Efforts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to change the nation’s immigration policy by imposing a per country quota on the number of people who can be naturalized have been rejected by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and academics, an immigration official said yesterday.
“After deliberation, we did not believe that implementing a naturalization quota was suitable, considering the fact that a vast majority of foreigners apply for -naturalization on the basis of marriage to a Taiwanese,” said Lin Pei-hua (林佩樺), head of planning at the National Immigration Agency’s Immigration Affairs Division.
An interministerial task force held a meeting on Tuesday last week to discuss MOFA’s proposal, which had been presented to the Population Policy Commission the previous month.
Agency statistics showed that from 1987 to April this year, the number of foreigners who were naturalized or had applied to be naturalized was 449,111, with China being the country accounting for the largest number of naturalized Taiwanese — 288,344 people — followed by 84,937 from Vietnam, 27,047 from Indonesia, 12,179 from Hong Kong and Macau and 6,964 from the Philippines.
Lin said the agency would present the Population Policy Commission, which is in charge of the nation’s demographic policy, with its conclusion that imposing a quota was inappropriate, “as it could cause problems for foreign spouses who apply for naturalization.”
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday quoted anonymous sources as saying the MOFA proposal had targeted Vietnamese married to Taiwanese in light of increasing cases of naturalized Vietnamese involved in marriages of convenience.
Agnes Chen (陳華玉), deputy director-general of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, denied this, saying MOFA had no intention to ban or restrict certain types marriages.
The rationale for limiting the number of immigrants from any single country was to make it possible for naturalized Taiwanese to come from a variety of countries, rather than a limited few, as is currently the case, Chen said.
Chen said “diversification” of immigrants would be better for development, while naturalized citizens coming from a short list of countries was “relatively unsound.”
The idea was conceived to remove incentives for human trafficking and to protect human rights, MOFA spokesman James Chang (章計平) said, adding that it drew from the experience of countries like the US, Canada and Australia.
Bruce Liao (廖元豪), associate professor of law at National Chengchi University and a member of the consulting task force, opposed the idea and accused MOFA of fabricating the idea that a naturalization quota applied to foreign spouses in other countries.
“Some countries impose quotas on naturalization, but dependent relatives [who apply for naturalization after marriage] are not subject to those limits. Marriage is a human right ... it would be a violation of human rights to deny naturalization to foreign spouses, as it deprives them of their right to work and other social welfare entitlements,” Liao said.
Liao said the ministry should deny visas to individuals it suspects of entering the country via fake marriages and not reject naturalization applications for foreign spouses after they have lived in the country for several years, he said.
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