Government urges acceptance of new immigrants

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on March 16, 2006. It reports that Premier Su Tseng-chang recently urged government ministries and all citizens to accept immigrant spouses into Taiwanese society, and to provide assistance to help them and their offspring bring more diversity to Taiwan's open and pluralistic culture.

The government is urged to provide all possible assistance and guidance measures for immigrant spouses, in areas such as education, child-raising, welfare, health and community affairs.

According to statistics provided by the Ministry of the Interior, the number of immigrant spouses arriving in Taiwan from January 1987 through January 2006 amounted to 366,916, including 234,898 from China and 132,018 from other countries.

In 1998, the number of Taiwanese citizens married to spouses from abroad stood at 22,906, or 15.7 percent of all marriages in that year. But this figure rose to 28,427 couples, or 20.14 percent of all marriages, in 2005.

Meanwhile, in 1998, the number of children born to immigrant spouses stood at 13,904, or 5.1 percent of all children born in that year. This figure rose to 26,509, or 12.88 percent of all births, in 2005.

In early 2003, the government launched a set of "foreign and mainland spouses guidance measures" and formed a "foreign spouses care guidance fund" to respond to the increasing number of foreign spouses and new immigrants. These measures have been applied to foreign citizens who have not adopted ROC citizenship, stateless persons, residents of China, Hong Kong and Macau, and spouses who have already become ROC citizens but are still in need of guidance and assistance.

In 2004, the government located a NT$3 billion fund over 10 years to support a wide range of projects that had been proposed by central and local governments and authorized non-profit civic organizations to provide guidance and assistance to foreign spouses and new immigrants. So far, more than NT$120 million has been provided to 91 projects. These projects were to help people who faced special conditions before they became citizens, to set up local government foreign spouse family service centers, and to bolster personal safety education among newly arrived foreign spouses and immigrants.

According to officials from the Ministry of the Interior, future priorities will be to revise and implement laws and other guidance measures, to expand assistance to foreign spouses and new immigrants in acquiring basic language skills and understanding the rights and obligations of citizens in Taiwan, and to provide help to city and county governments in the establishment of service centers for foreign spouses and their families.