The National Police Administration yesterday denied that it planned to enforce a law that authorizes it to develop a database of fingerprints of foreigners living and working in Taiwan, saying it lacked the personnel and equipment to do so.
A local newspaper reported on Monday that the administration was to enforce the legislation.
"To be honest, our equipment doesn't even have enough space to save all the fingerprints of the 310,000 foreign laborers [from southeast Asia]," said an official in the administration's foreign affairs section, who wished to remain anonymous. "How can we collect more fingerprints?"
Under the Immigration Law and the Employment Service Act, foreigners over the age of 14 who live and work in Taiwan are required to register their fingerprints. The present number of foreigners in Taiwan is 400,775.
Under the Employment Services Act, the administration has required 310,000 overseas contract workers from Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to register their fingerprints since the government opened up the domestic labor market to foreigners in 1988.
The Immigration Law -- which requires other foreigners to submit their fingerprints -- was passed in May 1999, while the government was also planning to establish a system for collecting and storing the fingerprints of every Taiwanese citizen.
But the plan was put on hold when President Chen Shui-bian's(
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