Wendy, a 50-year-old Hongkonger who recently immigrated to Taiwan, is sitting in her new home in Taiwan, a flat that is three times as big as her old place in Hong Kong, as she watches a TV news report about five Hong Kong people who were recently rescued by Taiwan’s Coast Guard from a boat adrift in the sea.

“Thank God I applied for immigration in March of 2018,” she says gravely. Back then, Wendy heard rumors that the Taiwanese government was planning to raise the minimum amount of NT$6 million that Hong Kong citizens must invest in Taiwan to obtain investor immigrant status. Acting quickly, she contacted an immigration consulting firm for assistance with the paperwork.

Ben, a thirty-something who has been in a steady relationship with his Taiwanese girlfriend for five years, is less lucky.

Ben, a photographer, was planning to take advantage of a temporary job in Taiwan to apply for a business visa at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong, which handles visa affairs as Taiwan’s representative office in the former British territory. He and his girlfriend would then register their marriage in Taiwan. But after several trips to the visa office, Ben has not yet made it beyond the long queues to actually hand in an application.

“An office clerk told me right away that Taiwan is very strict now, and that I had better not go to Taiwan unless it is absolutely necessary,” says Ben.

After visiting the visa office several times yet failing to gain an appointment to determine whether he was entitled to a business visa, Ben tried to make an appointment online, waiting in front of his computer screen every morning minutes before the system opens at 9 a.m. Yet each time, the web server was overloaded, making it impossible to enter the appointment system.

Ben’s conundrum illustrates the dilemma in which the Taiwanese government finds itself. On the one hand, it voices vocal support for Hong Kong freedoms and its willingness to help, but on the other hand it lacks the resources to follow through.

Between January and August this year, 4,596 Hong Kong citizens, more than twice as many as during the same period the previous year, took up residence in Taiwan, according to National Immigration Agency (NIA) statistics. This means they have applied for a stay longer than six months, with some looking to stay in Taiwan for good. Many more are actually hoping to relocate to Taiwan and obtain permanent residency.

 
The number of Hongkongers who became permanent residents of Taiwan (meaning they have settled in Taiwan and established a household register here) between January and August this year has increased 16.15 percent over the same period last year. But many more are waiting to get the green light from the Taiwanese government before they can take this step.

Reason No. 1: Tense cross-strait relations and understaffed Taiwanese representative office

Increasing hostility between Taiwan and China is one of the reasons why gaining temporary or permanent residency in Taiwan has become more difficult for Hong Kong citizens.

Due to the deterioration in relations with Beijing, the directors of four of five divisions at the representative office were forced to leave Hong Kong after their visas expired. Presently, only the director of the economic division, Ni Bo-chia, who took up his post when Ma Ying-jeou was president, continues his work. So far, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) has not been willing to issue visas to officials appointed by the incumbent government of President Tsai Ing-wen, who has been critical of China.

It is not that only senior staff positions are vacant. Lower-level officials face the same conundrum, which means that the office is severely understaffed and unable to handle the rising interest in immigration to Taiwan.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown another spanner into the works of Hong Kong’s government machinery. 

Hong Kong citizens now need to make appointments one month in advance when applying for a police clearance certificate and other official documents needed for immigration to Taiwan. And, after China adopted a new national security law for Hong Kong in June, triggering concern over the curtailing of civil liberties, the workload for Taiwan’s representative office has become even heavier.

Huang Ling-yu, head of the NIA’s Immigration Affairs Division, notes that all the NIA, the Mainland Affairs Council and the representative office in Hong Kong can do is work overtime.

While there are voices advocating that Taiwan take a more proactive approach in dealing with immigration from Hong Kong, a party politician who did not want to be named explains, “This is the Tsai government’s dilemma.” There is concern that demonstrative, wide-ranging “support for Hong Kong” would cause the number of immigration hopefuls from Hong Kong to skyrocket. 

An exodus from Hong Kong to Taiwan would probably imperil Hong Kong-based Taiwanese officials and private citizens in China who assist immigration hopefuls because they could be charged with “collusion with foreign forces” under the National Security Law.

Reason No. 2: Taiwan adjusts policy, handpicks Hong Kong immigrants

At the same time, Taiwan is adjusting its immigration policy from a quantity-oriented to a quality-oriented approach. The ideal immigrant has a professional background in the finance or technology sectors. In contrast, people who want to try their luck in Taiwan with small retail businesses are not as sought-after anymore.

This March, a new planning document appeared on the website of the Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs regarding the prerequisites for investors from Hong Kong and Macao to be granted residency; it showed that the requirements had been tightened. Investment immigrants from Hong Kong needed to successfully run a company for at least three years instead of just one year. On top of that, a new requirement for at least two locally hired employees had been added.

The posting triggered an outcry among Hong Kong citizens who were planning to apply for immigration to Taiwan as investors. In the end, the Ministry was forced to take the document down within one day.

“The Taiwanese government will still tighten the conditions for investor immigrants from Hong Kong,” predicts Shi Pei-hsin, general manager of the Taiwan branch of Uni Immigration Consultancy Ltd. 

Shi, who has assisted more than 300 Hong Kong citizens with immigration paperwork, and has an investor immigrant client who filed an application in October last year. Although the client has no links to China’s political or military apparatus, the application has still not been approved.

Shi was so perplexed about the case that she spent several months investigating it. Eventually she found out that the client has applied to run a small apparel retail business in Taiwan. 

“When they (the Investment Commission) think that you have nothing special to offer, the review process is very slow, probably because they think that Taiwan has enough such businesses.”

Amendments to Taiwan’s Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals, which are expected to be sent to the Executive Yuan for review in November, offer a glimpse at what kind of Hong Kong professionals the government is hoping to attract.

In the past, certain professionals needed to legally reside in Taiwan at least 183 days per year for five years in a row before they qualified for permanent residency. The current amendment would shorten this period to three years. And instead of having to stay at least 183 every year during that period, immigration hopefuls now must only prove that they stayed in Taiwan legally for a three-year average of 183 days. The NIA’s Huang says this is meant to demonstrate the Taiwanese government’s good intentions to attract Hong Kong professionals. 

Hong Kong-born Lee San-tsai, who runs a school for Southeast Asian languages and has helped recent immigrants adjust to life in Taiwan for many years, points out that once the act is amended, graduates from 500 leading universities around the world can come directly to Taiwan to work. While this might help attract top talent from the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong, Lee also points out that fresh graduates must earn a monthly salary of at least NT$47,971 to be eligible for a residence permit. Given the low salaries for recent graduates in Taiwan, this is a tall order.

“We shouldn’t use the same yardstick for everyone. If we use an amount of NT$47,971, this will narrow the range of talent from top universities that we imagine,” notes Lee. He cites Japan as an example, where a point-based preferential immigration system is in place that allows for more flexibility. Applicants with a master’s degree or a doctorate get additional points, as do applicants who are younger than a certain threshold. “After all, youth is an asset,” says Lee.

Lee thinks that the Taiwanese government should not rule out that some highly skilled people from Hong Kong would be willing to work for lower salaries in Taiwan because they come for freedom. 

“If they have potential, are future-oriented and identify with Taiwan’s democratic and free environment, then the government should give them an opportunity to stay in Taiwan for work.”

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Have you read?
♦ Hundreds of Hongkongers Came to Observe Taiwan’s Elections: What are They Taking Home from This Experience?
♦ What Tsai Ing-wen’s Inaugural Address Told Us about Future Ties with the U.S., China
♦ Pratas Island Tensions: Could This Be War?

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Penny Chiang