Taiwan Readies for Indian Workers Amid Anti-Migrant Concerns
Labor-short island joins other countries facing backlash
Dogged by labor shortages and a plummeting birthrate, Taiwan recently has agreed to open its doors to up to reportedly 100,000 Indian workers despite xenophobic outbursts across social media platforms for what the islanders call “3K jobs” – dangerous, hard, and dirty. In doing so, Taiwan is joining other countries actively striving to expand the introduction of Indian labor including Germany, Italy, and France as well as countries in the Middle East. Singapore and Malaysia, both of which already have sizable Indian populations, are also on the list.But as labor force mobility increases globally with cheap transportation, increased education, growing female mobility, shifts in the global economy, amendments to international immigration policies, and socio-economic changes, protests against in-migration have become a boiling social issue, especially in Europe and the United States. Taiwan is finding out it is no different. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a UK-based think tank, said that the social and institutional challenges facing migrant workers represent a key drag on Taiwan's otherwise rosy assessment in the EIU’s Democracy Index.
Taiwan’s opening to Indian workers is not going to be warmhearted. Netizens are predicting, without foundation, that the number of sex crimes is likely to rise with the arrival of so many men from India, which has been slapped with the derogatory term "country of sexual assault.” The misgivings are despite the lack of effect that Taiwan’s existing foreign workforce of 700,000 migrant workers from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines has already had on the local crime rate. In 2022, the combined crime rate of migrant workers from these four countries was 59.46 per 10,000 people, which is about half the crime rate of the locals…
