I’d just like to add a little more to clarify and elaborate on what I wrote earlier.
As I see it, there are three kinds of mainland Chinese brides coming to Taiwan, as follows:
(1) Women who happen to be PRC citizens who meet and marry Taiwanese men for the same reasons that women anywhere in the world meet and marry men. If such marriages are genuine, there is no reason why these brides should not be allowed to come and live in Taiwan and be granted equal rights with any other spouses living here. Barriers against their admission should be limited to what is absolutely essential, and there should be no requirement of a minimum amount of financial assets or earning power as a prerequisite for their being allowed to settle permanently with their husbands in Taiwan.
(2) Women who are purchased by Taiwanese men, often referred to as “mail order brides”. While one may sympathize with the men who have to resort to this method of acquiring a spouse, it is from many points of view an undesirable social phenomenon, and thus it is highly reasonable that a government should implement measures to discourage it and place restrictions on the admission of such brides to the country and their acquisition of permanent resident status or nationality. Many advanced countries adopt exactly such a stance toward this kind of bride. Imposing a requirement that the purchasing husband’s family should at least have sufficient means to support such a bride and any progeny of the marriage is entirely reasonable. Why should the rest of society have to bear the burden of providing welfare assistance to support such a family if the husband is unable to do so himself?
(3) Women who enter into sham marriages with the real purpose of coming to Taiwan to engage in prostitution. Of course, the government must do all it can to detect and nullify such marriages and prevent such brides from entering or remaining in the country. I believe the current administration is making a real effort to achieve this and adopting highly reasonable methods to do so.
(But I do not necessarily accept that importing women who want to ply their trade as prostitutes is a bad thing. I agree with Jive Turkey that, if there is sufficient demand and insufficient local womanpower to meet it, then there is no reason why the government should not consider setting up schemes for officially recruiting and importing eligible women to work under close regulation in licenced bordellos.)
As mentioned earlier, Lien was born August 27, 1936 in Xian.
Soong was born March 16, 1942 in Hunan Province.
Ma Ying-jeou was born July 13, 1950 in Hong Kong.
If they were Americans (which clearly they are not) none of them could be elected president of the US.
Of course this opens that old can of worms about the ROC as a political entity and the land known as “China.”
Personally, I think that being born in Taiwan must be a qualification for a president of this nation.
yeah, if this was the US a foreign born citizen isn’t able to become prez. but in the same vein, neither CSB or annette “curse from the gods” LU would be able to run as they did prison time.
[quote=“skeptic yank”] but in the same vein, neither CSB or annette “curse from the gods” LU would be able to run as they did prison time.[/quote]Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? There is nothing in US law that bars people who’ve done prison time from running for office.
Not necessarily. I used to think so too, but it turns out disenfranchisement laws vary from state to state. There’s a ton of info about this on the web. Here are just a couple of links.
Absolutely incorrect. May I refer you to Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution:
[quote]No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
[/quote]
There is nothing said about convictions of any sort, and for good reason. The framers of the constitution knew that candidates may have been prosecuted and convicted in the past for their political views; while such convictions are not so likely, the writers of the consitution decided that it should be up to the voters to decide whether a past conviction has any bearing on how well someone could fulfill the duties of the Presidency. In my opinion, the Constitution should have no restrictions whatsoever on who can hold office, other than requiring that the person be a US citizen. Voters can decide for themselves if a person’s long term absence from the States, his being born a citizen of a foreign country or his age would prevent him from being a good President.
Traditionally, foreign born leaders have had a poor record of serving as head of state of their adopted country.
Adolf Hitler (Austrian)
Josef Stalin (Georgian)
Napoleon (Corsican)
William Walker (the original man who would be king, an American who ruled Nicaragua in the 1850s after his mercenaries were bankrolled by Cornelius Vanderbilt)
The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (err, sorry, it’s been “House of Windsor” since they nervously changed it during WWI so’s the English wouldn’t realize they were being ruled by a bunch of bloody Huns). Take a look at Prince Charles’ mug - can we say ‘inbred’, children? I knew you could!
Che Guavera (Argentine)
Alberto Fujimori (Japanese)
All bad leaders for their adopted countries, to say the least.
Old Mainlanders (Army Vets) that retire and return to China can receive a pension that pays about 25000NT-35000NT a month. It is sad that they can receive a pension from the Taiwan government so they can live in China. It is even depressing as Chinese women can marry the old pensioners and can have the pension transerred to them when the pensioner passes away. Again the Chinese women can receive this pension money until they die. If she is young, she is quite lucky to receive money every month. Just the latest scam in China targetting the pensioners.
It is a loophole that should be fixed and maybe this new rule for mainland brides is a way to stem the loophole?
I’d never heard of any “sealed records”. But yes, he did, just as Clinton had a conviction for perjury which got him booted off the SCOTUS bar and cost him his law license.
There are, as is implied by Hex’ response, more than just the odd serious mainland xiaojie in a bind over her marriage to a foreign or Taiwanese hubby. Surely there are blokes too. For fecksakes lets not do the government’s bidding by perpetuating this stupid lie. It seems too many foreigners in Taiwan are blinkered by exposure to consider that PRC citz also deserve equal rights in Taiwan.
As for whores, I’m quite sure there have always been, and will coninue to be, more than enough Taiwanese lasses ready to fill Taiwan’s insatiable needs.
[quote=“hexuan”]I get so tired of hearing this “all mainland women are prostitutes” shit…
Without a scrap of evidence provided this is just racist bullshit.[/quote]
I change my above statement to “a significant number, if not a majority of mainland women in Taiwan are working as prostitutes.”
I’ve met a few mainland women in Taiwan who were definitely not prostitutes. They were in Taiwan because they had married a Taiwanese guy. I would still say that such women are greatly outnumbered by mainland sex workers. My understanding is that the larger KTVs are full of nothing but mainland women. I’ve never been in any of them, but I’ve known plenty of Taiwanese guys and a few foreign guys who have. All of them say that hardly any of the women working in such KTVs are Taiwanese. On a Friday or Saturday night, there are literally hundreds of women in a larger KTV. You’re never going to get your “scrap of evidence,” though, because there will never be an accurate counting of all of these women coming in and out of Taiwan. I’d be curious to know how many mainland women were allowed into Taiwan last year to join their husbands. Not even considering how many of these women were actually coming to work as prostitutes, I would guess that the number of mainland women coming to Taiwan on such visas is dwarfed by the number who are smuggled in to work as prostitutes.
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”] As for whores, I’m quite sure there have always been, and will coninue to be, more than enough Taiwanese lasses ready to fill Taiwan’s insatiable needs.
[/quote]
I don’t know why you would think that. An understanding of where these mainland women are coming from would tell you otherwise. Hardly any Taiwanese or HK women would want to compete with mainland sex workers. Why would a Taiwanese or HK pimp employ a local when a mainland woman will do the same work for much less? Most mainland sex workers don’t even have a secondary education. The best they could expect on the mainland is an RMB400 a month factory job. Let’s say they go to Taiwan or HK and can make five times what they would have made in a Guangdong factory. That still only amounts to RMB2000 or NT$8500. Do you know any Taiwanese women who would be willing to work for that little? I doubt it. I’m sure there are significant numbers of Taiwanese women who are in the higher end of the market and can bring in a lot more money, but my guess is that they only account for a small portion of the overall market for sex services.
What I have tried to stress is not that “all mainland women are prostitutes.” The problem I see is that because Taiwan does not allow these women any sort of legal way to enter Taiwan and work in the sex trade, they are only left with avenues that ultimately lead to their exploitation. In Hong Kong, most mainland sex workers can at least come and go as they please since they came over the border with a proper entry permit. They usually aren’t smuggled in without any sort of documentation by pimps. If Taiwan were to adopt policies that would allow mainland sex workers to at least enter Taiwan legally (or better yet, do their work legally), then there would be a lot less exploitation and far fewer pimps using the marriage visa route to bring in women.
