Illegal immigration disrupts Taiwan’s economic shift away from China and towards Southeast Asia
- Policy to expand economic reach and reduce dependence on China runs into teething problems as tourism, trade and tuition numbers soar but so do visa violations
- Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen introduced the New Southbound Policy in 2016
Nearly 2,000 visitors have violated Taiwan’s immigration rules since they were relaxed three years ago to boost the self-ruled island’s slow moving economy and reduce its reliance on mainland China.
Tourists have been pouring in from South and Southeast Asia in response to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s New Southbound Policy, introduced in 2016, to shift her island’s economic weight to those regions.
Enrolment by Southeast Asian students at Taiwanese universities is shooting up, too, and trade with 18 policy-targeted countries grew more than 15 per cent in 2017.
But a surge in visa violations is challenging officials to bolster immigration controls without disrupting trade inflows, tourism or tuition.
The case of Taiwan’s missing Vietnamese tourists: honest error or human trafficking?
In all, 1,950 visitors from 18 countries covered by the policy went missing in Taiwan between August 2016 and March last year, the legislature’s budget office said in December. Hundreds of university students have also turned to illegal jobs, according to a legislator and local media reports.
“In a sense this is part of the price of doing business, in this case seeking more people-to-people engagement with countries that generally have a lower quality of life than Taiwan,” said Denny Roy, senior fellow at the East-West Centre think tank in Honolulu.