Well-educated Chinese spouses face challenges while seeking employment here, as their diplomas will not be certified by the Ministry of Education.
"Since Taiwan does not recognize bachelor's, master's or PhD degrees from China, well-educated Chinese spouses can only be certified as a high-school graduate," said Kao Yu-hwa (高玉華), a job counselor at the Taipei City Government's employment center.
Since last year, the center has been helping Chinese spouses to look for jobs and has so far successfully placed 155 applicants.
"Most of the spouses who have found jobs through the center are middle or high school graduates. Most of the jobs available to them are labor or service-related," Kao said.
The majority of them end up working in restaurant, housekeeping or care giving jobs.
"I have dealt with several cases where the spouses are very highly-educated and are certified professionals. However, their education is of no use to them in Taiwan," Kao said.
Kao also said that the first obstacle spouses face while job hunting is related to the certification of their Chinese diplomas. According to the higher education department under the Ministry of Education, cross-strait cultural exchange policy stipulates that Chinese bachelor's degrees or higher are not able to be certified in Taiwan.
"This policy has been around since 1997. There have been talks on revising the policy, but no substantial conclusion has been reached," a higher education department official said yesterday.
Kao added that barriers to professional work are nonetheless frustrating.
"For instance, suppose a spouse has a solid computer-education background in China: he or she still faces technical problems due to the differences in computer systems and has to re-learn Taiwan's data input systems. Another problem might be getting Taiwanese professional certification, such as professional security trading certificates," Kao said.
"Even if these spouses are granted work permits and permanent residency status in Taiwan, they still do not share the benefits equally with Taiwanese citizens because they can't produce national identification cards [when seeking jobs]. As a result, many of them, despite comparable professional capabilities as the Taiwanese, receive lower pay," said Liu Hsien-wen (劉獻文), secretary-general of the Cross-Strait Marriage Harmony Promotion Association of the ROC.
Liu stated that salaries received by these spouses were about 20 to 30 percent lower than those of Taiwanese citizens, he said.
Furthermore, most employers are still confused about the legal rights of Chinese spouses, which makes job hunting even more arduous.
"This is the result of the lack of publicizing legal changes on the government's part," Liu said.
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