Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate Jennifer Wang (王如玄) and China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) Chairman Chang An-le (張安樂), better known as the White Wolf, attended the Chinese Women’s Federation general meeting yesterday, at which Chang lashed out at the KMT for failing to allow Chinese spouses enjoy the four-year residency requirement for obtaining Republic of China residency that spouses from other nations do.
The Chinese Women’s Federation was founded in 2013 by Chinese spouses to promote the group’s interests. The meeting was attended by KMT politicians.
Wang said that new immigrants are “mothers of Taiwanese children” and each is “one of our own,” adding that various measures benefiting new immigrants, such as granting them the right to work and participate in occupational training before obtaining residency, were made possible when the KMT was in office and when she was Minister for the Council of Labor Affairs.
“It is not easy to make room [for those new measures] as some parties deem new immigrants as ‘not of our kind,’” Wang said.
It takes Chinese spouses six years to become residents, whereas for spouses from other nations it takes four years.
“Are [Chinese spouses] second-class citizens compared with Southeast Asian [spouses]?” Chang said after Wang left the meeting, adding that Wang failed to promise to make reforms.
Hung, who arrived at the meeting after Wang left, asked supporters to vote for the KMT, saying the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, have been obstructing legislative proceedings.
Hung said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has made great advances in diplomatic and cross-strait affairs, but Taiwan’s livelihood might be destroyed when there are people espousing anti-China and China-hating rhetoric, adding that the KMT is a “middle-way and rational” party that “walks through big doors and on big roads” and is not familiar with propaganda and political tactics.
Chang said: “The KMT has lost its party soul; [the people of] the KMT do not dare acknowledge that they are Chinese. The party’s soul is with Hung.”
“The KMT wants our support, that is fine, but it has to promise that after we send its candidates to the legislature, the party would grant Chinese spouses equal rights to the four-year requirement for obtaining national identity,” Chang added.
“With the KMT in office, the requirement for the Chinese spouses has been lowered from eight to six years,” Hung said, adding that the two additional years is “discriminatory” and “unequal.”
Hung said the KMT would make an effort to change the requirement.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS