TAIWAN - MIGRATION IN 1998

Taiwan continued to take in more foreign workers in 1998. As of mid-1998, there were 246,000 workers in Taiwan, drawn mostly from other Asian countries. The steep placement fee for Taiwan jobs has been a cause of many irregularities against migrant workers. In the Philippines, placement agencies called for a ban on the deployment of workers to Taiwan because of the many layers of fees exacted by the Taiwan-based brokers and agencies. The matter of fees became a point of contention between Philippine and Taiwanese agencies.

In solidarity with the Indonesian Chinese, Director Chan Huo-sheng of the Labor Department said Taiwan will hire fewer Indonesian workers unless the Indonesian government takes concrete steps to better protect the ethnic Chinese. There are 12,961 Indonesian workers and 3,000 Indonesian maids in Taiwan; they comprise six percent of Taiwan’s foreign worker population.

Nicaragua will soon be one of the source-countries of migrant workers to Taiwan following a May accord wherein Taiwan agreed to take in 5,000 workers from Nicaragua. The Central American country is one of 27 countries which maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

A report by the Environmental Protection Bureau may provide some answers to the search for cause(s) of the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a disease which afflicted migrant workers (mostly Filipinos). Their field studies revealed that underground water around Philips Taiwan’s Chupei plant contained high levels of the cancer-causing chemical tetrachloroethylene (PCE). The next steps would involve a comprehensive medical examination of nearby residents and workers in the industrial area and a comprehensive environmental quality survey of over 20 industrial zones and sites.

Taiwan’s foreign population not only includes workers but also brides. Marriages between Taiwanese men and Vietnamese women have been on the rise — 10,500 in the past three years. In 1997 alone, 4,800 such marriages took place, and almost all had been facilitated by matchmaking agencies. The fee of NT$35,000 go to the agency (NT$20,000) and the rest is given to the Vietnamese woman.