The Ministry of the Interior’s proposed amendments to the Nationality Act (國籍法) would fail to guarantee the naturalization rights of foreign nationals, civic groups said yesterday, demanding the full repeal of discriminatory provisions.
About 20 campaigners from the Taiwan International Family Mutual Help Association, Taiwan TransAsia Sisters’ Association and other immigrant advocacy groups gathered outside of the Legislative Yuan, shouting for the legislature to remove the “shackles” migrants face when naturalizing.
“The current law allows for our citizenship to be stripped at any time within the first five years for any kind of a police record — even a speeding ticket,” the Taiwan TransAsia Sisters’ Association’s Yadrung Chiu said.
“Government discretion to strip our citizenship is not fair because we have already gone through an extremely rigorous review process, including proving that we had no criminal record in the past,” she said. “A citizen is a citizen — if the government does not have the right to strip native Taiwanese of their citizenship, we should not be treated differently.”
Because foreign spouses are required to give up their native citizenship before naturalizing, being stripped of Taiwanese citizenship makes them stateless, leaving them in an administrative “black hole” if their relationship with their Taiwanese spouse ends because of death or divorce, she said.
A woman originally from Thailand named Tiponda said she had been stripped of citizenship after the broker who arranged her marriage was accused of fraud in cases involving other couples, and that she had forfeited her only opportunity to appeal because she did not understand that the appeal had to be filed within a week.
The death of her husband the same year ended any possibility of renaturalizing, she said.
“When I go to the Thai representative office, they say they cannot help me because I am Taiwanese now, but when I go to the National Immigration Agency, they say I am Thai,” she said, adding that she could only extend her resident rights in three month increments, making it nearly impossible for her to find stable employment, as well as making her ineligible for National Health Insurance.
Wong Lennon (汪英達), the director of the Serve the People Association’s service center and shelter for migrant workers, blasted the draft legislation for giving the government the right to strip new citizens of legal residency, as well as citizenship, if they fail to prove they have given up their original citizenship within a year, saying that the legislation perpetuated double standards on dual citizenship.
“The Taiwanese government in practice allows for dual citizenship by Taiwanese nationals, but still refuses to allow foreigners to maintain their original citizenship,” he said.
“We have to spend five years before getting a national ID card, but even after we get it, we still do not have the same rights as Taiwanese,” said Melisa Huang (黃麗莎), originally from Indonesia, criticizing draft legislation for failing to drop requirements that naturalized citizens wait 10 years before standing for public office.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,