The Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office last week disclosed a case in which a circuitboard company section head was found to be an illegal Chinese immigrant who for 12 years had been using an assumed identity to live and work in Taiwan.
The 51-year-old man, surnamed Chi (池), in April was found by police officers at a random traffic stop to be using a forged identification card. He has since been deported under deferred prosecution, prosecutors said.
Chi came to Taiwan illegally in 2003 under the pretext of visiting a relative, but with the intent of seeking employment, by paying smugglers 30,000 yuan (US$4,708) for counterfeit papers that stated he had a Taiwanese grandfather, they said.
Upon his arrival, Chi discovered that he could not work without valid identification, so he contacted his sister, who was married to a Taiwanese, who put him in touch with her indebted brother-in-law, surnamed Yeh (葉), they said.
Yeh agreed to let Chi assume his identity on the condition that Chi pay Yeh’s debt to the bank.
Prosecutors said that Chi pasted his photograph onto Yeh’s identification card, applied for a job and was hired by a circuitboard firm in Taoyuan as a clerk with a monthly salary of NT$20,000.
Chi avoided suspicion about his accent by telling his colleagues that he was from the outlying island of Matsu. At the time of his arrest in April, Chi was in charge of 20 employees and had a monthly salary of NT$40,000, they said, adding that Chi’s success came at great personal cost, as his wife in China had ended their marriage and Chi was unable to visit his father before he passed away.
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