|
Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Hong Phuong was hoping to find answers when she decided to marry a Taiwanese man four years ago.
"I wanted to look for my elder sister's ex-husband in Taiwan and ask him why he treated her that way," she said.
Her sister was sent back to Vietnam with her son after her marriage ended in divorce.
Fortunately, life in Taiwan has turned out better for her. The 24-year-old married a Taiwanese man two years her senior whom she had known for less than two weeks through a matchmaking agency.
She is among Taiwan's growing number of spouses from mainland China and other regions, especially Southeast Asia, who are gradually changing the ethnic make-up of the largely homogeneous society.
Such marriages, which began in the late 1990s, has become a common trend in recent years.
Last year, one in six marriages in Taiwan involved a spouse from outside the island. Although these women currently comprise less than 2% of the island's population of 23 million, the trend has a far more profound impact on Taiwan's demographics.
In 1998, the offspring of such spouses--dubbed the "new children of Taiwan"--accounted for one in 20 babies born that year. Last year, the ratio had more than doubled to one in nine newborns.
The trend has caught the attention of the Taiwanese government. Earlier this year, it took the long overdue move of setting up a National Immigration Agency to streamline immigration and visa related operations.
In the past, new immigrants had to shuttle between different government departments for the necessary documents and assistance.
The government had announced in 2005 that it would allocate NTD3bn (USD90.57m) over 10 years to cater to the needs of these new immigrants.
The Taipei City New Immigrants' Hall, which offers programmes such as Mandarin lessons and vocational training for non-Chinese spouses, is one such initiative.
The government also offers funding to civil groups such as the Pearl S Buck Foundation in Taiwan, which operates helplines in different languages.
But non-Taiwanese spouses have urged the government to do more, such as shortening the waiting time for citizenship and calling for laws offering them more protection.
Southeast Asian spouses are required to stay in Taiwan for four years before they are eligible for citizenship. Mainland spouses, however, have to wait for eight years because of Taiwan's political tension with China.
"Taiwan currently does not have a permanent residence scheme that grants overseas spouses certain rights before they are formally granted citizenship," said Professor Hsia Hsiao-chuan of Shih Hsin University.
But a greater worry they face is the bias against such spouses, who are seen as inferior by some Taiwanese. They are sometimes perceived as "mail-order brides" who tend to marry Taiwanese men from the lower socio-economic strata.
A 2004 survey conducted by the Academia Sinica, a leading Taiwanese research institute, showed that some 80% of Taiwanese expected the government to restrict the granting of citizenship to foreign spouses.
"Most Taiwanese, except the aborigines, were descendents of immigrants to this island. But Taiwan does not see itself as an immigrant society, and there appears to be a general bias against foreigners," Prof Hsia told The Straits Times.
She is a founding member of the TransAsia Sisters Association, which offers help to Southeast Asian spouses.
What worries the overseas spouses more is that their children could suffer the same bias.
For instance, Vice-Education Minister Chou Tsan-der said in 2004 that "foreign brides should not have so many children," hinting that these children were inferior.
| 
