Legislators yesterday accused government officials from various law enforcement, intelligence gathering and criminal investigation agencies of negligence and lack of coordination, which they said has resulted in more than 70,000 foreign nationals going missing and being unaccounted for.
National Immigration Agency (NIA) Director-General Mo Tien-hu (莫天虎) said his officers have encountered problems in tracking down foreign laborers who have left their place of employment, but are in Taiwan working illegally.
Answering questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) during a meeting of the the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, Mo said that about 51,000 foreign laborers went missing last year, adding that the “imported workers,” who had been hired on mandated three-year employment contracts, mostly came from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
In addition, there are about 20,000 foreign nationals from other parts of the world who entered Taiwan on short-term or tourist visas who are unaccounted for and have either overstayed their visa or are working illegally, he said.
“There are a total of about 71,000 foreign nationals missing or hiding in Taiwan,” Mo said.
“We do not know what they are up to or who they are working for. This is a serious situation and is endangering our national security,” Chiang said.
Chiang criticized NIA and National Security Bureau officials, saying that the former is in charge of immigration and entry of foreign nationals, including tracking their visa expiration dates, while the latter is responsible for surveillance, monitoring and intelligence-gathering on foreigners who might pose a security threat to the government and society.
“Information provided by officials and citizens suggest that at least half of the missing foreign workers are Vietnamese. They likely left their place of employment to work illegally elsewhere for higher salaries,” Chiang said.
“Why we are still importing so many foreign workers each year? The NIA and other agencies must work together to stem the problem by working with the Vietnamese government to reduce the quota of imported workers,” Chiang said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift