The government is considering relaxing immigration rules for migrant workers and foreign students as part of efforts to address a labor shortage and issues linked to the nation’s low birthrate, Minister of the Interior Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) told a trade group yesterday.
Lin made the remarks while giving the keynote speech at a meeting in Taipei of the Third Wednesday Club (三三會), whose membership is limited to the top 100 firms in each business sector.
“We should embrace different views in dealing with foreign workers who currently serve as caregivers for ill senior citizens and work at construction sites,” Lin said.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
It is not fair or humane to dismiss caregivers after they have looked after people’s family members for the legal maximum of 12 years and have developed a close relationship with their employers, Lin said.
Perhaps they should be allowed to stay and be naturalized, the minister said.
Similarly, the government is considering whether male migrant workers who work on public and private construction projects should be allowed to stay in Taiwan for good, Lin said, adding that they are currently required to leave after their contracts expire in four to five years.
They usually have received years of training in Taiwan and are therefore welcomed by employers in South Korea and Japan, he said.
“We should revisit our immigration rules, rather than train workers on behalf of other nations,” Lin said.
The change is necessary as Taiwan is to become a super-aged society in 2025, when people aged 65 or older are to account for more than 20 percent of the population, he said.
Taiwan already became an aged society in 2018, with people aged 65 or older making up 14 percent of the population, and the birthrate has declined, Lin said.
The demographic structure is unfavorable for the workforce, causes other social security issues and it would require decades to rectify, the minister said, adding that labor shortages are affecting all levels of the workforce: unskilled, skilled and managerial employees.
Foreign students are another solution, and the government is considering allowing them to extend their stay, giving them two years, instead of 12 months, to find employment in Taiwan upon graduation, the minister said.
Toward that end, policymakers are also debating lowering the wage requirement from NT$42,500 a month, as most graduates in Taiwan have difficulty finding a job that pays that much, Lin said.
The government has offered assorted benefits to boost fertility rates, but to little avail, he added.
DIVERSIFICATION: The chip designer expects new non-smartphone products to be available next year or in 2025 as it seeks new growth engines to broaden its portfolio MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it expects non-mobile phone chips, such as automotive chips, to drive its growth beyond 2025, as it pursues diversification to create a more balanced portfolio. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said it has counted on smartphone chips, power management chips and chips for other applications to fuel its growth in the past few years, but it is developing new products to continue growing. “Our future growth drivers, of course, will be outside of smartphones,” MediaTek chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu City. “As new products would be available next year
At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change. The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600°C. The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of “green” concrete. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere, experts have said. Biochar could
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares yesterday rallied 2 percent on the local stock market after Nvidia Corp said the contract chipmaker would be the sole supplier of its latest graphics processing chip, defusing speculation that Intel Corp would get a share of the orders. TSMC’s share price climbed to NT$562, snapping a three-day losing streak. It outperformed the benchmark index’s 1.18 percent gain. Net purchases by foreign institutional investors yesterday totaled 8.37 million shares, reversing net sales of 2.9 million shares on Thursday. The rebound follows Nvidia’s announcement that its latest artificial intelligence graphics processing unit (GPU), codenamed H100, would
Taiwan is expected to be the third-largest market for Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd, after DBS Bank Taiwan (星展台灣) completes its acquisition of Citibank Taiwan Ltd’s (台灣花旗) consumer banking business in August, a bank executive said yesterday. Taiwan would rank after only Singapore and Hong Kong in terms of profit contribution to DBS, followed by China, India and Indonesia, DBS Taiwan general manager Ng Sier Han (黃思翰) told a media briefing in Taipei. DBS Bank Taiwan expects to retain all 2.77 million Citibank Taiwan cardholders and help them to transition to DBS Taiwan cards over the next 12 months, Ng said. The bank
RSS