Pan-blue draft amendments to the Statute Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and Mainland Area (
Long a flashpoint between ruling and opposition party lawmakers, the statute governs a sweeping array of cross-strait links, from trade, investment and tourism to immigration.
A separate pan-blue draft amendment to the statute seeking to lift restrictions on the transfer of sensitive technologies from Taiwan to China, sparked a near brawl in the legislature last Friday, as pan-green lawmakers forced the Home and Nations Committee to adjourn prematurely.
Faced with equally controversial amendments yesterday, pan-green lawmakers again engaged their opposition colleagues in bickering so intense that the committee was forced to adjourn in the morning despite what was scheduled to be an all-day meeting on Chinese immigration.
"This is a bill by the Chinese for the Chinese!" shouted Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Chien-huei (黃劍輝).
Sponsored by 50 pan-blue lawmakers, an amendment to Article 70 of the statute drafted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Diane Lee (
Lee's bill would fast-track Chinese immigrants' residency applications over other immigrants, whose application for residency can require up to eight years, critics said.
KMT Legislator John Wu (
Sponsored by 34 pan-blue lawmakers, the proposed amendment would pave the way for Chinese immigrants to become civil servants immediately after obtaining permanent residency.
If passed, pan-green lawmakers said, the bills would allow Chinese to be employed by the government within just five years of arriving.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Chen Ming-tong (
There are now 290,000 Chinese spouses in the country.
The National Security Bureau (NSB) has other concerns about the proposals. Senior bureau officials worry that the bills could lead to an influx of Chinese spies eager to gain employment in a wide array of government agencies, an anonymous official was quoted as saying in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) yesterday.
In April, the US weekly Defense News quoted former vice minister of defense Lin Chong-pin (林中斌) as saying that more than 5,000 spies are now in Taiwan.
NSB Deputy Secretary-General Wang Hsi-tien (
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