There are 734 unregistered children in Taiwan born to migrant workers who have been unaccounted for after arriving in the nation, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said on Wednesday.
The Control Yuan on Monday said the children of immigrants in Taiwan are considered non-citizens and ineligible for the benefits of Taiwanese citizens as they were not registered at birth.
The Control Yuan also said that the agency did not know how many such children were in Taiwan.
From 2007 until the end of May, 9,302 infants were born in Taiwan to a foreign parent or parents, of which 734 did not have citizenship, as the mother was a migrant worker who could not be contacted or who entered the nation under an alias, the agency said.
The agency said it received the information from the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration, which in turn receives information about all newborns from the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Promotion Administration.
Only infants whose parents are both of foreign nationality, or if the mother is of foreign nationality and the father is unknown, are notified to the agency, it said.
While the agency is searching for the mothers of these children, social welfare units have been contacted to arrange housing, the agency said, adding that the agency has issued the children with temporary residency permits.
Should the agency fail to find the mother and the Ministry of the Interior confirms that a child is considered an individual without nationality, the agency could process adoption requests or send the child to its mother’s nation of origin, it said.
Since the appointment of National Immigration Agency Director-General Chiu Feng-kuang (邱豐光) at the end of last year, the agency has stepped up efforts to look for migrant workers who have dropped off the grid.
On average, about 200 pregnant migrant workers or those already caring for a child disappear from their jobs each year, the agency said.
The agency relocates the mother and child to housing facilities and seeks organizations or individuals willing to post bail before the mother and child are sent to their nation of origin.
As most migrant workers with children are Indonesian, the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei has promised to provide four temporary housing units, the agency said.
The agency said it is also working with the Ministry of Labor to obtain more resources to help resettle migrant mothers and their children.
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