Taiwan’s Immigration Policy Challenges in 2020

The 2020 presidential election might yet be the first time that immigration is front and center at an election in Taiwan. So, where do the presidential candidates stand on immigration?

The News Lens
Date: 2019/12/19
By: Yu-chin Tseng

Immigration is an important issue. It forms a major component of election platforms and influences voting in many countries. In the United Kingdom, Brexit was heavily shaped by migration and border control issues. In the United States, immigration policy is Donald Trump’s signature issue. In Germany, refugee, asylum, and immigration topics have dominated politics since the opening of borders to refugees in 2015. However, these issues are still new to Taiwanese voters and were never core parts of party platforms in Taiwanese elections. The 2020 presidential election might yet be the first time that immigration is front and center at an election in Taiwan. So, where do the two major party presidential candidates stand on immigration and what are their policies?

The rising importance of immigration to elections

Both the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) candidates have proposed new measures to address “new immigrants” – predominantly marriage immigrants in Taiwan – whom now amount to 550,000. Of these new immigrants, 270,000 are eligible voters, half of whom are originally from China; the others are mainly from Vietnam and Indonesia.

In the 2016 election a naturalized Taiwanese citizen of Cambodian descent, Lin Li-chan (林麗蟬), won a seat in the Legislative Yuan through as a party list candidate, becoming the very first legislator who migrated to Taiwan through marriage. Having the first and only new immigrant legislator on its side, the KMT has over the past four years presented itself as the legitimate representative of the growing community of settled migrants and their children.    [FULL  STORY]