Caution is needed after the Cabinet last week approved a Mainland Affairs Council policy to relax permanent residency rules for professionals from Hong Kong and Macau, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
Under the new regulations, which are to take effect on Sunday, professionals from the territories who have had a work visa in Taiwan for at least five years and earned at least double the minimum wage in the past year can apply for permanent residency. Applicants must also have been in Taiwan for at least 183 days in each of the five years.
However, DPP Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) said that the change would pose a national security risk, specifically when residency is granted to Hong Kongers.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The territory is under tight Chinese government control, with pervasive programs of political indoctrination, Lai said.
“It is possible that some Hong Kongers who move to Taiwan might have ulterior motives and collude with China,” he said.
“Some ‘new residents’ might be Chinese proxies, seeking to subvert our free elections and democratic system, and aiming to bring down Taiwan’s society and government,” he said.
“We must thwart any Chinese attempt to take advantage of the relaxed residency rules,” Lai said, adding that government agencies should consider such issues carefully.
“Mechanisms to vet and monitor such people might be necessary,” he said.
DPP Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) said that Macau and Hong Kong are in a Beijing “one country, one system.”
“We are opening the door to professionals from Hong Kong and Macau, but China has de facto control over these two territories,” Chiu said.
Many Hong Kongers oppose the Chinese regime and want to work in Taiwan, “but we also know that relaxing the regulations might create a conduit that allows infiltration by Chinese operatives,” he said.
“Professionals can work for five years and obtain residency, but can retain their Hong Kong citizenship,” he said.
“At that time, would they be patriotic to China, or patriotic to the Republic of China, Taiwan?” he asked.
Many Taiwanese are sympathetic toward people in Hong Kong, and aggrieved at China’s harsh crackdown on democracy advocates there, “but people must know that Taiwan has always been on the front line in facing China’s military threat,” Chiu said.
Taiwan is constantly fighting Chinese infiltration, covert operations and political propaganda drives, but “now the door to residency is being widened, which can lead to full citizenship, and the right to vote and influence public policies,” he said.
“This is a concern for many Taiwanese,” he added.
“The new policy has serious national security implications, so we urge caution against flinging the door wide open,” he said, adding that legislative scrutiny, as well as oversight and monitoring mechanisms, are vital.
“We already have doubts that the judiciary can properly investigate national security breaches,” Chiu said.
Moreover, the recent rise in COVID-19 infections in Taiwan makes this a bad time to relax the residency rules for people from the two territories, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching