The Portraits of Migrant Workers in Taiwan

Yu-Chien Lorna Kung

In the 1960s and 1970s, labor intensive industries created the economic miracle in Taiwan. Along with the economic developments, the costs of land and labor soared. Taiwanese industries could no longer rely on taking advantage of the cheap labor released from the rural area. Transferring industry abroad became a tendency while the importation of migrant workers became one of the strategies for the government to request the industries to “root stay in Taiwan.” In 1989, the Administrative Yuan began to import Thai workers according to the Measures in Response to the Demand for Manpower in Fourteen Major Construction Projects. The adoption of the Employment Service Act in 1992 affirmed Taiwan’s migrant worker policy.

Therefore, no matter it is Taipei Metro, High Speed Rail, hospitals, or community parks, we see the images of migrant workers living and working with us. As of February, 2007, there are 341,623 blue-collar foreign migrant workers in Taiwan, which amounts to 1.4% of the total population or 3% of the total labor population. About half of the blue-collar migrant workers are in the manufacturing industries, while 44% care takers. The amounts of workers from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippine, and Vietnam range from 70,000 to 90,000 while those from Malaysia and Mongolia are less than a hundred.

The Plights of Migrant Workers

The Employment Service Act of 1992 differentiates blur-collars migrant workers from white-collars. The employment of professional white-collar foreigners is regulated by the system of individual permissions. It does not set a quota for the number of work permits issued each year, nor limit the years of contracts or the duration of stay. Migrant workers, however, are regulated by the so-called “guest worker” system: the employment is controlled by quota, and migrant workers are allowed to stay during the contractual period and for six years at most. Different from the professional white-collars, who can freely change jobs in the labor market, the low-level migrant workers are deprived of the same rights that white-collars have. Migrant workers can only work for designated employer. They are not allowed to change employers, except in some extraordinary conditions.

Taiwan’s government announced four basic principles for its migrant worker policy: a) To ensure that migrant labor is only a supplementary labor force; b) To prevent migrant workers from becoming de facto immigrants or long-term residents; c) To prevent migrant workers from creating social and public health problems; d) Not to interfere and retard the industrial upgrades. Guided by these four principles, Taiwan’s administration system of migrant workers has the following characteristics:

1. The government controls which industries to import migrant workers and how many workers to be imported.

2. Migrant workers are allowed to work in Taiwan only for a limited period. After a maximum stay of three years, migrant workers must Taiwan for a minimum of one day so that they are not eligible to apply for permanent residency. After finishing their stay, migrant workers must leave Taiwan and cannot return as migrant workers again.

3. Migrant workers must submit police clearances and pass routine health checks. Before and after coming to Taiwan and every two years thereafter, migrant workers have to submit the health clearances issued by the hospitals approved by Taiwan’s Department of Health. If the health checks fail, they cannot renew the work permits and will be deported. Before obtaining the work visas, migrant workers have to prepare the police clearances from their mother countries as the verifications for their behaviors.

4. Migrant workers have only limited mobility. Migrant workers have to reside with the employees. They are not allowed to move freely. Migrant workers are allowed to change employers only when the factories are closed, the patients whom they are hired to take care passed away, serious maltreatment such as sexual abuse or harassments

5. The quota system controlled by cyclic reuse. According to the current legislation an employer will lose his or her quota if the hired migrant worker runs away. This kind of legal system leads the employers to strictly control the migrant workers by confiscating their passport, by “forced saving plan,” or by restricting migrant workers’ social activities during their vacation. These strategies adopted by the employers often violate the human rights of migrant workers.

6. Migrant workers are recruited by private agents. The complicated process to import migrant workers, the quota system, and the pressure of the competition between brokers lead the brokers to transfer their costs to migrant workers. The high broker fee is the most obvious and direct exploitation upon the migrant workers in Taiwan. According to the statistic numbers provided by the Taiwanese government, a migrant worker has to pay between NT$110,000to $150,000 as the broker fee before she or he can come to Taiwan.

7. Migrant workers are not allowed family reunion. Foreign blue-collars are not allowed to marry in Taiwan or bring their families. They do not have the rights of family reunion. The period of their legal stay does not qualify for the application of naturalization.

8. Foreign domestic workers are used to cover up the loophole of safety nets.By February 2007, one hundred and fifty thousand foreign domestic workers constitute forty-six percent of overall foreign blue-collar workers in Taiwan. That Taiwan’s welfare system has not been well designed for this ageing society results in the continuous increase of the number of foreign domestic workers. According to the statistics from the Council of Labor Affairs, the average working hours of foreign caretakers is as high as 12.5 hours. Long working hours and low wages of foreign domestic workers have been compensating the defect of Taiwan’s system of care. Council of Labor Affairs, in April 1998, once sought to broaden the application of the Labor Standards Law to include domestic workers, but withdrew the proposal in January 1999. Without the protection of Labor Standards Law, domestic workers do not have guarantees in working hours, sick leave, vacation, and other working conditions, nor do they have fixed job description to follow. TIWA and Catholic immigrant worker groups have formed PAHSA to propose the enactment of the Household Service Act to protect the legal rights of domestic workers.

Taiwan’s policies set the foreign blue-collars migrant workers to the position of “guest workers,” who cannot stay permanently. Low-level foreign workers are merely supplement to Taiwanese labor force and guests of this society. The structural controls of blue-collar migrant workers—the limitation of six-year work permits, not allow to change employers freely, not allow to form labor union—and the system of private brokers, which deepened the control of migrant workers by debts, make migrant workers silent when they confront the manipulating structures. The riot of Thai workers in Kaohsiung City showed that Taiwan’s migrant worker policies had become a “New Slavery System.” This system and the situation that domestic workers lack legal protection also led Taiwan to be included on the Tier-2 watch list in the US State Department's 2005 Trafficking of Human Persons report.