The Ministry of the Interior has failed to propose response measures effective
against this problem, and it has ignored the serious shortage and unbalanced
allocation of dedicated personnel in the Immigration Agency, to the point that
the problem of the increasing number of untraceable runaway migrant workers
has become more serious. An outcome of this is that the original employers
may fall short of manpower, and the foreign worker caregivers may become
unavailable to elderly who depend on them. Migrant workers working illegally
can also affect the order of the entire labor market and the native nationals’
interest and rights in employment. These runaway migrant workers can
themselves further be easily targeted as the objects of human trafficking or
transported for labor exploitation. After investigation and continuing followup by the Control Yuan, the Ministry of Labor proposed draft amendments to
the Employment Service Act, so that offenders illegally permitting foreign
workers to stay in their employment, or those acting as brokers for or retaining
illegal foreign workers, may be fined repeatedly, and that the fines and
criminal liability levied against agents illegally brokering foreign workers will
be accrued.
29.
Several Vietnamese domestic caregivers, while waiting to be transferred to
new employers, were suspected of having been assigned by their employment
broker to work for illegal employers and they suffered mistreatment at that
workplace. They were subjected to labor exploitation, and some were forced
by the broker to go to hospital due to physical and mental exhaustion. The
Control Yuan made an investigation and mandated a response by the Ministry
of Labor. If any migrant worker now is identified as a victim of human
trafficking by the judicial police authority, the Ministry of Labor will
temporarily blacklist in its information system the employer, the employer’s
legal representative, or the person recruiting labor on behalf of the employer;
i.e. they will not be permitted to obtain more migrant workers. In the case of
domestic caregivers, the person needing home care and other co-living
relatives will be likewise registered in the system for restriction. This will
apply unless the employer obtains a decision not to prosecute or a not-guilty
ruling rendered by the court. All the same, the Ministry of Labor will strictly
examine any applications filed by the said persons on a case by case basis.
30.
To address the problem of schools admitting foreign students to Taiwan via a
broker with the actual intent of engaging them in part-time work as interns for
manufacturers, the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Education should
enhance their lateral communication, and work more closely to improve the
inspection mechanism. This should prevent schools from operating through
unscrupulous brokers to recruit foreign students in the name of studying in
Taiwan, while actually making them do physical work, even long hours as
cheap labor. A reputation of “physical work in the disguise of internship”
would damage Taiwan’s international image in higher education. After
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