Immigrants married to Taiwanese nationals are mostly happy with life in Taiwan, even though their average household income is less than half the national average, to a census released yesterday by the Ministry of the Interior showed.
A total of 498,368 foreign-born spouses, including naturalized immigrants and foreign nationals, call Taiwan home. At 67.6 percent, more than two-thirds come from China, Hong Kong or Macau; another 28.1 percent are from Southeast Asia, predominantly Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia, according to ministry statistics.
In the once-in-five years census of foreign-born spouses, 92.9 percent of respondents described life in their adoptive country as “happy” (幸福), and 87 percent said they do not have trouble communicating with their Taiwanese family members despite cultural and linguistic barriers.
The survey found that the average monthly household income in families with new immigrants was NT$46,173, less than half the national average of NT$98,073.
Among the offspring of immigrants, the ministry found that 40.3 percent of children interviewed for the census cannot speak their foreign-born parents’ native language, despite a government push to promote “mother language” learning.
The statistics also showed that the largest single group of immigrants by marriage is women from China, Hong Kong or Macau, at 315,293 people or 63.3 percent. The next biggest group is women from Vietnam, at 90,503.
For men, the largest single group also came from China, Hong Kong or Macau at 21,735, with men from Thailand taking a distant second place at 2,661.
The survey part of the census was conducted during visits to immigrants between September and December 2013, yielding 13,688 valid samples. Further samples were collected during eight forums for foreign-born spouses and two expert forums in the middle of last year.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS