Premier William Lai (賴清德) on Friday last week told a news conference that any talk of possible solutions to the nation’s shortage of workers involving recruitment concerns immigration policy.
He was not talking about the recruitment of foreign professionals, as the government has previously addressed, nor was he referring to limited-stay employment akin to the “guest worker” model, in which workers are kept at a substantial distance from the local population in terms of benefits and rights.
He was talking about actual immigration, with permanent residency for workers who prove themselves to be law-abiding members of society whose skills are needed in certain sectors, such as agriculture, fishing or long-term care.
“We have started deliberating how to transform short-term employment to long-term employment and immigration. Our goal is to replace the importation of foreign workers with a coherent immigration policy,” Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-i (林萬億) said.
Lai did not reveal details of the policy, since it has yet to be finalized.
However, he did say that the Cabinet was targeting specific nations: the 10 ASEAN members as well as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, New Zealand and Australia — nations also targeted by the New Southbound Policy.
Is this sound policymaking or politics?
One of the government’s big ideas seems to be dovetailing different policy areas. It is bringing together immigration, population, labor and trade policies to move away from a longstanding over-reliance on China.
However, it might be better off optimizing its responses to the challenges at hand.
One of the big changes looming for the labor market is automation. The University of Oxford last year published a report, titled Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used to Be, saying automation will have a significant effect on jobs in developing nations.
Technological advances and the increasing importance of the Internet of Things in logistics, planning, production and marketing in agriculture and fisheries will revolutionize these sectors.
This is a good thing, as it will increase quality control, productivity and the international competitiveness of Taiwanese farmers and fishermen.
However, it will also lead to a streamlining of processes and labor-saving initiatives. In other words, there will be fewer jobs.
The Council of Agriculture in July last year published a report, titled Smart Agriculture 4.0, on the importance of upgrading technology to improve the competitiveness of the nation’s agricultural sectors.
The report mentioned uncrewed aircraft; Big Data transmitted through the cloud and accessible on cellphones or tablets; vane sensors; parameterized intelligent production; and greenhouse upgrades that could “reduce personnel by more than half.”
The Oxford report identifies investment in education and encouraging entrepreneurship as the two most efficient approaches to this challenge — not increased immigration.
There is also the issue of using immigrants to deal with the shortage of long-term care workers. That sounds like a recipe for an efficient demographic transfusion.
Immigration is a great idea — a diverse population is a noble aspiration.
However, it is a questionable antidote to labor shortage, especially when it could be argued that the policy is ideologically driven, when research shows preparations must be made for a different kind of industrial revolution and when immigration is definitely going to have a huge — and in some ways unforseeable — effect on society.
It just sounds like the nursery rhyme of the old woman who swallowed a fly.
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