The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) commitment to protecting the rights of foreign spouses will be measured by the legislation they prepare, not by the special committees they establish, advocacy groups said yesterday, calling for the elimination of discriminatory standards against Chinese.
About 30 people gathered outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, shouting slogans demanding that foreign spouses not be treated as “flower vases” — a Mandarin idiom for something decorative but useless — in response to the DPP’s and the KMT’s establishment of internal party committees last month to address problems faced by the nation’s “new residents.”
“Whether the new committees are flower vases will be understood when the parties express concern for real issues,” National Chengchi University associate law professor Bruce Liao (廖元豪) said, criticizing the requirement that Chinese spouses wait six years before they can apply for a Republic of China identity card, compared with three years for spouses from other nations.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“The reason spouses are required to wait before applying for an identity card is to give them time to settle down and adjust to life here, but [Chinese] spouses do not face a language barrier and can adjust more quickly than other spouses, so what reason is there for the longer waiting time other than political animosity?” Liao said. “We want them to love Taiwan, but our actions are telling them that Taiwan does not love them back.”
Cross-Strait Marriage Harmony Promotion Association chairman Chung Chin-ming (鍾錦明) said that recent legislative amendments had not shortened waiting times, but added new requirements.
Advocates also criticized the requirement that foreign spouses from many Southeast Asian nations pass Ministry of Foreign Affairs interviews before being allowed into the nation.
Labor Rights Association executive director Wang Chuan-ping (王娟萍) said that 30 percent of the spouses interviewed by the ministry in 2015 failed their interviews and their marriages were not officially recognized.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes its own decisions and foreign spouses are not given an avenue of appeal,” said TransAsia Sisterhood Taiwan executive secretary Ly Vuoch-heang (李佩香), who is an immigrant from Cambodia, adding that the ministry has dragged its feet in changing the procedures after being censured by the Control Yuan in 2009.
The Control Yuan ruled that the ministry violated basic human rights by denying rejected foreign spouses the right to appeal.
“We do not see how they have made any progress,” Ly said, adding that the ministry only last year held a hearing on the issue.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai