Lax screening by the National Immigration Agency (NIA) is posing a severe threat to national security, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said.
Chen said records show that nearly 4,000 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) United Front Work Department officials have visited Taiwan since 2008, ostensibly for economic or academic exchanges, and their numbers continue to rise.
More than 3,801 officials from the department across all levels of the CCP government have visited Taiwan since 2009, Chen said.
Chen said 68 officials visited in 2008, 446 in 2009, 754 in 2010, 740 in 2011, 855 in 2012, while last year and this year up till last month, 938 visited the nation.
The department’s former deputy chief, Xu Zongcheng (續總成), visited in November 2009 and Deputy Director-General Chen Lin (陳琳) visited in January last year, the lawmaker said.
The immigration agency has failed to uphold the Act Governing Approval for Mainland Area Professionals to Engage in Professional Activities in Taiwan (大陸地區專業人士來台從事專業活動許可辦法), which is supposed to be the basis on which the agency considers Chinese applications, Chen Chi-mai said.
“The department is treating Taiwan like its own backyard with such ease of access,” he added.
The merging of the former act with the Act on Permission for Entrance of People of the Mainland Area into the Taiwan Area (大陸地區人民進入台灣地區許可辦法) last year relaxed regulations, Chen Chi-mai said, adding that as long as Chinese applicants state their reason for visiting as a “short period of professional exchange” then the entry application is approved.
More than 1,020 CCP Unified Front Work Department officials applied to visit Taiwan last year and this year to last month, yet only 24 were denied, which represents a 97 percent approval rate, Chen Chi-mai said, adding that all 14 officials who applied for a “short period of professional exchange” were approved.
The entire system for reviewing applications has become dysfunctional, Chen Chi-mai said.
The “united front” principle of “allying with your lesser enemies to fight your primary enemy” eroded the basis of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule in China and eventually saw the KMT defeated in 1949, Chen Chi-mai said, adding that the KMT’s fear of the tactic had caused the 40-year-long White Terror period in Taiwan.
“It is sad to see the KMT government has not learned its lesson and is still allowing the CCP United Front officials open access to Taiwan to brainwash the Taiwanese,” Chen Chi-mai said.
“President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration must implement a major review and bar any member of the CCP’s United Front Work Department from entering Taiwan,” Chen Chi-mai said.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
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