Everyone lets submit story tips on mass to Apple Daily pointing out the blatant xenophobic discrimination. Especially regarding how even Taiwanese born abroad are discriminated.
https://tw-survey.appledaily.com/s/bLGaK
or
news@appledaily.com.tw
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I think you do have some serious incentives for those things.
Even banks to abide to the regulations, or potentially huge regulatory actions and /or fine up to revocation of the licence over non-compliance. I already brought a bank in HK to the HKMA (it was citibank HK) over malpractice, and won. I know my standing.
They literally said in a reply with the FSC that they r not complying with the law since they do not have incentives. This cannot be tolerated, and if it is then the Taiwanese financial system is a joke.
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There are disincentives but no real incentives.
With the banks it seems there are no disincentives to their usual xenophobic discrimination
It is and I doubt anyone on this forum would disagree. Completely over-regulated and stuck in old-fashioned paper-based ways, with limited access to foreign investors.
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We need to launch a class action or something coordinated. This can’t be tolerated for any longer.
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https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=D0080166
How do we file the official petition for discrimination? Does anyone know?
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https://www.immigration.gov.tw/5385/7445/250283/126365/
This is all I could find. if I remember correctly complaints must be filed in traditional Chinese…. Which is backwards for a law supposed to protect minorities but anyway
Then in Chinese we will have to do it. Is anyone’s Chinese good enough? While I can speak and read Chinese… I don’t think mine is good enough for such a letter… (only been here just over 5 years -maybe you learn faster than me… we learn at our own pace-)
Mine’s definitely not good enough
@fifieldt is yours good enough? If worse comes to worse I might hire someone… I’m not letting this go.
@Marco … I note that it seems your Chinese is good. Do you think it would be good enough for such a petition? We can file it with my name if you don’t want to use yours…
To be honest, this is why I focus all my energy on dual citizenship. As this is often the silver bullet to 90% of the issues. And then a what’s your excuse now to the other 10%, like this is towards naturalised citizens.
Fighting every single company alone as a foreigner is going to run you down and drain your wallet. I have no problems draining my wallet, but I want that to be an efficient use of my blood, sweat and tears. I think you can agree. I’d rather start tackling these issues after dual citizenship is solved. Many of us, myself included have fulltime jobs which can make this slow, so I am quiet right now because I do my bidding in the background for now as I try to set up the legal frameworks to try to help create a more organised and co-ordinated effort, for not just dual citizenship, but for everything as right now the only one legally allowed (and willing to) to fight for us is @fifieldt and as much as he’s been able to accomplish, it’s still the influence of one person.
I’d recommend against this petition because A) we’re foreigners and don’t have rights, B) I don’t want unelected government officials to codify anything that might be even more unfavourable, as there may be people who would look at this and say, ‘hmm. sounds reasonable’. And there are. It doesn’t affect the locals directly and it’s going to be very hard convincing those in unelected governmental positions to, putting it mildly, give two shits as you can see from @Mataiou’s reply letter.
I can appreciate the enthusiasm, but my opinion at this moment is to save our energy for creating a situation where we are able to secure our rights first before going after companies individually as this will burn out.
A petition is not going to do much because you’re not a consitituent. Petitions are for politicians to look at opinions from constituents and because many are unable to see the benefits foreigners bring to Taiwan, like a recent store I went to, ‘taking our business elsewhere’ is not quite the motivator we think it is in Taiwan. If you’re not a Zuckerberg type, both implicitly and as @Icon recently learned explicitly from similar efforts, they could not care less. You’re not important enough.
Journalists are primarily sloppy and tabloidy, they are a business to make money and sympathy to ‘those foreigners that make so much money, cause so much trouble and fuck all our women’ (despite it being untrue) is possible to backfire. These kinds of sympathy stories here for anything except the worst and most vile of racism are either going to be ignored, or edited in a way to make us look bad if it gets the views. Especially Apple Daily, the biggest tabloid of them all. There’s a real risk of one of us screwing it up like the Antiwork Subreddit Mod talking to Fox News or Adam Ragusea talking to Vox. They have a job to do, and that is to make money. This has real potential to set us back and turn public opinion against us.
The only way to force a discussion on this in a legal is to sue. Like same sex marriage, this can be done in the court. This can take years and cost upwards and over a million. To do that for one company or the government about the financial industry will leave us burnt out and financially drained and with little appetite to do it again for the actual battle of helping to remove that aforementioned 90% of discrimination with the added benefit of kneecapping anyone that says ‘but but but, they’re foreign born!’.
When we are on the other side, we can help pull our foreign friends out of the hole and take a pickaxe to their discrimination, but right now we have a huge glass ceiling to start picking at and this is probably where I am going to stay at the moment.
I understand this may not be the answer you were looking for, but with a full plate like many others here that live in Taiwan, I’d recommend instead drawing energy to the dual citizenship issue and not at individual companies just yet. Trust me, it was hard! Cost me $15000 out of pocket. I’ve done it already. You know what they did? They restored the discriminatory rule a year later. This was an expensive exercise that nullified any savings I would’ve gotten and they just simply changed the rules back. This isn’t meant to be cynical, but I’m one person. So… while it does seem like I mention dual citizenship a lot, and I do, it’s for good reason. I’m trying to hammer home that this is the most efficient way to solve a shit tonne of discrimination issues at once while providing us extra ammo to tackle the ones that remain unsolved.
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Shocking. Taiwan makes such a fuss about wanting to be global, inclusive and open to other countries, but the reality is completely different. Even blatantly disregarding laws is considered fine by the higher ups, as it only impacts a few crappy foreigners.
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I had this experience once, it may be relevant.
There seems to be an accepted principle here that “discrimination can be okay as long as there’s a good reason”. Their response to you looks suspiciously like a list of reasons why it can be argued that that is the case here (though they didn’t outright say it). It would be ridiculous reasoning in this case, but it may be helpful to possibly have an understanding of what their thinking is.
I wonder how this would solve issues that are not solvable by attaining Taiwanese nationality? There are forum members who have already naturalised, and they are still open to marginalisation detailed here already.
Don’t get me wrong, we need to focus our effort on maximum impact. I just do not think these approaches have to necessarily be mutually exclusive (at a group level). Now non-nationals rights have improved esp. around residency, offspring automatically dual citizens etc. These were rights fought for separately, not cascading from one battle.
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Here Marco the effort is not against one company, is against a category. In my complaints I have not moved against one bank, but made the point that in general the financial sector (which is my industry) cannot refuse servife to us (and in the acception of service I mean cannot bar us from applying) fue to our nationality or place of birth.
So my efforts now are to make the industry compliant, not just this Kako bank. And I don’t live in a dream world, and expect that my applications will all be approved. I know that our applications can still be bined immediately after submission, but that’s legal and their right, can’t do anything about it.
But they must let me apply. Foreign companies in the financial sector are scrutinised in such a detail and need to comply with all the rules, changing even our flows and operations which are well established in other jurisdictions, I cannot accept local companies regulated by the same agency to keep operating with non-compliant operations.
That’s it, maybe it’s a bit personal now for me, but what’s not personal in these fights?
This discrimination affects even naturalised citizens, citizens with multiple nationalities and citizens born abroad, it is so against the law that it’s revolting.
I might agree on your point for the reporting to newwspapers, but I counter your “appreciate your enthusiasm”. It is the same thing I told to you regarding the naturalisation process, which will require legislative changes. Here the law it’s there and bas been there for a while, they r just not following it. So you are using now my argument against me, isn’t it? Anyways, no worries, it is my thing now.
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I have to agree with you and Marco at the same time. I think it needs to be a multifaceted attack. One to go after industries that are government regulated to move the regulator to hopefully take positive action, and on the other hand to keep working toward fair dual citizenship laws to grease the wheels so to speak.
If government regulators get enough pressure, hopefully they will eventually codify something so as to not have to deal with one off complaints forever. The squeaky wheel and all that
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I have never said @Marco fight is useless, never. It is a just fight. But will take enormous lobbying and will take time.
My fight here is about something already codified in law and guaranteed by established regulations and practices which are just outright ignored.
I am already fighting the “system” with my job, to do something legal but unheard of in the financial sector, just because banks can’t be bothered. It’s going well there (let’s not jinx it however), and I will do my best to do the same here.
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This is a great point… and none of their excuses ever point to a valid legal reason for excluding foreigners. Most of their excuses are also deeply flawed such as ‘foreigners don’t have secondary ID” “foreigners have multiple tax residencys” “foreigners are all money launderers” they know what they’re doing is wrong but won’t admit it or fix it.
I’m 100% for @comfy123 in taking on this battle but I don’t have any resources, expertise or friends in high places to help. I can just offer moral support 
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