A 37-year-old Vietnamese woman whose marriage to a Taiwanese man recently ended has filed for administrative litigation against the Ministry of the Interior’s decision to revoke her Republic of China (ROC) citizenship in March because she had engaged in an extramarital affair with a Vietnamese worker in Taiwan.
The woman decided to marry the Vietnamese man and visited a local household registration office in March to register their marriage. However, the ministry stripped her of her ROC citizenship by citing Article 19 of the Nationality Act (國籍法) and claiming that her affair showed she did not have “good morals” — a requirement to obtain citizenship. The ministry also suspected that her previous marriage had been a scheme to obtain citizenship.
Having given up her Vietnamese citizenship, the woman became stateless after living in Taiwan for eight years. In desperation, she began a legal battle against the government to retain her citizenship, insisting that her ex-husband did not sue her over the affair and that she has no criminal record.
She even made an argument against Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) over his previous extramarital affair with Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅).
“The whole nation knows about Lee’s extramarital affair. If I don’t have good morals, neither does he,” she said.
Under the law, foreigners who obtain ROC citizenship can be stripped of their status if they engage in criminal activity or fail to demonstrate good morals over the following five years.
There are over 150,000 foreign spouses living in Taiwan, and more than 52,000 do not have ROC citizenship.
As the law requires foreigners to forsake their original citizenship to obtain ROC citizenship, people like Wu are left in civil limbo, and since they have to meet difficult requirements, such as having at least NT$5 million (US$170,000) in savings, the road back to naturalization is not easy.
The ministry’s move shows that foreign spouses continue to be targets of discrimination, and such disregard for human rights is ironic in a country that has signed two UN human rights covenants.
While President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration touts its efforts to improve human rights, the current law still treats foreign spouses and foreign workers as potential threats to social order, allowing the authorities to revoke their nationality based on a vague and abstract requirement of “good morals,” while putting up unnecessary hurdles for them to become an ROC citizen.
Immigrant-rights advocates have voiced opposition to the law and pushed for amendments to scrap regulations that require foreigners to behave “properly” in order to maintain their ROC citizenship. The proposed amendments also called for the cancelation of regulations that ask foreign spouses to meet minimum financial requirements when applying for naturalization.
The proposed amendments passed a preliminary review in the legislature in April, and Lee has given his support. However, the amendment to the law has yet to be completed.
As a country that often takes pride in the values of freedom and democracy, Taiwan clearly has a long way to go before discrimination is eliminated and human rights are respected.
It takes persistent efforts to improve human rights, and the authorities should take proactive measures to protect the rights of immigrants with more mature immigration policies and laws, so that society can become inclusive and truly embrace diversity.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS