The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said the executive branch was struggling to find ways to deter Chinese women from working as prostitutes here.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said it was very difficult to determine the legality of marriages involving Chinese spouses who marry Taiwanese nationals.
“The National Immigration Agency (NIA) has been harshly criticized for extending its administrative authority from the living room to the bedroom,” he said. “Some say they are going too far.”
The council also came up with the idea of building a biometric database for Chinese nationals, including fingerprints, face recognition or iris recognition, but the proposal was rejected by the legislature, which criticized it as discriminatory.
“We don’t know what to do,” he said.
Liu made the remarks in response to media inquiries about the arrest of staff and a number of alleged Chinese prostitutes at suspected brothels in Taipei on Wednesday.
The NIA and Bureau of Investigation said the owners of the alleged prostitution ring hired Chinese prostitutes.
Commenting on the case, Liu said they needed to better understand how the Chinese women had entered the country either through fake marriages or some form of exchange.
It was not easy to find the perfect answer for the problem, he said, adding that the women would always find a way to get around government policy.
For example, Liu said, if the government allowed more Chinese nationals to visit family members here, the level of human smuggling might decrease. If fewer Chinese nationals were allowed to visit, human smuggling might not go up, but the number of fake marriages would likely grow.
Following comments by Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) promising to allow Chinese tourists to visit as individuals, not just groups, Liu yesterday said the details are still being worked out.
Wu has previously said that of the 1 million Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan per year, about 370,000 were here on business visas and the remaining 600,000 on tourist visas.
As the disposable income of the former was greater, Wu said the solo-visit policy made them a priority for liberalization.
Liu did not indicate whether the issue would be discussed at a meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), later this year.
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