Geoff Livingston/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
In 1989, the import of foreign workers' was legalised as a special case to satisfy labour gaps for the labour-intensive Ten Major Construction Projects. In 1992, the Employment Service Act that legalised the hiring of blue-collar international workers from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand was also put into effect. Workers were categorised under 'industrial' and 'caregiver' roles – the 'industrial' category included fishing, factory, and construction jobs while the 'caregiver' category included organisational caregiver, private nursing, and household worker roles. Taiwan has approximately 40,000 national domestic and care workers in the country, which is a small number in comparison to the 250,000 foreign workers.
Due to gaps in the social welfare system, the Taiwanese government has failed to provide a care system. In legalising the import of foreign caregivers, the government left the responsibility of long-term care to families. In addition to conveniently outsourcing the problem, the government’s management system of foreign workers has led to many human rights violations. For example, the system limits the length of time foreign workers are allowed to stay in Taiwan and workers are unable to choose or change employers at free will.
