Foreign residents in Taiwan & the right to dual citizenship

an interview with one of the lawyers behind the petition

Before I dive into this, a strong word of caution: I am not a legal expert, nor have I compared or looked into naturalization or immigration laws between different countries. The following piece is just a cursory glance at what will undoubtedly become a very complicated piece of legislation—if it even gets that far.

I also want to avoid leaning too much into whataboutisms. I am aware that many other neighboring countries, like Japan or Korea, also do not allow dual nationality. But this isn’t about those other countries. It’s about what Taiwan stands to gain if it decided to integrate its foreign population, and what it might lose.

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I am a Taiwanese citizen married to a foreign national, and over the years, I’ve seen how difficult it is for non-Taiwanese citizens to get anything done in this country. I basically have to co-sign mostly anything my husband does. Which is annoying, because I have enough on my plate.

Signing up for a joint phone plan? The staff laughs at us condescendingly and says to just put my name on it because my husband is just a foreigner.

Signing up for anything with his identity number? An error message because foreigners don’t really “count.”

For my American readers: it’s the equivalent of getting a social security number as a green card holder…that doesn’t work most of the time. And a number that changes every time you renew your residence permit. When that number changes, sometimes the services linked to the old number gets disabled and you have to manually reactivate everything. As I’m writing this, I actually just got a call informing me that I should tell my husband to go to the bank to update his identity card number.

The nitty gritty is boring. But trust me when I say being a foreign national in Taiwan is a maddening Kafkaesque bureaucratic process rooted in inefficiency.

Perhaps the social security metaphor isn’t that great because we don’t actually use our social security in the States on a day-to-day basis. In Taiwan, our ID number is used for everything. From the mundane: signing up for events, getting a library card, to really important things: hospital queues and government subsidies.

So I was delighted to see this petition go around this summer: a path forward for foreign nationals to become citizens without having to renounce their original nationalities.

In Taiwan, foreign nationals can become citizens, so long as they give up their original nationalities. Which you can imagine, is not a very attractive prospect for many folks who either have a nostalgic attachment to their homes, or are hesitant to forfeit the practical benefits and protections their original citizenship provides.

Again, I am not an expert, so I called up Michael Fahey, a Californian lawyer and long-time Taiwanese resident by way of the Bay Area, and asked him some questions about the petition, which he helped put together.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Clarissa Wei (CW): What is the historical background of the current law restricting foreigners from obtaining dual citizenship?

Michael Fahey (MF): In the early 20th century, when countries started having nationality laws and passports after World War I, the main model was for a country to be ethno-nationalist: One blood. One language. One people. Italy and Germany were like this. Japan (editor’s note: of which Taiwan was a colony during this period) copied Germany’s system, and the Republic of China did too because the whole project was to turn China into a nation-state founded on one blood, one people, one culture.

CW: What are some misconceptions people have regarding this proposal, to allow dual-nationality in Taiwan?

MF: Well, I would say that the biggest misunderstanding is that this would somehow allow people from China, particularly PRC spouses to become citizens more easily. And the answer to that is that the law that we’re proposing, to change the Nationality Act, is totally different from the law which governs people from the PRC and Hong Kong. They are governed by totally different laws so this has no effect on them.

There are also people who say things like, “You know I couldn’t get citizenship in another country, so why should we give citizenship to others?”

CW: Right, but even in many other countries, even if you’re not a citizen and just a legal resident, you are still able to sign up for most services without any issues. Your identity number doesn’t inhibit you from functioning in society.

MF: I’ve been a permanent resident for 20 years and the government keeps saying that they’re going to fix this and fix that. It’s just not happening. And I don’t think it ever will. And the reason that will never happen is because everything in Taiwan is based on having a household registration. And [non-citizens] don’t have household registration.

My understanding is that some countries, like Germany, give their permanent residents some kind of quasi-household registration that entitles them to everything. But I just don’t see any change on that front ever coming [in Taiwan].

CW: So without a household registration, what are some things that you just can’t get?

MF: Honestly I’m not particularly inconvenienced, but I do have an annoyance that comes up every few months. I’ve had a credit card with a bank for 25 years. One day, the digital chip was scratched and it wouldn’t work. When I went in, they came back and said, you’re going to need a guarantor now because you’re a foreigner. We have a new policy.

CW: I suppose that’s the issue. Unless you have a Taiwanese guarantor, foreign residents—even permanent ones—can’t get basic things done.

MF: Yeah, you have workarounds. Like my friend, who wanted to buy a Gogoro? His girlfriend ended up buying it for him. But not everybody has a spouse or a partner or whatever. So for some people, it’s really a problem.

It’s just annoying. I pay taxes. Why can’t I get a government subsidy?

There was also this British guy who was disabled. He was dying and his Taiwanese wife that was caring for him couldn’t get a disabled card. She couldn’t park in a convenient place in the hospital. They did get the benefits eventually but he passed away soon after.

CW: You said this law doesn’t apply positively or negatively to Chinese people. Can you elaborate?

MF: Basically we’re talking about PRC spouses because they’re basically the only Chinese citizens  who are permitted to reside in Taiwan these days. They don’t go through naturalization. They are permitted to reside in Taiwan. I guess the assumption behind that is that they’re already Republic of China nationals. They get a special status. They apply for residence, then they get a residence card. After they’ve been here for six years, then they can apply for long-term residence. After that, they can apply to settle. And once they have settled, then they can go to the household registration office and apply for household registration. Then they can go and apply for a passport and vote.

CW: Oh. So what you’re saying is that PRC nationals have more rights than a foreign permanent resident who has been in Taiwan for 20 years.

MF: Yes. But they have to give up their household registration in China. My understanding is that they get it back, although that’s not always the case for desirable household registration in Shanghai and Beijing. It’s very complicated. They are neither ROC citizens, nor are they foreigners.

CW: But also to clarify, it’s not like PRC nationals can just drop into Taiwan.

MF: Basically, the only way they can live in Taiwan is through marriage.

CW: As you know, the process of becoming a foreign resident in Taiwan is fairly easy—at least compared to countries like the U.S. Do you see any value in making the path to Taiwanese citizenship more challenging, perhaps by adding requirements like a language test?

MF: Yeah so what we’re proposing is that you would reside in Taiwan for five years on an ARC, then you would get permanent residence. Then you would need to reside for another continuous five years, for a total of ten years of residence. When you do the permanent residence, you do a criminal and financial record check. Then you do it again when you naturalize. Part of naturalization is passing good moral character. There’s also a citizenship test, but these tests are currently pretty easy, I would personally argue that I think they should be a bit harder.

It’s important to realize that there are restrictions on us politically too, because you can’t run for office until you’ve been a citizen for ten years. You can vote, but you can’t run for office. There are also many jobs in government that dual nationals cannot hold.

CW: Restrictions apply to people like me. I hold both Taiwanese and American citizenship, but my Taiwanese citizenship was granted based on my family background.

MF: In general, most public sector service jobs are closed to you. You can’t be a legislator, or a city councilor. Or a member of the professional volunteer military.

CW: I’ve seen a lot of people compare Taiwan to its East Asian neighbors. Like Japan and Korea. They don’t allow this; why should Taiwan?

MF: Korea and Japan are important reference points whenever Taiwan does something. Both Korea and Japan are much more conservative and less liberal than Taiwan is. Even Korea has now loosened up on this a bit for spouses. Japan, well, they’re just the ultimate conservatives.

There are a lot of people in Taiwan whose image of Taiwan’s future is something like Japan. But is that really where we want to go? Japan doesn’t allow same-sex marriage. It’s way more conservative about women’s rights.

CW: It also seems like the Taiwanese government is really trying to sell the image of Taiwan being a diverse society. At the inauguration banquet this year, the theme was all about this diversity.

MF: The government does push diversity as a value. Whether or not people are on board with that is another question. I don’t think we can assume, the way that we might in California, that most people in society accept as a sort of axiomatic first principle, that diversity is good in and of itself.

What the government is really talking about is Taiwan’s internal diversity. Hakka. Indigenous.

CW: Southeast Asians?

MF: Because of the traditional patriarchal view that a woman becomes a part of her new family, there’s this perception that when a marriage immigrant comes in, they’re magically transformed into becoming Taiwanese.

CW: Right.

MF: But the most important argument is that of demographics. Taiwan’s population is irreversibly in decline. According to 2022 projections, Taiwan is going to have between 15 to 17 million people in 2070, and the median age is going to be 58. There will not be enough tax paying workers in Taiwan to support or care for these people.

We already see shortages in the workforce everywhere. There are not enough bus drivers, not enough people to clean hotel rooms. Restaurants are short-staffed. Taipower says it needs people to hang transmission lines. That’s why there are so many older people working at 7-11 now.

What Taiwan is doing is similar to what Japan has been doing, which is practicing stealth immigration. They’re letting people like me come in here and become permanent residents.

CW: What do you mean by stealth immigration?

MF: There are now over 820,000 migrant workers and former migrant workers. Migrant workers can now be reclassified. After five years, they can become permanent residents. That's very similar to what Japan is doing. You’re not telling people there are a lot more foreigners, but of course you can see it everywhere.

It’s just kind of like, “Don’t worry. They’re not citizens. Maybe they’ll be here for a long time, but just don’t worry about it.”

Is it really in Taiwan’s interest to create a multi-generational community of permanent residents who are permanently disenfranchised and not integrated into society? That’s the kind of approach that has gotten Europe into trouble.

CW: Final question. You guys have gotten enough signatures for the petition to go through. What’s next?

MF: It will be forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior. I’m pretty sure they’re going to say hell no. They have a long-standing policy of single nationality with very limited exceptions, and say that there are national security issues with dual citizens. And that Taiwan is a small place with limited space.

So we have to go to the legislators and talk to them. Now that they know people are interested, especially with 5,000 signatures, we have shown that there is something there.  In today’s Taiwan, if you want to get anything done, you have to put out a digital petition on the government’s platform. It’s a first legitimizing step.