The Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in that country, signed a memorandum of understanding with its Indian counterpart, the India Taipei Association, on Friday last week to pave the way for Indian migrant workers to seek employment in Taiwan.
The details of the process have yet to be agreed, but the Ministry of Labor has confirmed that, according to the memorandum, Taipei would be able to determine the number of Indian workers and which industries they could be employed in.
That is, the government is not flinging open the nation’s doors to a flood of migrant workers.
The agreement has been a long time coming, with negotiations beginning in 2020, but having to be put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is certain to bring many benefits to Taiwan, for a variety of reasons, although news of the plan, when announced last year, was met with a certain amount of resistance among the public.
This resistance is due in large part to misunderstandings about the need for the policy and how it is to be implemented.
It is the government’s responsibility to ensure that these misunderstandings are cleared up, and the opposition’s responsibility not to fan the flames of social tensions resulting from these misunderstandings.
It is not news that Taiwan, like so many other countries, is facing a demographic cliff, an aging society that is going to mean a gradual shrinking of the workforce and the need to bring in migrant workers to address this.
Taiwan already allows workers from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand to seek employment in certain industries, but it has become apparent that these sources of migrant workers alone are not sufficient.
Allowing Indian workers into Taiwan, to help bolster the nation’s requirements in industries such as construction, manufacturing, domestic labor and agriculture, could go some way to remedy this situation.
Germany, Italy, France, Singapore, Malaysia and countries in the Middle East have already signed migrant worker agreements with India, and Japan and South Korea are also looking to go down this route.
There are also sound geopolitical reasons for promoting ties with New Delhi, to promote Taiwan-India relations in an international environment in which Taiwan and India share a distrust of Beijing amid its territorial ambitions.
Immigration and increasing the pool of migrant workers does have the potential to create social tensions if the public is not given access to the objective facts. During the presidential election campaign, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said that allowing 100,000 workers coming into Taiwan would sow social tensions and take jobs away from Taiwanese.
The figure is inflated and inflammatory. It is no surprise that there was a protest in Taipei against the policy on Dec. 3 last year, during the campaign.
Unfortunately, it is also not a major surprise that this attitude toward the policy and the rhetoric of certain politicians, which Hou’s words would only have encouraged, led to negative — and unfounded — tropes about Indian migrant workers entering the debate about the issue.
Hou was criticizing government policy for political purposes during the campaign. Often, things said during an election campaign stay in the election campaign. Hou can change his tune now that the dust has settled.
The opposition needs to work with the government to refine, not hobble, this much-needed policy to ease the problem of labor shortages, improve the relations with New Delhi and help pave the way for a more prosperous and harmonious future.
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