Sure, if we back up far enough, any broad brush can work. But I wouldn’t compare the US system of registering an address to the Chinese or Taiw aese HR system in any way outside basically just that. Recording an address. The HR system is waaaaaay more troublesome than that. Again, I won’t speak on the US. But for Canada for example, a peice of official mail suffices. No need for landlord signatures. No need for over 59% of landlord signatures etc like Gere. Amongst all the other pissues peopel have mentioned already.
Anyway, aside from other countries. People in Taiwan cannot sldo a lot of things based on HR. Which is a serious issue. Especially given it being realistically difficult many times. I understand it’s illegal for landlords to refuse. But that’s not how the economy is allowed to run here
The system in most US states is pretty troublesome too. You usually require two forms of proof of address, and depending on your rental situation, you may not be able to obtain those.
Yup, same in the US. Many things require official residency in the state in which you are living. Don’t know about Canada though.
Ya, that’s just not the same as here. But I don’t want to stray too far from HR. In US and Canada. As far as I know, you just show them “proof”. It’s not that way here. Sometimes people get lucky, especially with over crowded offices, but I doubt the US Canada have people from eh hr office coming I to your home and photographing your bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. As one example. Another example being we need over 50% of the ownership of the address (landlords) to sign off. If a house has 5 owners, need 3.
, for example. Getting the paperwork done for such little money is usually a cause for landlords to say fuck it. So people can’t vote there. This is a pretty huge problem in Taiwan for loads of people as the secondary issues such as voting and schooling now become life changing
I can give you some specific examples of things tied to “HHR” in the US.
Discounts for basically everything in Hawaii (even groceries) are only available to those with official Hawaii residency (or in other words, “HHR” in Hawaii).
Free entry to museums and other places of interest are sometimes only given to those with official state residency too.
Another example: A street parking pass for my neighborhood is only available to those with “HHR” in my neighborhood. Prior to moving my “HHR” there, I couldn’t park my car on my own street.
Of course, the biggest example I already mentioned before is college tuition discounts for those with “HHR” in that state.
What are you talking about? There are many ways to register your household here. I don’t think most people need to rely on those ways you mentioned.
Although I know it is definitely more painful to register here compared to the US.
I get that. My main point is those are residency issues. Not Chinese style HR. For example, if you are a resident in many of those places you can do much of what a citizen does. Because you are a resident. Even foreigners. HR does not allow this. Not even remotely. Outside of joinjng family or beckming a citizen. That’s a huge distinction.
I am a resident of Taiwan. For a relatively long time. I cannot get HR anything outside of joining family. Even then, it does not give me much advantages outside of what my visa already gives me. In contrast, residency in say cananda, and I assume many IS states, allows a person to get quite a few rights based on the residency itself, nevermjnd the visa. As an example pel, I have zero health care in Canada even though I am a citizen. Why? Because I am not a resident. I feel that’s fair. If I remember correctly, in BC, I need to be back 3 mk ths and I can reapply for residency and carry on as normal. That is very different than here.
Residency abroad and HR in Taiwan are not really that similar, outside of registering a location to an ID/Name in my opinion.
It’s a real thing. I am not mentioning because it’s fun. I am mentioning it because I am absolutely against this style. Also, as mentioned, not saying everyone goes through it. I am not 100% sure how the HR office decides things. I have found taking the landlord, in person, to the hr office helps. When we rent places where the landlord lives abroad or out of town, everytime they come to photograph our home. As they do with many others we have talked to about thus issue. For referremce: Pingtung, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taitung and Hualien. Have consistently had this type of treatment.
That could be true. I am not a taiwanese citizen nor a US citizen. But many of my family are immigrants and I’m mostly going by their issues. As well as my taiwanese family. HR vs residency there. It’s much different in reality. Though they both aim to track and record a person’s location
You’ve got this right. No landlord in the US tells us when we can update our address so he/she can avoid tax liabilities.
There is another part that a friend whose Dad fought for the Chinese told me about. He said they used HHR to do counts of people in there homes during the time of the White Terror. Too many or too few and someone might be taken away and never seen again. That’s another reason why HHR creeps me out. It’s time that locals get rid of this system of being tied to a house but as with anything, it is up to voters here and they may not even see the problem.
Canada is similar, the services etc you can access are tied to your residency in a province, but I would say that the concept of “residency” in a state or province is not the same beast as Taiwan’s household registration system.
It’s a real stretch to say that a social insurance or driving license database is the same as an HHR register.
Your whole argument boils down to “the USA has state residency” and “state residency is kinda similar to HHR”. Yeah, the US has the concept of state residency. The states have various databases that will keep your information when you pay taxes or get a driving license. Your right to access some of a state’s services is tied you living in that state. Sure.
I know California does that too, for example tours of various museum is only available for official residents of certain counties near the SF Bay Area. I was able to get on USS Hornet free once because of that (since my parents were official Alameda county residents), otherwise the ticket was something like 50 bucks. I believe you needed to be official resident of that county to get a library card from that county as well.
But I don’t know how Texas differs from other state, I was able to get in state tuition just by getting a drivers license there and get in state tuition for UT Austin after staying 1 year. Maybe Texas is more lax because they have no state income tax.
Folks, Taiwan is never going to get rid of the Household Registration system. Japan has it. Germany has it. Italy has it. In fact, many countries outside the Anglosphere have some version of it. It is deeply rooted in every aspect of life and relied on by innumerable laws, regulations, and systems.
Save your energy for reforming it.
Disclainer: I don’t like it either and wish it could be got ridden of.
So what is the main defining aspect of HHR to you? What does another country’s version of “HHR” need to contain, for you to consider that a true equivalent of HHR?
Many countries around the world have some form of HHR, and they all vary from country to country:
My definition would be “the government database that keeps track of all citizens or residents within a country, which qualifies individuals for certain rights, services, and responsibilities.”
Then you could say even Australia has it yet we don’t have ID Cards or HHR.
In Australia for me to get services I have to register on www.mygov.au
To do so I need to have an address and for this they will ask for utility bill etc.
I will return to Australia in a few years and have to do lots of documentation online. First rent a place, then get a telephone number, change my bank details to tax resident, perhaps get a drivers license. Maybe even a digital ID as well.
The USA (and Canada) does not have such a database. They have many disparate databases distributed among the states and provinces which each perform some of the same functions.
In the first place, there must be a law defining what it is and a single database whose specific purpose is registering households.
But more importantly one of the key differences is that HHR is not only about about your personal place of residence and the services you are personally entitled to, it’s about the family unit. I guess this comes from the history that Asian cultures are less individualistic and more family-oriented.
HHR defines a “household” as group of people living together as a family (or living with non-family members under a household head). You aren’t just registered to a place of residence, you’re registered to a household. There is a designated managing person or head of the household. A single person living alone can be their own household. There is a defined process for tracking changes to the family’s status, like people moving in/out, combination and separation of households, marriages and divorces, etc. There is a unified national database whose purpose is to track such.
Having said all that, I do see the point that our countries have many similar ways to do a lot of what HHR is doing.
Yup. In the US, social security is basically HHR except they aren’t the ones to keep track of where you live. Although that is a moot point since SSN are now linked to driver’s license numbers.
When a new child is born, the parents take their birth certificate to the social security office and apply for a social security card. They are given a SSN which is linked to the parent’s SSN. Sound familiar?
The main difference is the Social Security Administration updates everything themselves instead of relying on the head of household to do it. For example, if you get married, the county sends your marriage certificate to the state, the state sends it to the Social Security Administration, and they proactively update their database.
Another difference is they don’t actually give you a nice printout of all the info they have on your vitals and family relationships.
That’s probably why most Americans are unaware that the US has “HHR” — It is not user-managed, but managed by the SSA.
I mean, to me that’s still just saying “any government database that keeps an up to date record of its people and lists their dependants and can serve as a proof of residence” is basically HHR. That’s a part of what HHR does, but I still feel like it’s misses the point, like I mentioned above. Linking your dependants to your SS file is not exactly the same as a register of the people who form your household.
Here’s another way to think about it: the USA doesn’t have household registration, it has residence registration. Similar, but different.