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MAC chair blamed for a rising influx of immigrants

Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers yesterday said Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should step down because of lax cross-strait regulations.

One day after the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Statute Governing the Relations between the People of Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), TSU members blamed Tsai for the fact that more than 80,000 Chinese nationals married to Taiwanese have obtained legal residence status since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government was elected in 2000.

TSU whip Liao Pen-yen (廖本煙) said that there is a slackness in the application of cross-strait regulations which strays from the mainstream opinion in Taiwan.

"Tsai is the one who should step down for making these wrong Chinese policies," Liao said.

According to Liao, these policies include granting residence to the great number of Chinese nationals immigrating to Taiwan on the grounds of marriages to Taiwanese citizens and allowing Taiwanese investors to set up an eight-inch wafer plant in China.

He added that the lifting of the ban on Chinese colleges recruiting students in Taiwan could deprive the nation of potential benefits, since Taiwan and China have not yet reached a consensus on recognizing each other's educational records.

Despite a promise from Tsai to implement stricter surveillance and management of naturalization applications by Chinese spouses, Legislator Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) said leaving the amount of time Chinese spouses must wait to apply for an ID card at eight years would burden Taiwan's economy and affect domestic politics.

According to Chen, more than 110,000 Chinese spouses would qualify for Taiwanese citizenship by the end of this year.

"And at least 40 percent of them had faked marriages with Taiwanese citizens in order to stay here," Chen said.

The TSU caucus members apologized for failing to safeguard the interests of the Taiwanese people, since they were a minority in the legislative review on Thursday where it was agreed to leave the waiting period at eight years. The 12 members of the TSU, backed by 17 DPP legislators and one independent lawmaker, voted in vain against the eight-year rule for Chinese spouses.

Lawmakers also decided on Thursday to allow Chinese universities to recruit students in Taiwan and to give the government 18 months to complete negotiations with China on direct cross-strait transportation links.

The TSU and some DPP lawmakers opposed this, vowing to defend Taiwan's interests and sovereignty by maintaining rigid rules on cross-strait exchanges.

"The TSU caucus will petition for a legislative reconsideration of the cross-strait statute on Tuesday. In the meantime, we have decided to close the door to further negotiations with the three major parties after they abandoned the TSU and the real interests of the Taiwanese people by passing the amendments," Lo Chih-ming (羅志明), another TSU leader, said.

DPP whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said that his party would not endorse the TSU's reconsideration appeal, "because it is pointless."

"The revised statute, in fact, realizes the goal of imposing more stringent regulations on granting Chinese spouses ID cards. The number of Chinese immigrants could be managed by setting up quotas in the different phases of the application procedure.... The old law was loose and incapable of stemming the influx of Chinese immigrants," Ker said yesterday.

"It is therefore unnecessary to file for a review of the approved amendments, especially considering that the only proposal the TSU presented in opposition to the eight-year rule was an extended 11-year application period. Extending the waiting period would not necessarily lead to a reduction in the number of Chinese immigrants in Taiwan 10 years later," Ker said.

"It is normal that each party would safeguard its stance on certain political issues, but the way that the TSU suddenly withdrew from the last-minute multiparty negotiations on the amendments is debatable," the DPP whip said.

He added that this trend "has set a bad example for legislative cooperation."
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