Remember when Tevos of the WHO made their comments and the Taipei government went up in arms saying they’re welcoming and not racist?
Yeah … while Taiwan aren’t likely to go and make monkey noises at a black person and go around beating someone up for the color of their skin, there’s no doubt it is a racist country that continually shafts foreign workers---- East Asian workers way more than western workers, it must be said. Fillipinos, Indonesians, Vietnamese etc get treated appalingly here–both by the government who doesn’t give a toss about them and by employees who work them to the bone and pays them a pittance.
Care to explain the difference between racism and nationalism in the context of how a country treats it foreigner workers. Who btw are in a very vulnerable position due to have limited support networks.
In the US, many conflicts evolve around the topic of racism (mostly between US-citizens) while in Taiwan nationalism seems to be much more common than racism (policies strongly favoring citizens over residents).
Although, I would argue that discrimination based on citizen status is definitely “normal” when it comes to immigration laws of most countries. This also applies to the US and Europe. So some level of “discrimination” against non-citizens will always exist - even in very liberal societies.
However, Taiwan’s policies seems to favor citizens over residents in many social policies much stronger than many Western countries. Still, I wouldn’t call Taiwan a racist society because of that. Just rather restrictive on welcoming immigration.
There’s a strong tinge of racism because if you check how the whole immigration system is setup it has a very clear tiering structure according to which country you are coming in from and what is your heritage .
In the end governments can use all kinds of excuses to discriminate against minority groups. In this case lack of ID and household registration (all foreigners are shut out automatically ) is a very convenient gate to hide behind. The government could change this and enfranchise vast numbers of foreigners residents , along with other measures, but they deliberately choose not to.
The Taiwan government consistently makes it very difficult for foreign citizen residents to access subsidies and also causes us HUGE problems for digital access to both public and private services.
Household registration is a very different concept to Westerners. It’s best to look around at other Asian countries and why it has worked so well that you don’t need ancestry.com or something to find out about your family lineage.
It’s not really. They have special agreements with countries in SE Asia about how those labourers can come in and they have many restrictions and also not covered under the labour standards act.
Also treatment of fishermen is an absolute disgrace. Is it universal when 99% of fishermen are from dirt poor countries ?
I have not checked every country’s regulations, but am sure that most countries have immigration restrictions applied just to people from certain countries. What I say universal is that kind of discriminatory regulations.
And I completely agree what you claim to be discriminatory, except for it is racist part. Han Chinese from SEA countries are treated differently from Han Chinese from Western countries, though they are racially the same, both are Han Chinese.
not really. Most western countries’ citizens can easily come to taiwan visa-free. not so for others.
most of them can get teaching jobs here because of their skin color. not so for others.
Everyone is equal. And I think it would be a mistake because a lot of Westerners “look down” at Taiwan because it isn’t as developed as their home country and are in disbelief when the tables are turned.
