Immigration policy never seems to be a hot debated issue in Taiwan’s
presidential elections. However, population movement between Taiwan and
China is considered a serious national security issue. Until now none of
the three presidential candidates have proposed a clear picture of
migration policy toward PRC Chinese. Here I will talk about Taiwan’s
migration policy, and then focus on the possible migration policy change
towards PRC Chinese and overseas ethnic Chinese, who are mostly living
in Southeast Asia.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF IMMIGRATION CONTROL
Currently there is a very complicated immigration system in Taiwan
due to its unique political history with China. Residents living outside
Taiwan are categorized into 6 groups, which can be basically aggregated
into two: foreigners and ethnic Chinese. Such a complex immigration
system has developed in different periods in the past 60 years because
of the change of political milieu and social change that the Taiwanese
government faced.To lure overseas Chinese with ROC passports to come to
Taiwan to invest, to study or to visit relatives, so that ROC Taiwan
could compete in terms of political legitimacy with the PRC, overseas
Chinese are granted a special certificate (Huaqiao shenfen zhengmingshu,
Overseas Chinese Certificate), which is only issued to those overseas
Chinese who can prove that they or their parents had ever held ROC
passports. Overseas Chinese can use this certificate to apply for
settlement inTaiwan. About three-quarters of the overseas Chinese
immigrants are from Asia.
But since the ‘ROC’ was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, and
after the US recognized the PRC in 1979, Taiwanbecame a political
pariah in the international community. Many Taiwanese moved out this
country to seek political security overseas in the 1970s and 1980s.
There is no data available for emigration at that time, but Figure 1
below demonstrates that whenever there was a blow to Taiwan’s political
stability, the number of emigrants increased, e.g., the Taiwan Strait
crisis in 1996 when China launched long-range missiles to intimidate
former President Lee Teng-hui. In addition, since the mid-1980s
Taiwanese investment in Southeast Asia and China increased enormously,
and many people are assigned to work overseas. It is even claimed that
there are more than half million Taiwanese living in Shanghai. This
creates a new category for immigration control. If these Taiwanese have
left Taiwan, and have applied for naturalization in other countries,
they will be regarded as ‘overseas Chinese’, but different from the
traditional meaning of ‘overseas Chinese’ who mostly come from Mainland
China. Basically these overseas Taiwanese have no problem to apply for
new passports to return to Taiwan if they can show their old Taiwanese
ID card, passport or household registration.
Figure 1 Migration Registration of Resident Population inTaiwan
Regarding the category for PRC Chinese, mutual exchanges between
Taiwan and the PRC were banned before 1985, and there were no mutual
visits between the people on the two sides. After 1986, when the Taiwan
government relaxed its control of the veterans, who fled to Taiwan with
Chiang Kai-shek army, to visit their home towns, exchanges between the
two sides increased significantly, including economic investments and
personal visits. Marriages between the two sides have taken place since
then, and it created a big problem for Taiwan government to accept those
‘enemy people’ to have family unions in Taiwan. It had to abolish the
archaic regulations, and in 1997 the law ‘Act Governing Relations
between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area’ (Liangan renmin guanxi tiaoli)
was passed to accommodate the new migration situation. This law also
applied to people in Hong Kong and Macao. However, the control over PRC
Chinese is harsher than for foreigners due to the ideology of national
security. So currently there are two laws to regulate marriage
immigrants, one is the law for PRC Chinese, while another is for all
other foreigners.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TAIWAN’S IMMIGRATION POLICY
The most important ideology that sustains immigration policy in Taiwan is the patriarchal jus sanguinis
principle, which dominates postwar Taiwanese immigration policy. As
discussed previously, political rivalry between the PRC and ROC created a
specific immigrant category for overseas Chinese. It is based on a jus sanguinis
principle, and this principle has not changed too much until now. It
was patriarchal because before this revision of the Nationality Law in
1999, only descendants of male ROC/Taiwan passport holders could apply
for naturalization. Any marriage immigrant before naturalization without
attachment to a Taiwanese national, either spouse or child, has to
leave when the temporary residency permit expires. This practice
supports the patriarchy family ideology in Taiwan, since most permanent
settlers are women from China and Southeast Asia.
Another key concept of Taiwan’s migration and citizenship policy is ‘population quality’ (renkou suzhi)
and the categorization of individuals and migrants as being of lower or
higher quality. The mission of the Taiwanese government is to ensure
the reproduction of a good quality population, while preventing any
contamination of low quality population coming into the society. A
‘Population Policy Committee’ was set up in the 1960s, which still
remains an important body in the Ministry of Interior, to direct the
policy to reproduce a ‘good quality’ population. Taiwan’s government
explicitly states that it will attract ‘high quality population’ to work
and to settle down as it states in the ‘Guidelines for 2009 Policy
Implementation’ that ‘the government will improve the effectiveness of
border control, prevent human trafficking, formulate a consistent policy
to prosecute, protect and prevent human trafficking, and to actively
attract overseas high quality persons’.
The third characteristic of Taiwan’s migration policy is the emphasis
on ‘national security’. Since the defeat of KMT in 1949, Taiwan was
built as the bastion to fight against Communist China. Population
movements were regarded as threatening for national security, so they
needed to control them. Such a principle is especially applied to PRC
immigrants, who could be denied entry into Taiwan at Taiwan’s airport if
they are considered potential threats to the national security. Chinese
immigrants are not allowed to work before they get the permanent
residency status, which takes about six years to acquire. Even when they
are naturalized, they are suspected to be communist Chinese spies, and
are not allowed to be civil servants within the first ten years of
naturalization.
PROPSECTS
The principles of Taiwan’s immigration policy have not changed very
much in the past few decades, and it still dominates the ways of
thinking about migration in Taiwan. The major immigration policy changes
made in the past are due to international political changes, which are
strongly related to the China factor, and domestic social pressures. In
the near future, we can foresee some changes that might be made.
First of all, the China factor will strongly influence Taiwan’s
immigration policy. Current migration policy toward Chinese spouses and
foreign spouses is discriminatory, and a strong pressure comes from
China and domestic NGOs to have equal treatment between these two
groups. Especially the new government in 2008 led by President Ma
Ying-jeou is heavily tilting to China, and it has relaxed the ban of
Chinese students to study in Taiwan after 2012, who will be very likely
to settle down in Taiwan after the graduation and become permanent
migrants. In addition, the short-term de-sinicization process between
2000 and 2008 by former President Chen Shui-bian is reversed after the
new government, and a relaxation on the immigration of overseas Chinese
is underway. More overseas Chinese would be able to apply for
immigration in the coming years. It also means that the ‘national
security’ principle will be down played, while the jus sanguinis
principle, the imagined Chineseness, will again be enforced. One piece
of evidence is the number of approved overseas Chinese to settle down in
Taiwan increased from17,000 in 2007 to 31,000 in 2009. I still don’t
know how the migration policy would be changed if Dr. Tsai Ing-wen wins
the election, but the Chineseness might be again downplayed, and more
resources might be directed to local cultural affairs like aborigines.
What will be kept intact is the ideology of ’population quality’.
This principle applies to all foreign residents, no matter what
ethnicity they are. Scholars who did research on population policy in
2007 subcontracted by the Ministry of Interior say nothing about
blue-collar immigrants in Taiwan, and the reason is ‘the government
declined to put migrant workers policy as a part of population policy’.
However, this report put much effort in formulating policy to attract
‘high quality human resources’. In other words, the government will keep
its strict control on marriage immigration and labor migration.
