Accompanied by a Taipei City councilor, seven mainland wives of Taiwan citizens held a press conference to complain about the time taken to process their applications for permanent residency in Taiwan and said that they are being treated unfairly.
Since 1992, the Mainland Affairs Council has allowed Chinese brides to apply for permanent residency in Taiwan by following the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. Since the issue of the mainland brides' legal status is directly linked to the sensitive cross-strait issue, the statute imposes an annual quota of mainland nationals who may be granted permanent residency. The current quota is 3,600. This has resulted in protracted delays and considerable hardship for many mainland brides.
Shih Tong-mei (石冬梅), a mainland bride who has been in Taiwan for about five years, argued that brides from other countries obtained permanent residency more easily than the mainland brides.
"Brides from Thailand are approved for permanent residency in a couple of years, but we have waited for seven or eight years without seeing any progress," Shih said.
According to statistics from the Bureau of Immigration, between January 1992 and May 2000, 40,785 mainland brides applied for permanent residency, but only 9,631 applications were approved.
An official from the Mainland Affair Council's legal affairs department, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the government has to "consider the issue in the light of the national interest."
"The quota was only 240 in 1992, and we increased the number to 3,600 in 1999 and have kept it at that level. This is not only a problem of numbers to us, but a matter that is related to marriage fraud, prostitution and Taiwan's security," said the official.
Tseng Yen-fen (
"How immigrants are treated in other countries usually reflects the relations between their home country and the country to which they migrate, but that doesn't mean that's the right way," Tseng said.
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