The spouses and minor children of Taiwan resident certificate holders, excluding migrant workers and students, will now be able to apply for a special entry permit visa and Taiwanese overseas missions will review related qualified applications accordingly, BOCA said in a statement.
Spouses/children of migrant workers still can’t visit.
Miserable.
Monday the CECC said that migrant workers who overstayed their visa or were unaccounted for would not be arrested when getting a jab. With Taiwan New’s translation of Mr. Chen’s comment saying “We can fully guarantee that.”
On Tuesday an unaccounted for migrant worker who went to get a jab was arrested at a vaccination station in Hsinchu. After the police arrested her the migrant worker was released after they got some information confirming her status from Immigration.
Workers calling for the right to freely change employers in Taiwan if they wish to do so
However, the article states that giving migrant workers more freedom in that regard would risk “employment stability” and might result in increased hiring costs. So no attempt to conceal what this is all about…
Meanwhile, the MOL’s Workforce Development Agency issued a statement after the protest, saying that allowing migrant workers to freely change employers may result in increased hiring costs and unstable manpower supply in certain jobs, particularly the care of people with severe disabilities.
The MOL said migrant workers can change jobs not only in extreme circumstances, but also with the consent of their employers, and at the end of their contracts.
Any decision to change the law in that regard would require public consensus, since it involves employment stability, the MOL said.
And public consensus will probably be impossible to achieve - no one employing cheap labor would speak out in favor of those changes, of course…
For me everyone seems sympathetic, but there’s an attitude that nothing can be done/indifference. It’s a pity that blah blah blah happens but what can we do? Similar attitude americans have towards Mexican immigration issues.
Wow the response from the mol. Basically saying that profits are above basic human rights. They don’t say it’s too expensive to give those rights to Taiwanese, but somehow when it’s for migrants, now it’s “too expensive”.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no clear path to citizenship. That’s part of the big problem. Because no one is going to submit proposals on behalf of the migrant workers. It’s only really possibly if migrant workers can become citizens through naturalization
Because there is nothing that can be done*
* without drastically increasing labor costs and reducing employer flexibility
I feel that the discussion is not too far from that one about the wage level for Taiwanese people (especially those entering the labor market). Though no one seems to ask “Why is the economy growing every year and stock and housing markets are booming but wages and work conditions stagnate?” (referring to both migrant workers and Taiwanese workers).
Instead the public discussion seems to be about: “Why do migrant workers earn so much when Taiwanese workers earn so little too?”.
It’s not the Taiwanese college graduate or the average Taiwanese worker whose behavior result in the bad treatment of the migrant workers - it’s mostly the guys driving their Ferraris and Porsches who influence these policies and profit from the cheap labor…
I feel even without a path to citizenship, solving those issues would be a big improvement already.
The government is tackling the migrant worker issues by doing a survey - well, not the kind of survey one would expect from this thread:
Among industrial employers, 34.3% reported encountering difficulties with their migrant workers. The language barrier topped the complaints at 74.8%, followed by hygiene at 35.5% and attitude problems or poor self-discipline at 32.6%.
Well that might be true for factory workers but not caregivers. And it’s caregivers in particular who want the right to change employer or change to employment in industry.
Most Taiwanese probably see nothing wrong with the treatment of caregivers right now. Seriously , do a survey you will see. Many think they are here to work 24/7 and they don’t see anything wrong with not giving them time off because that would mean who is going to look after Ama or Agong.
This is actually something the government knows would piss off a lot of people if they were forced to give caregivers just one day a week off or to raise their wages (which haven’t been raised in many years I believe ). I even knew of caregivers that weren’t allowed out for six month or almost a year because it would 'put ama at risk ’ during this covid pandemic period. They told them to stay home and they would get the food or whatever they wanted…Just don’t go outside. That’s abuse.
This is a huge number of humans being abused by the way. If you ask the caregivers some of them will complain some won’t. No matter they agree with their mistreatment or think they have to put up with it for the money to send home it is still wrong.
By the way this is employers filling in the survey not caregivers.
Among household employers, 82.4% said they did not prescribe how long their caregivers had to work each day. Regardless of whether the number of working hours was specified or not, the survey shows that migrant caregivers worked an average of 10 hours a day.
The survey also shows that 25.7% of these caregivers were off work either every weekend or some weekends and holidays, a decrease of 31.6% attributed mainly to the Level 3 COVID-19 alert last summer.
Yeah - that was my point when i wrote
They don’t. My father in law had a stroke so they were drawing up plans to extend the downstairs so he wouldn’t have to go upstairs and we were going to hire a caregiver. My wife asked whether the caregiver would have a room upstairs. Nope, she will have a bed in the old man’s room. My wife was like, she needs her own privacy. Then the mom said that her friends were surprised that she was giving the girl a bed, they just give theirs blankets for the floor.
My wife was like how would you feel if someone treated me like that if I went abroad? But the mom didn’t get it.
In the end, her dad recovered so he didn’t need a caregiver.
If you check the caregiver at my grandma’s, you will know she works no more than 4-5 hours per day. Grandma is paralyzed. The caregiver bathes grandma, buys and prepared food and washes clothes (in a washing machine) for her. We dare not asking her to do anything else. She never volunteers to help out with any house work. After 3 years of being in Taiwan, she still doesn’t speak/understand/read Chinese, and is still not interested in learning, so she is pretty much a handicapped and illiterate person in Taiwan for any other profession. I would not consider her qualified for any other jobs in Taiwan if I were an employer.
She spends most of her time playing on her mobile phone. She only eats the tasty food, for example, when we buy a pineapple, she will taste it, eat it if sweet, if not she will not eat it and let grandma eat it. This just shows her heart. Grandma constantly has bedsores, and we repeatedly told the caregiver what to do, but she repeatedly ignored it.
She says very few words to us, doesn’t complain or attempt to communicate. She has no passion for the job and is not motivated since day one. She doesn’t seem to be interested in any interaction with Taiwanese anyway.
Caregivers get free room and board and pay no taxes. She gets to keep all her monthly cash income, whereas most minimum wage Taiwanese workers have to pay for food and rent themselves.
So did you give her time off every weekend ? Does she have to look after granny at night ? Does she have her own room ? Does she get any support from outside ?
Did you teach her some Chinese to help with communication ?
I feel like your post is kind of mean spirited…I mean not everybody is perfect but you just picked out a lot of things you don’t like. It’s no surprise many caregivers are depressed or not communicative.
If she is so bad, why don’t you get someone else?
You don’t consider her qualified for even a minimum paid job but you let her take care of grandma?
We pay her extra money (加班費) for the weekend. On some Sundays she went to Taipei main station for a few hours, while family members are home to watch grandma, but we still pay her the same extra, no big deals, we never say a word.
Last year she threatened to return to Indonesia before her contract ends, since then we had to pay her more than what was on the contract, just to keep her to stay. There is a Covid pandemic and it is difficult to find a replacement caregiver. In fact, the nurse at the hospital told us she heard the same stories happening since the pandemic began: caregivers took advantage of the shortage due to pandemic and demand raises. We had no choice but gave in and paid up. She has been getting much more than minimum wage since. I am just stating the fact, not complaining. But I don’t believe the caregivers are all the vulnerable party, many of them sure know how to work the situation.
I can only speak for my own experience with our foreign caregiver.
I bet you never have any experience hiring foreign caregivers.
Simply put it, it’s not easy to fire/replace a foreign caregiver. There are laws and regulations on replacing foreign caregivers, if you are not aware of them.
Why don’t you hire a Taiwanese person?
You are complaining about the foreign worker so why don’t you hire a Taiwanese person? Or take care of grandma yourself?
It seems like you are complaining that she doesn’t work hard and you pay her well in your eyes, but you can’t replace her because you can’t find anyone else.
Those things don’t match up.