I said many times in my posts here that I don’t mind other people for having it and don’t blame others for having it. I am saying this as a general policy for nation-states to consider, and the laws that they have on nationality. We are debating/arguing on whether or not Taiwan should allow duals and I am merely bringing up the viewpoint that no country should.
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its not @endy that started talking about dual citizenship in this thread. And he brought up to restricting taiwanese dual citizenship because @Brianjones complained its not fair foreigner cannot but locals can. I think his posts are not more off topic than others.
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I agree. The dual nationality posts can be split to another thread.
But the entitlement comment went further than dual nationality I feel. Also having no say, this kind of attitude. Is that related to this gold card thread? Should foreigners not want anything and be happy with any bones thrown at them?
Or should the Taiwan govnenrnet continue to open up and see attracting foreigners here to be long term residents and ultimately new citizens as a positive thing. Ultimately I think the end of that process is to allow immigrants an easier path to participate in civil society and to look at dual nationality laws again (which is indeed slowly what they have been moving towards, to be fair).
Let’s be straight about this.
Taiwan is not the US or Canada if it wants certain people to move here it will have to keep opening up.
I guess it depends on how a state imagines its nationality.
I still think that questioning an other persons right of citizenship or identity is something that I personally would avoid doing in almost all contexts.
I wouldn;t dream of questioning your blood link to Taiwan, or your sense of being fully American. If I did Id be a d*&k.
(just to clarify: that is not a round about way of me trying to insult: I just think that would be a nasty thing for me to do if I did it. but I wouldnt do that)
I think it’s very emotional and charged.
You could land in a lot of hot water in many places face to face questioning.
I would take particular issue not with myself but with my kids.
If people say my kids are not this nationality or that nationality for whatever reason it gets me very worked up. Because they are talking about taking away rights they already enjoy. Also there could be a racial discrimination component to the argument.
In history we have seen where the taking away of rights has sometimes led us. The first step to taking away rights is usually ‘they are different than us’, ‘they don’t belong here’…
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And I never said that Brian or you or anyone here isn’t rightfully Taiwanese. I feel you guys can and should be if you are willing to break off your previous ties. And I won’t ever judge or care what citizenships someone else has like you said. I’m just talking about state policy in general.
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I am not 100% against renouncing. Probably 80%.
The problem is
A) if I renounce I still have to travel somehow on a passport that is not accepted in many countries ?!?
So how do I hold down my job and support my family.
I asked the officials in the NIA and they have no answer.
I am the breadwinner not a spouse from a third world country. I need to do international business.
B) I must further wait another year at minimum to get a proper passport and ID (even though I lived here almost 20 years already )
C) I can just claim my original citizenship back again anyway
D) ‘special’ foreigners don’t have to renounce
E) Taiwanese don’t have to renounce
F) Citizens from countries that don’t allow renunciation don’t need to renounce
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Have you contacted the home country to get the estimated turn around time on that? presuming that the original renunciation isn’t for a recognized state it should be instant.
No I didn’t. Nothing is instant with governments. But it is just formalities. Would also need to apply for a passport again would take many months most likely.
But there is also fear there that something would change .
Yea I guess its a tricky one. best case scenario renounce and reapply and you are good to go in a month.
worse case scenario you come up against a wall and you are in some kind of nightmare bureaucratic hell. Like the guy stuck in the airport.
Exactly. I didn’t have the balls to play that game and I need to be able to travel for my job. No job no money . Lose job cannot find another job like it in Taiwan.
Also compounded by the fact that my original country has no representatives in Taiwan so it is cumbersome to get things done. Even renewing my passport can take months from here.
So I decided to try the special foreigner route which doesn’t have these restrictions . But also not guaranteed. I am working on my ‘specialness’ now.
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I think giving APRC the same rights and duties with citizenship except for vote and conscription would work. How many certain people want taiwanese citizenship, if they could get almost the same rights without it?
The APRC and latest changes are great, don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate the governments moves on this. It’s almost laughably easy to move to Taiwan and get working for middle class folks from developed countries (160k monthly salary ).That’s a good move. And they made it easier for spouses to work and kids to stay too. Really positive. But not being able to get a national ID is ultimately very limiting (eg credit , household residency, voting, online services, education subsidies). It’s really a nasty roadblock after a few years .
TL DR - ‘Taiwan itself ultimately loses more from losing potential naturalised citizens than those would
-be Taiwan immigrants who end up leaving Taiwan with their famies in tow.’
Regarding citizenship I just feel that they are pointlessly making many long term residents who want citizenship and the national ID number to jump through hoops for no reason. People who have worked here for decades , paid taxes, created jobs , raised families.
It’s a very outdated process that seems to be based on KMT refugees from SEA (such as descendants of KMT troops in Myanmar) and huachiao who wanted to move to Taiwan and they needed to show further links to Taiwan by residing after getting the overseas passport. The overseas passport stuff is really weird for people who are already resident in Taiwan for many years.
When people get older and have kids and settle down they like to have citizenship if possible and participate in civic society. Those settled people can have major businesses or high level management, they don’t always want to be living as second class. They have families who contribute a lot to the local economy, buying property, education etc. They want to be able to get loans and education subsidies and more legal rights all round so they feel secure here. That’s the argument from an economic perspective. You might not want those people moving off somewhere that welcomes them with full citizenship.
It’s not an economic argument only though. Taiwan is kind of stale in a lot of ways , more immigrants from different backgrounds could make it a more vibrant place. I sincerely believe that. And Taiwan is facing a serious existential threat, it definitely needs more links with the outside world and more supporters . Immigrants can look at things and go, why don’t we try this or this? Maybe offer new perspectives and skills.
We can help raise Taiwan’s profile internationally.
Engaged citizens are a previous resource, if I am a citizen of Taiwan I will be able to contribute more to this place and less likely to leave and take my whole family with me. If we leave then my money, my future investments, my taxes, my kids future contributions and investments and taxes, my contacts, my wifes contributions and taxes are mostly lost to Taiwan. That’s actually a big economic and societal loss if played out over many people. For my family alone it would surely be in 10s of millions NTD over 10 years. Perhaps 100s or 1000s of millions if my kids or myself started a successful business somewhere else. One will notice that most multicultural families with Western or Japanese partners tend to leave Taiwan when they have children.
It’s Taiwan that loses more. Citizenship could help to hold onto more people who are already contributing to the island .
People ask me regularly , why do you choose to live in Taiwan ? It’s seen as a strange choice by many Westerners and even other Asians. Chinese also regularly criticise my choice to Iive here saying it’s poorer and isolated etc. China is really trying to push Taiwan down and Taiwan needs all the help it can get from people who have already made a long term commitment to Taiwan. Even just becoming a citizen of Taiwan is telling China that it has no jurisdiction here and people see value in being Taiwanese.
There’s lots of good reasons to live here but unfortunately not because I am Taiwanese (or the Summers!).
Why, exactly, do you think it’s such a bad thing?
It’s a long answer but to make it short I feel like citizenship is a precious thing and having one means you only have loyalty to your country. I’m all for naturalization when adults can choose which country they want to belong to but this should be an actual real choice and you should be telling your new country that you will be 100% loyal to them.
And it means you will really fight for your country because it’s all you have. I see so many huaren who will jump ship the second things become convenient. Taiwan US duals who have planned a nice exit strategy when the PRC looks like they will do something drastic. And I don’t blame them - but they only have this option cuz they have a dual citizenship. If they only had taiwan citizenship they would stay and fight for their country.
So many taiwan American duals treat their US citizenship like a bonus - a nice thing to have for the perks but I often don’t see any loyalty to love for America. It’s like we are basically a club membership for elite ppl and nothing more. This really annoys me more than anything else. My dad immigrated to the US to attend graduate school and fell in love with America. He considers himself 100% American and uses his American passport to fly back and hasn’t seen his ID card nor his roc passport in decades.
On the other hand I have relatives who show off their new American passport like jewelry and only think about the perks they will have.
I know you guys aren’t like that but in my mind dual citizenship in general helps foster this type of mentality - seeing citizenship for only perks and not the responsibility it really is. Having only one really puts it to light how precious your country and citizenship is.
Thanks for explaining your perspective.
I am somewhat sympathetic to it having met these kinds of dual citizenship holders in Taiwan.
Ultimately though I think dual citizenship can and does benefit Taiwan tremendously from an economic and societal perspective . That dual citizens can fly back and vote in Taiwan or avail of Jian Bao are loopholes in my book and not directly related to dual citizenship.
Certainly the US has benefited tremendously from dual citizens in terms of investments， attracting the best people, tax from dual citizens etc. If Taiwan made it easier for long term resident foreigners to attain citizenship it should naturally benefit in the same manner.
As many countries allow you to regain citizenship Im not sure how much commitment is involved to ‘defending the realm’ of the new host country. Thats simply going to be an individual decision. As we can guess most local citizens would not take up arms against an invading force. These days you are as likely to be bombed to oblivIon. Having ‘nowhere to go’ doesn’t mean you will defend your homeland and people of means often opt to leave in the case of war.
Basically I think it’s very naive to think that most Taiwanese or new Taiwanese would actually 'fight for their country '. A good portion of locals will welcome or at the least not stand in the way of a PRC takeover. It’s just not that kind of place that the whole population would rebel and the odds are pretty low of success if it gets that bad.
I’ve seen video from Syria and even when the citizens do mount an effective defense with large scale assistance from outside the result was still catastrophic .
How does a regular citizen fight against tanks, bombs , machine guns? The reality is whole neighborhoods would be pulverised. You can run to the hills but it’s not going to change anything much. Nope either we have US help and an effective military response or else game over. We are not talking in abstractions here but the real scenarios of what is likely to happen in Taiwan from an invasion .
You are putting loyalty to country at the top of the pyramid there. But how about your country’s loyalty to you? How about your loyalty to your family? What comes first? For me the answer is very clear.
The world would be a better, happier, wealthier place if law abiding people could live anywhere on the globe they wanted to live. Restricting freedom of movement because of outmoded ideas about nationalism is destined for the dustbin of history.
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Yeah, that’s working out so well in Europe 
Globalism will only work if Cultures and People integrate .It can cause more problems than it solves . I hope one day people are ready for a borderless World .
It is. The EU has been a roaring success. Especially when you compare it to what came before.
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