Yeah. People who were born here and are clearly Taiwanese, but are unable to obtain citizenship is mad.
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I don’t agree , which laws are improving for long term residents , specifically those who want to be citizens ?
There’s a very narrow ‘elite’ dual national immigration route but it still sucks big-time for vast majority to be told you have to abandon your own citizenship .
And APRC is a bit ofa joke in Taiwan let’s face it , can’t even get govt special subsidies during covid. That’s like a kick in the face for resident taxpayers…You want immigrants to pay taxes but you don’t want them to access any benefits ?
Also for the 700k Wailao and caregivers who are still chucked out at maximum 12 years unless married to a local. And not covered under labour standards act. Many many issues.
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They did revise several laws, I’d certainly give them credit for that, however, I still find them too specific and arbitrary, making it very hard for most foreigners to benefit from them.
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Yep actually very few people benefit from those revisions…
There’s a reason why 96% (if I recall rightly) of new citizens are female.
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Another issue , as pointed out , are the arbitrary nonsensical regulations.
If your country doesn’t allow you to give up your citizenship , or you get an official letter stating as such (even if not actually true ) you can become a citizen in Taiwan without giving up your citizenship.
But if your country allows you to abandon it you must abandon it and only then can get national ID.
And of course few 'elite immigrants ', sometimes wit/not very strong ties to Taiwan , are permitted to be dual nationals.
This makes absolutely no sense as an immigration policy! It’s not achieving anything for Taiwan specifically .
And when you become a citizen with national ID in Taiwan they don’t ask you to do anything, to pledge allegiance, to pass any test except to show some Chinese proficiency . There’s just no proper goals set for the whole thing.
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Why is it not possible to renew a visa while in-country?
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It’s sort of like a restaurant that serves beef noodles for 100NT, however, you must pay with 1 50NT coin from your left pocket and 5 10NT coins from your right pocket. The depth of your pockets must be less than 10cm unless it is tailored by a guy named Chen that’s shorter than 183cm. Moreover, all coins must be authenticated in your home country before use, and you must possess the coins for more than 5 years or more for them to be valid.
Or, you can also invest a minimum of 5 million NT in this restaurant to bypass this process.
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Yep I have posted on it a few times before.
I believe it’s actually originally a refugee process for overseas Chinese (hence the very clear differentiation between ROC citizen and ROC Taiwan national with ID ) that has slowly been commandeered over decades to become an immigration process for everybody.
Absolutely cobbled together randomly with no logic and no stated aim as to what it wants to achieve.
When you become a n ROC citizen they don’t care at all and give you what is effectively a refugees passport which you cannot do anything with !
It’s only when you become a Taiwan ‘national’ with an ID number that you are really a citizen in reality.
Exactly, if the rules benefit Taiwan or its nationals in some way, it would be understandable. However, I feel that many of them are just put there as meaningless roadblocks meant to make life harder for foreigners.
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Maybe it should be called the 'anti immigration law except for foreign wives from South East Asia act ’
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I’ve yet to see immigration laws from any country that made much sense…
The whole point is to either discourage immigration, or only allow immigration for those who can prove a tangible benefit to the country.
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No that’s not the point in Taiwan. There literally is no point or objective as far as I can tell.
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If the point is to discourage immigration, it did its job.
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I don’t think SEA spouses are exceptions. It is not rare that they are denied resident visas and have to go and back every 6 months, which wouldn’t happen to western spouses so often.
The reality of Taiwan immigration
Its data showed that 91.7 percent of the people who gained Taiwan citizenship last year were women, 86.9 percent were spouses of Taiwan nationals, and 95.9 percent were from Southeast Asian countries.
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Is 156 people over four years, forty people a year, doing anything for Taiwan?
Since December 2016, when an amendment to the act allowed high-level foreign professionals to be naturalized while retaining their original nationality, 156 foreigners have become citizens, Ministry of the Interior statistics showed
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I wouldn’t repeat the round discussion on it here.
They have amended immigration related laws very often, so I think well organized actions from foreigners could do something.
In a nutshell, the policy seems to be: Asian wombs, good; Western professionals, bad.
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Amending the law doesn’t really mean anything if it is STILL extremely restrictive . Saying there is a route to citizenship but making it so tight/selective means hardly any change at all in reality. It’s good for optics though. The total numbers of naturalising citizens now is also very low, something like 3k to 5k per year, so it seems Taiwan really doesn’t want new citizens.
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Their standard for high level foreign professionals are ridiculous also. Part of the criteria is that their work must be internationally acclaimed, the problem is that very few of these people would actually consider moving here due to the income level. The chances of a high level foreign talent to give up their established life and connections in their home country are very slim.
Most foreigners don’t move here because of the pay, they move here because they love this place or because their family lives here.
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