Empty promises for immigrants
By Lorna Kung 龔尤倩
As next Saturday’s elections draw nearer, candidates from the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are
busy trying to secure additional support. They are either going around
electioneering or attacking their opponents to get more media exposure.
At times like these, politicians — be they pan-blue or pan-green —
suddenly start paying a lot of attention to new immigrants who are
voting for the first time.
Now, all three presidential candidates
are saying they are “Hakka” and visiting Aboriginal villages, donning
traditional Aboriginal clothing and pretending they are Aborigines — all
in an attempt to gain votes. It would probably be safe to predict that
when the next presidential election comes around, the candidates will
all be referring to themselves as “new immigrants.” That is actually
right, because the only distinction that can be made between people
living in Taiwan is who got here a bit earlier and who got here a bit
later. We are all immigrants in a sense. The problem is politicians do
not realize this most of the time, but come election time, every
presidential candidate suddenly develops an interest in “genealogy.”
This is nothing but a trick to get people to vote for them.
The
450,000 spouses from China and Southeast Asia in Taiwan are in a
minority, accounting for 2 percent of the population. Of these, 190,000
have already obtained citizenship and the right to vote. If they all
voted for the same person, they could easily elect a legislator of their
own choice. Unfortunately, there are no quotas for new immigrants and
the election system distributes them across different areas, eroding
their potential voting power. Like many other disadvantaged groups, they
only get any attention at election time.
Tsai’s election slogan reads: “Thank you, Taiwan,” while Ma keeps
talking about respecting cultural diversity. However, neither Tsai nor
Ma has come up with a concrete response to the discrimination
experienced by Chinese spouses and Southeast Asian women in their daily
lives.
