The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed the new Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法), which allows foreigners interested in working in Taiwan to extend their work visa, lifts the restriction on the minimum duration of their stay and includes faster enrollment in the National Health Insurance system.
Under the act, foreigners would be able to apply for a four-in-one “gold card” that incorporates a work visa that allows them to transition between jobs without legal restrictions, a resident visa, an Alien Resident Certificate and a re-entry permit.
Foreign professionals are to be allowed to apply for the card on their own without the approval of their employer.
Photo: CNA
With the passage of the act, the maximum duration of stay for foreigners holding a work visa or an Alien Residence Certificate has been extended from three to five years, while the required minimum duration of stay of 183 days every year has been abolished.
A work visa holder is to be granted an extended stay of no more than five years if their employer requires them to stay in their job for an extended period of time.
Foreigners looking for a job in Taiwan are to be eligible to apply for a “job-seeking visa” that is valid for six months.
A tax deduction rate of 50 percent of annual income is to apply to a foreign worker whose annual salary is NT$3 million (US$99,437) or more for three consecutive years.
People with Alien Permanent Resident Certificates are to be included in the pension system. They can decide whether to claim their pensions in a lump sum or in monthly payments.
A six-month waiting period before foreigners, their spouses and children awarded an Alien Resident or Alien Permanent Resident certificate can join the National Health Insurance system has been lifted and foreigners can now apply to join the system upon receipt of their certificate.
The act also covers residents of Hong Kong and Macau working in Taiwan.
The act includes an article stipulating that a cap is to be set on the total number of work visas issued to foreigners every year.
The cap is to be reviewed every year and adjusted if necessary.
A disputed “internship visa” with a validity of two years was vetoed by lawmakers, apparently out of concern about foreigners taking lower-paid jobs under the guise of an internship, hurting the job opportunities of Taiwanese.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Karen Yu (余宛如) said “unfriendly” restrictions have been the major obstacle preventing foreigners who love Taiwan staying in the nation and that she hoped the act would help to retain more foreign talent.
The nation faces the dual problem of transitioning into a superannuated society and a lack of professional talent due to a low birth rate, with the University of Oxford saying that Taiwan is forecast to face the most severe shortfall in talent worldwide in 2021, she said.
Therefore, the nation is in need of a strategic population policy such as moderately opening up to foreigners, which would in turn help improve the economy, she added.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS