Taiwan is considering requiring migrant workers and other foreigners applying for resident status in the country to be fingerprinted for the sake of national security, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).
“Since anti-terrorism has become a global trend, Taiwan will follow the lead of the US, Japan, Canada and the EU in imposing the biometrics requirement for foreign nationals entering the country,” the ministry said.
The requirement is part of a series of new measures in a proposed revision to rules governing foreign applicants for Taiwanese resident visas.
The new requirement, scheduled to take effect at the end of the year after it is approved by the Executive Yuan, will first be applied to migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries to prevent those with criminal records from entering the country using fake identities, it said.
Taiwan currently hires about 300,000 migrant workers, mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries in the region.
The revised rules will also seek to ease current restrictions on certain categories of visa applications in a bid to attract talented foreigners to work in Taiwan and to offer convenience to those who urgently need to visit Taiwan for extraordinary reasons, such as people whose Taiwanese relatives die or are hospitalized.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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