Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, would establish an immigrant council as part of the Executive Yuan if elected president, KMT vice presidential candidate Simon Chang (張善政) said yesterday.
Starting today, KMT Legislator Lin Li-chan (林麗蟬), an immigrant from Cambodia, is to serve as head of the council’s preparatory panel, responsible for planning its formal launch, Chang told a news conference in Taipei.
Since the establishment would entail legislative amendments, the council would not be immediately launched following Han’s election, he said.
Taiwan has an immigrant population of more than 550,000, which is roughly the same as its Aboriginal population of 570,000, Chang said.
While the Executive Yuan already includes a Council of Indigenous Peoples, there is also a need for an immigrant council, he said.
The founding of such a council would be “a symbolic step in the nation’s efforts to improve human rights,” Lin said.
Immigrant affairs are divided into several areas and governed by various ministries and agencies — from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of the Interior, the Mainland Affairs Council, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Central Election Commission and the Veterans Affairs Council, she said.
“Having so many different ministries and agencies govern our rights makes it difficult to safeguard them and ensure an organized system,” she said.
Establishing an immigrant council is “urgent and necessary” to achieve better results, she said.
Lin said that during a question-and-answer session with National Immigration Agency Director-General Chiu Feng-kuang (邱豐光) at the Legislative Yuan earlier this month, Chiu told her that there is no need for an immigrant council, because the Executive Yuan already conducts regular briefings on immigrant affairs.
The Tsai administration is only using consultative meetings on immigrant affairs to coordinate policies and ensure immigrants’ rights, she said.
“That is so ridiculous,” she added.
Most of Tsai’s platforms on immigrants’ rights — such as better social welfare programs and job-matching services — have not been delivered, she said.
“In comparison, Han’s immigrant policy is clear and concrete, and we are already taking responsible steps to realize it,” she 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:
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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