Foreigners who have overstayed their visas or were working illegally were detained in Taipei and Kaohsiung over the weekend,he National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday.
Taipei police joined NIA agents in targeting more than 30 venues where the agency had received tip-offs that illegal workers might be employed.
Sixteen people were detained in Taipei, including six tourists who had overstayed or breached the conditions of their visas, five migrant workers who had been reported as missing by their legal employers and six Taiwanese who allegedly hired foreigners illegally for short-term jobs, officials said.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of the National Immigration Agency
The operation also targeted job brokers and employers involved in illicit hiring, International Affairs and Law Enforcement Division head Chang Wen-hsiu (張文秀) said.
“The aim is to crack down on Taiwanese job brokers and employers, and cut off this underground sector at the front end. We hope it reduces the number of illegal job opportunities for migrant workers and the incentives for them to take on illegal work, as well as the appeal for foreign tourists to overstay their visas,” Chang said.
Hostess bars, tea houses, karaoke lounges, massage parlors and other entertainment venues in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) were searched, which led to the detention of four Vietnamese women who were allegedly working as prostitutes.
Twelve foreigners were detained yesterday by the NIA and Kaohsiung authorities, all of whom had been reported as missing by their legal employers and some of them were reported to have been found working illegally on fishing boats.
Three Taiwanese were also taken in for questioning for allegedly illegally hiring foreigners.
The Taipei and Kaohsiung raids were part of a nationwide sweep, and a total of 165 foreigners, mostly Vietnamese and Indonesians, had been detained as of Saturday, the agency reported.
During the searches, NIA officials told foreigners they encountered about the overstayers’ voluntary departure program that is running through June 30.
By turning themselves in, overstayers can avoid detention and might be reimbursed for airfare for a flight home if they cooperate with authorities and provide information on illegal employers and brokers.
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:
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