Officials will start interviewing Chinese brides next week to stop Chinese women from coming to work in Taiwan through fake marriages, the Bureau of Entry & Exit said yesterday.
"We will start the interviews on Sept. 1 because, since the late 1980s, 168,651 Chinese women have married Taiwanese men and applied to enter Taiwan. Many of them came to work in factories or as prostitutes through fake marriages arranged by criminal rings," said a bureau official who asked not to be named.
"Because of this, we will start interviewing Chinese brides on three frontiers: before they enter Taiwan, when they land in Taiwan and after they have arrived in Taiwan," the official said by phone.
"That is, if the Chinese women have lived abroad for some time, our embassies or representative offices there will conduct the interviews and clear them for entry if they pass the interviews," he said.
"If they come from China via Hong Kong or Macau, we will interview them when they arrive at our airports or sea ports, and deport them if we think they are not bona fide brides," he said.
"If they have entered Taiwan for some time and police find them suspicious, police will summon them for interviews," he said.
Lured by promises of well-paying jobs, many Chinese women have come to Taiwan through fake marriages or with the help of human traffickers, only to find themselves turned into slave laborers or prostitutes.
Since Tuesday, police have caught three groups of Chinese women -- 70 women in all -- who were smuggled into the country by sea to work as prostitutes.
The Mainlanders' Detention Center in Hsinchu holds more than 2,000 Chinese women awaiting deportation to China.
Meanwhile, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that the problem of illegal Chinese immigrants is serious and that it is necessary to set up an immigration administration.
The premier said that "the rising number of illegal Chinese immigrants will affect the quality of life of the 23 million people of Taiwan as well as social order," adding that "the problem has to be dealt with cautiously."
He said that "it is necessary to set up an immigration administration, and the pace has to be quickened," adding that he has instructed Minister without Portfolio Yeh Chun-jung (葉俊榮) to take charge of the coordination work among the various government agencies concerning the draft organization bill of the immigration administration.
Yeh noted that the review of the immigration administration draft bill is expected to be completed by Sept. 4 and that the bill will then be sent to the Legislature for approval.
If the draft bill is passed into law, the Bureau of Immigration will be expanded to include several units currently under the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, as well as the National Police Administration's foreign police unit, and other related organizations. It's functions will also be adjusted.
He said the major business of the immigration administration will be passport checking and verification of sea and air passengers, as well as interviewing immigrants before they come to Taiwan and providing counseling services for arriving immigrants.
MAC Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (劉德勳) said that the Executive Yuan had originally wanted to have the Cabinet's organization adjustment bill to go hand-in-hand with the immigration administration organization bill. However, due to the urgency of the illegal immigrant problem, MAC Chairman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Interior Minister Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) had asked the premier to delink the two so that the immigration administration organization bill can be passed as soon as possible.
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