Many people in Taiwan have prejudiced views about migrants who have settled in Taiwan through marriage, believing that they often enter into fake marriages to find jobs in Taiwan or work as prostitutes. Just recently, another outmoded idea has been added to this list, namely that immigrant spouses often fabricate cases of domestic violence in order to get permanent residency and obtain a Republic of China (ROC) passport and the identity card that goes with it.
This idea has been voiced in various major newspapers. Such reports invariably make the partner accused of abuse appear to be the victim, for instance by sympathizing with men as being innocent, but provoked to anger. They suggest that immigrant women’s real purpose is to get an identity card and that their marriages are just a means to this end. According to this way of thinking, these migrants use civil protection orders issued by the courts as a crafty way of getting to stay in Taiwan.
This theory about “fake domestic violence” basically goes as follows. The first idea is that female immigrants, having received their ROC identity cards, often lodge a complaint of domestic violence and sue their husbands for divorce, and that their allegations of spousal abuse are all made up — otherwise why would they have put up with the abuse until that point?
The second notion is that, even if there really has been violence in the home, the woman “made it happen” by intentionally provoking her husband to make him lose his temper. Again, the theory goes, the purpose is to obtain a protection order as a way of staying in Taiwan.
A lot of people in Taiwan think that when women file domestic violence lawsuits they are a kind of “trap” or “setup.” This idea is a reflection of how little most people understand about migrants’ precarious position with regard to residency rights and citizenship. In fact, the process involved, starting with the occurrence of domestic violence, through applying for a protection order to filing for divorce, either in court or through negotiation, is a long and tedious one. Furthermore, getting a protection order does not necessarily guarantee that a migrant can keep her residency rights or become naturalized.
In practical terms, there are some obstacles involved in reporting domestic violence and getting the authorities to deal with it. People are constrained by traditional notions such as the idea that one shouldn’t wash one’s dirty linen in public and by their wish to maintain the integrity of their families. In addition, those who have not yet obtained ROC passports find themselves in a precarious situation in which they could lose their residency rights at any time if they get divorced from their Taiwanese spouses. In such a predicament, most migrant women who experience domestic abuse choose to suffer in silence.
To make matters worse, the departments responsible for dealing with domestic abuse have greatly varying standards as to how they handle such matters. In some places police officers are not very clear about what constitutes violent behavior. They may dismiss incidents of mental abuse or even physical violence. Some police officers even try to fob off women who report abuse with talk of preserving family harmony, or make them feel humiliated, or give them a lecture about how to get on with their husbands’ families, and so on.
It is true that Article 31 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) includes an “anti-domestic violence clause” that allows marriage migrants to extend their residency after their original purpose of residency, ie marriage, has been terminated because they have suffered physical or mental abuse from their spouses and a court has issued a protection order. Their residency can also be extended if a court has approved a divorce because a person has been subjected to domestic abuse and that person has one or more minor children born in Taiwan.
The first point to be noted about this is that a protection order has to be issued by a court of law and it would be hard to make a judge believe in a case of “fake” abuse.
Second, protection orders remain in force for a year at most, so it is debatable whether such an order can be the magic key that allows a migrant woman to stay in Taiwan forever, as some people imagine.
Third, the key condition under which someone can continue to reside in Taiwan when a court has approved a divorce on grounds of domestic abuse is that the person must have a child or children who have not reached adulthood. That means that a migrant woman who gets divorced, but does not have minor children, would still have to leave Taiwan even if the divorce was granted on the grounds of domestic abuse.
The fourth point that people need to understand is that residency and naturalization are two quite different things. If a migrant whose marriage has come to an end wants to become naturalized, he or she has to produce proof of financial standing for which the threshold is set very high and is something that many people cannot do very easily.
People who believe in this idea about “fake” domestic violence generally do not understand the extent to which immigrant women’s residency and naturalization rights are tied up with their marital status. It is even harder for them to grasp why a disadvantaged woman would put up with abuse again and again and only dare to take legal action to protect herself if and when she has got enough resources and know-how to do so.
As to the kind of talk that makes out the perpetrators of violence to be the victims, it betrays a deep-rooted patriarchal attitude as well as toleration of violence. Are women really expected to bow down in obedience and accept whatever blows, kicks and mental abuse are inflicted upon them?
Notions like “fake marriages” and “fake domestic violence” reveal the distrust and prejudice with which many people in Taiwan regard women who have come from abroad and settled here through marriage. Everything migrant women do is put under a tinted magnifying glass, while their possible motives are subject to wild speculation. Talk of “fake domestic violence” is yet another indication of how migrant women are always used as scapegoats for all kinds of social problems.
Blaming everything that goes wrong on these people who have come from abroad to settle here obscures the wrongfulness of violent behavior and it blinds people to the deficiencies in the system that put marriage migrants in such a disadvantaged position with regard to their basic rights.
Hsia Hsiao-chuan is a professor and the director of the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University. Cheng Shih-ying is a social worker at the TransAsia Sisters Association of Taiwan.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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