual…Foreigners in Taiwan … NO (except for a fig leaf scheme).
Arthur Henderson Smith’s book is free on google books “Chinese characteristics”.
Nothing has changed. I suggest you go to a children’s bookstore, here or in mainland. You are sure to read a variant of this sentence.
“All westerners are savages”
西方人都是野蠻
-The official word in China for whites was “savage” 野蠻 in all government documents. 1 of the stipulations of the treaty ending the 2d opium war was this practice be stopped.
-Even today if you watch China Mainland TV the word foreigner 外國人 is emphasized negatively.
-I watched the Chinese court proceedings agreeing that QiaoDan was ripping off Michael Jordan. He may be a hero to some but the Chinese judge seemed to utter the word ‘foreigner’ with derision every time she said it. Michael Jordan might be the greatest ever. But he’s still not Chinese.
in China town in my country I hear Chinese call me foreigner. Chinese carry the Great Wall in their head anywhere they go
-They won’t change. You must.
Answer your own question–why do most ‘accept’ the situation? Probably because they’re comfortable and they have no strong incentive to turn over apple carts. If there were true discrimination in TW, I believe people there would push back harder. Most are engaged politically out of necessity. The fact there’s no strong movement towards this kind of illustrates that there isn’t that much discrimination, doesn’t it?
they have a phrase for this in Dutch:
all the luck just it’s not good.