A legislator decried the use of foreign brides as cheap surrogate mothers yesterday after highlighting the case of a married man who used another man's identity to marry a Cambodian woman so that she could bear his children.
The man, surnamed Chan, decided to find a foreign bride to bear his children as he and his wife had been unable to conceive.
As he was unable to use his own name, Chan registered with a marriage agency using the identity of a man surnamed Yao and went through the marriage formalities in December 2003.
After arriving in Taiwan, his Cambodian wife, surnamed Chung, was forced to live with Chan and bore him twin girls. But after giving birth, Chung's visa expired and she was unable to renew it, since her registered husband, surnamed Yao, had been killed in a fishing accident. In line with regulations, Chung was deported and the twin daughters were adopted by Chan and his family.
Chung's brother-in-law, a Taiwanese who married Chung's sister, said that according to the Law of Nationality (國籍法), the daughters should be in the custody of Chung, since her registered husband is deceased and that the children should have been deported along with her.
However, he said, nobody in the family knew what had happened in a behind-closed-doors meeting between Chan and the foreign affairs police that in the end allowed Chan to "adopt" the children.
In their desperation the family turned to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (
Tsai yesterday held a press conference to highlight the issue and said that it was a violation of human rights to use foreign brides as surrogate mothers, taking advantage of the fact that they could not speak Mandarin to report their unfair treatment.
Tsai said that the government even paid for Chung's plane ticket back to Cambodia, aiding Chan in getting rid of her.
Tsai Chia-huang (蔡家煌), a foreign affairs policeman, said that current regulations do not protect the rights of foreign brides, because without a national identification card they are not permitted to stay in the country once their visa is no longer valid or has expired.
Local foreign affairs police use different standards when granting visa renewals, but the government is working on unifying the system with respect for human rights as the foundation, he said.
Officials from the Department of Population under the Ministry of the Interior who were present at the press conference said that if the marriage between Chung and Yao was legally registered, her children would be of Taiwanese nationality.
But ministry officials could not comment on whether Chung would be allowed to return to her children or whether she was actually entitled to custody of them. The case would have to be looked into, they said.
According to ministry figures, there were approximately 365,000 foreign spouses in the country last year.
Any foreign brides wishing to report cases of injustice can call a special Legislative Yuan hotline at (02) 2358-6122.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS