I see the ‘been here 50 years’ foreigners were all laughs and chuckles on TV about all the neat new ways to get permanent residency. Legislator Chen Xuesheng was all smiles as he passed the bouquet to Dr. Brougham, and the anchorperson chimed in with “at last they can be Taiwanese”.
Putting aside the fact that I am a measly foreigner and have no business asking for anything, I’d like to explore for a moment what happens in those countries that have two kinds of ID cards for people that will be living out their lives there, Israel, South Africa & homelands, etc. past and
present.
I bet the holders of the lesser privileged card get more rights than we do with the Taiwan permanent resident card. The common feature of all these cards is that there is no upgrades, even for good behaviour.
Got a question. Let’s say I’m the president Chen Shuibian, and I want to
express my thanks to some honorable foreigner that has been helping the obese or whatever for over 50 years. I present him a “key to the country”, also I get him signed up for permanent residence. But wait, what honor is that? Now all he is is on par with nasty old Dan Jacobson who got his permanent residence card cause he managed to stay married to somebody for 7 years or whatever.
So president Chen turns to his assistant and asks “do we have any better cards? I distinctly remember seeing a Gold card. Can we give him a Gold card?”
“Sorry Sir, Gold cards are reserved for the tribe with the golden skin”.
Anyways, check
http://tw.search.news.yahoo.com/search/news?p=%A9~%AFd&z=date
At least 3 headlines say “be a Taiwanese”
when infact all they got was a 2nd class citizen card.