Prosecutor Eric Chen's (
The grand justices' interpretation upheld the constitutionality of Article 21 of the Cross Strait Relations Act (兩岸關係條例). According to this law, Chinese nationals must be permanent residents in Taiwan for 10 years before being eligible to become civil servants. A permanent resident is someone who holds status as a citizen living in Taiwan, carries an ROC passport and ID card, and can vote for the president. Regardless of one's political stance on whether Taiwan and China are one country or two, these permanent residents are still our countrymen. The government obviously cannot treat these genuine Taiwanese as "foreigners" or "Chinese."
The right to serve in public office and the right to vote are fundamental rights of citizens. Article 2 of the Constitution stipulates that sovereignty belongs to the whole nation, which indicates that each citizen is sovereign and owns a stake in this country. In a nation with a Constitution built on the cornerstone of "citizen sovereignty," permitting regulations that create second-class citizens to exist should be unimaginable.
The grand justices cite public servants' "duty to be loyal," as well as Chinese immigrants' inadequate understanding of a free democratic constitutional system as their reasons for supporting the law. However, this argument doesn't hold water.
First, if the government really doubted the loyalty of Chinese people as a whole or of Chinese individuals, it could refuse them citizenship. Instead, the government admits that these people are Taiwanese, yet at the same time it is scared to death they will sell out Taiwan.
This kind of attitude is simply unacceptable. People who love others are always loved in return. How can a country that practices prejudice and exclusion expect to be loved and respected back by its immigrants?
Second, those who wish to be public servants must first pass an exam, undergo training and clear several other hurdles. So on what basis can the judges say that immigrants who can pass these tests don't understand freedom and the democratic system as well as those born in Taiwan? How do they arrive at the even more outlandish conclusion that they will sell out Taiwan? If this is really true, then is the testing system and the background investigation into personal and family loyalty worthless?
Third, those who are legal permanent residents have been living in Taiwan a long time and are certainly familiar with its free and democratic system.
If they really lack an understanding of democracy, then why allow them to vote for the president? Wouldn't their vote interfere with Taiwanese politics? Isn't there a huge contradiction in the idea of being able to elect the president but not serve as a low-level civil servant? Although the US Constitution places limitations on naturalized citizens running in presidential or congressional elections, they are not restricted from becoming basic civil servants like sanitation workers and staff members.
This disrespectful treatment of immigrants should not manifest itself in a society with a long tradition of immigration and which is marching toward globalization and diversity. Many European countries even allow foreign workers to vote in local elections. Although rather fierce when it comes to border management, the US immigration system still allows "foreigners" who have lived in the US for a long time the right to work and a constitutional right to work in local state governments.
Other countries allow foreigners to vote and work in the civil service, but even Taiwan's naturalized citizens still have to carry a stigma for at least 10 years. Even the grand justices, who claim to be champions of human rights, all believe that nationalism is more important than civic rights. In future, how are we going to win rights for immigrants and foreign workers from Cabinet ministries and certain members of society who have never made human rights a priority?
Bruce Liao is an assistant professor of law at National Cheng-chi University.
Translated by Jason Cox
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs