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TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — The Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association on Feb. 16 signed a memorandum of understanding on labor cooperation, paving the way for blue-collar workers to join the Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indonesians, and Thai already employed in Taiwan.
The deal comes as Taiwan seeks to hire more Indian workers to address labor shortages in the manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and fishery industries. The number of immigrants and the industries or social care job types they will fill will be determined by the Taiwan side.
They will be needed, but it is not just blue-collar workers that could provide mutual benefit to Taiwan. India educates vast numbers of engineers and technically skilled workers that are in short supply.
Even better would be to welcome them to study here. Taiwan’s universities are shrinking along with the birth rate and need more students, and this would be a good way to prepare them to join the workforce in Taiwan companies.
This is already the case with other countries’ citizens, especially Filipinos. Here in Taichung, it is not uncommon to meet Filipino students or engineers working in the Central Taiwan Science Park.
Community building
Opening up as a host country for international labor requires taking the right steps to ensure they feel welcome. It can not be rushed.
As of the end of last year, there were only 5,320 Indian residents in Taiwan, of whom around 3000 are students. That is relatively small compared to the total of 851,932 foreign residents in Taiwan at the end of 2023.
In Taichung alone, there are hundreds of small businesses that cater to Filipinos, Indonesians, Vietnamese, and Thai in central Taiwan. Near the train station in and around ASEAN Plaza, there are restaurants, nightclubs, KTVs, and shops for imported products from their home countries as well as many services, from barber shops, tailoring, and electronic repair among others.
On the weekends the neighborhood is buzzing with activity as people flock in from all over central Taiwan to meet up, socialize, and shop. Taichung operates a services office and offers language classes there.
There are associations and activities for people from specific regions of these countries and vast online and offline social networks. Many churches now offer services in Tagalog and Vietnamese and Muslim prayer rooms are becoming a more common site.
Having these thriving communities makes welcoming and integrating people from those countries easier and more pleasant for new arrivals, while also opening plenty of entrepreneurial opportunities for those who have been in Taiwan longer.
Initial reports that 100,000 Indians were to be brought in turned out to be false. The government initially plans to welcome a small number and grow from there.
That is the right way to go. It will take time to develop the welcoming communities that already exist for those from Southeast Asia, prepare enough housing, and prepare social and community needs for them.
Some of this infrastructure is in place, just not very much. On Google, four Hindu Temples are listed, but all are in Taipei.
There are Indian restaurants, but they largely cater to an upscale Taiwanese audience. The Facebook group Indians in Taiwan is active and a good resource for the community and various festivals and activities that are celebrated by the Indian community here.
Growing this community will make it easier to welcome increasing numbers going forward. Some day it may be as large as the Vietnamese and Indonesian communities, which both number over a quarter of a million.
Countering racism
Every time Taiwan has opened up to a new nationality racist stereotypes make the rounds among a segment of the population and every time they have been proven wrong. No crime wave materialized and National Police Agency data showed that last year the crime rate among migrant workers was 59.46 cases per 100,000 people, lower than the 114.12 per 100,000 among Taiwanese.
Taiwanese pets have not ended up in cooking pots. Indonesians have not brought Islamic terrorism, the only acts of terror committed here have been domestic.
When the later proven false news that 100,000 Indians would be arriving, once again racist stereotypes reared their head. As reported in Taiwan News at the time, some Taiwanese netizens on Dcard, a platform popular among young people, argued that Indian men would endanger society and put women’s safety at risk. They invoked stereotypes, such as Indians being “dangerous” and “dirty,” and cited “crimes against women in India.”
This sort of talk is hurtful and unwelcoming to a community that has contributed an outsized amount to Taiwan despite being relatively few in numbers. Speaking to Taiwan News at the time, Priya Lalwani Purswaney, an Indian interpreter working in Taiwan for over 30 years, described it as a feeling of “betrayal.”
Priya, who also founded the aforementioned Indians in Taiwan Facebook group, added: “How could Taiwanese people say such things? This is not the Taiwanese people we have known.”
Referencing the “dangerous” trope, she said, “India is a huge country. It is 91 times the size of Taiwan. It has the biggest population in the world. If every country has 1% of the population that’s bad, in Taiwan that may not be a big number, but in India, that’s a big number, and that is what gets carried by the media.”
Exactly right. She said many Indians have encountered discrimination, including while studying at Taiwanese schools and universities.
However, there is hope for change, as she noted, “My own children have experienced it … But if you point it out, then they understand. Usually, they are willing to change.”
Government is right and wrong
Priya’s point about the need for education to counter ignorance is spot on. The government is being proactive on this, but does not always get it right.
The foreign ministry denounced the online denigrations as “scaremongering.” However, they then tried to pin the blame on Chinese misinformation.
That may have been partially true, but that does not explain why Taiwanese shared and spread the content. It is also disingenuous as in the past when immigration was opened to new countries there was a similar response among some Taiwanese that was not Chinese misinformation.
There have been headlines recently about various government officials making statements denouncing this. Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said, “Many countries have faith in Indian workers” and called on people of conscience not to “stigmatize” them.
Another official said an Indian worker’s “inner essence is stable,” which is a curious thing to say. The foreign ministry lamented that this discriminatory talk “damaged Taiwan’s image” and called on people to “unite to resist spreading rumors and false and fake news.”
It would have been preferable if the foreign ministry had led with the fact that it was morally wrong before worrying about “Taiwan’s image,” but it does point to a problem. As the founder of India’s first university Taiwan studies program Manoj Kumar Panigrahi points out, all this racist talk could add “speed breakers” to the Taiwan-India relationship. Taiwanese racism has made headlines in India.
Welcoming
Hopefully when more Indians do arrive Taiwanese will welcome them with friendliness and warmth. There will always be a certain number of people in any country that will be resentful of outsiders, but the majority of Taiwanese today are used to the immigrants that have already arrived.
My Indian friends and acquaintances have contributed a lot to Taiwan, and look forward to more arriving to further enrich Taiwan.
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