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.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS