A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker yesterday called for regulatory changes to allow the spouses and children of foreign professionals to obtain permanent residency and work in the nation.
Speaking at a morning news conference at the Legislative Yuan, KMT Legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) said that current regulations make life difficult for expatriates who plan to stay in Taiwan for the long term, including restrictions on their children obtaining permanent residency.
Once the children of expats reach the age of maturity, they are required to leave the country, making it impossible for the family to continue living together, while accompanying spouses also cannot take on part-time employment, he said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Hsu said he hoped to introduce a series of changes, including an amendment to Article 25 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), to allow the spouses and dependent children of foreign professionals to apply for permanent residency.
Other plans include amending Article 42 of the Employment Services Act (就業服務法) to allow spouses and dependent children of those who have become permanent residents to work, he said.
Hsu said he also hoped that children who are disabled or otherwise unable to care for themselves would be allowed to extend their permanent residence status past the age of maturity through an amendment to Article 23 of the Immigration Act.
He added that Article 9 of the Nationality Act (國籍法) should also be revised so that those who decide to apply for Republic of China (ROC) citizenship would not be required to abandon their original citizenship until after they have been naturalized.
Lin Chih-mei (林至美), director of the National Development Council’s Department of Human Resources Development, told the news conference that she would put together a proposal for a draft bill after gathering input from all the relevant parties.
Tsai Meng-liang (蔡孟良), deputy director of the Ministry of Labor’s Workforce Development Agency, said efforts to relax relevant regulations are under way, as the government is aware that attracting professional talent is critical to making the nation internationally competitive.
“Taiwan cannot close itself off from the world. We naturally need to attract international talent,” Tsai said.
The way to achieve this is to loosen restrictions, Tsai said.
The idea of exempting foreign professionals from the need to apply for permanent residence in the first place is being discussed, adding that their dependent children would automatically receive permanent residence under the proposal, Tsai said.
The ministry is moving in the same direction on the issue as what Hsu is proposing, Tsai said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching