VZCZCXRO3031
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHNH
DE RUEHIN #0738/01 0680550
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 090550Z MAR 06
FM AIT TAIPEI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8946
INFO RUEHHI/AMEMBASSY HANOI 3036
RUEHHM/AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY 0035
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 4823
RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TAIPEI 000738 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/RSP/TC, INR/EAP 
DEPT PASS AIT/WASHINGTON 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM AIT KAOHSIUNG BRANCH OFFICE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM SOCI VM TW
SUBJECT: Vietnamese Brides in Southern Taiwan - 
Increasingly a "Social Problem" 
 
REF:  A)  HO CHI MINH CITY 01299   B) TAIPEI 3233 
 
TAIPEI 00000738  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1.  Summary.  Foreign brides, and their social and 
educational problems have once more captured considerable 
attention in the wake of late 2005 news coverage of a 
group of Vietnamese women entering Taiwan (ref A) via 
marriage documents for the actual purpose of 
prostitution.  While a few Vietnamese women have admitted 
that they were brought to Taiwan as "brides" to disguise 
their intent to work in the sex trade, others claim they 
came legitimately as brides and only later abandoned 
their Taiwan husbands and children to engage in sex work. 
Citizens in Southern Taiwan believe the continuing influx 
of foreign brides (in particular those from Southeast 
Asian countries) is lowering the average educational and 
social level of the Taiwan population and that these 
foreign brides will, to a certain degree, create learning 
and social impediments for their own children. They may 
also create a new political force in local politics to 
defend their interests. End summary. 
 
¶2.  On the December 23, 2005, Apple Daily reported Police 
Administration statistics that show by November 2005 
nearly 16,000 Southeast Asian women, two-thirds of whom 
were Vietnamese citizens, disappeared after entering 
Taiwan for the purpose of marriage.  The report claimed 
ten thousand of these women possibly were controlled by a 
local foreign bride broker but were sent on to work in 
the sex industry in almost all places on Taiwan except 
Yilan County, Tainan County, and Taitung County.  In a 
separate report, the same paper reported that a 22 year 
old Vietnamese woman, who has been in Taiwan for over one 
year, left her Taiwan husband after three months and 
became a prostitute in Taipei County. 
 
¶3.  According to Foreign Affairs police in Kaohsiung 
County, an estimated 20,000 Vietnamese women currently 
make their homes in southern Taiwan's Chiayi, Tainan, 
Kaohsiung, Pingtung, Taitung, and Penghu counties. These 
Vietnamese brides mainly come from poor families in 
Vietnam's southwestern regions.  They have chosen 
marriage to Taiwanese men as a way to escape poverty. 
Most of them marry through matchmakers or intermediaries 
and have little chance to get to know their husbands or 
their future families before they agree to marry a 
Taiwanese husband, who often may be advanced in age or 
even infirm. 
 
¶4.  Most Taiwan men marrying Southeast Asian women also 
come from lower socioeconomic classes (ref B).   The 
foreign brides are frustrated that they are "used" by 
their husbands and the in-law families as an all-in-one 
solution.  In addition to being a wife, they are a 
housekeeper, nurse to the aged in-laws, cheap labor in 
the family business, child-bearing machine, and caregiver 
for offspring.  In some cases, they have to also work 
outside the home.  However, due to lack of work and 
language skills, the foreign brides can take only 
marginal jobs that pay minimal wages (in Southern Taiwan 
this primarily translates into wrapping betel nut).  When 
they realize their illusions of marrying into a better 
life are shattered, some of them choose to leave their 
husbands and children to enter the sex trade to earn more 
substantial sums of money. 
They then discover that, in the case of divorce, Taiwan's 
current legal regulations disadvantage foreign spouses. 
Courts in Taiwan usually give custody of the children to 
the father, usually reviewing educational and financial 
prospects of the children to decide.  As a result, 
Vietnamese mothers who leave Taiwan or abandon their 
husbands almost always lose their children. 
 
¶5.  The extent of the foreign bride issue recently 
shocked a rural mountain village in Nanhua Town, Tainan 
County.  The town's household registry office recently 
announced that over 35 percent of its residents' new 2004 
marriages involved a foreign bride, while the divorce 
rate of these "migration marriages" was a historically 
high of nearly 19 percent.  These figures were both 
higher than the County's official record of the average 
annual 15.5 percent of new marriage with foreign spouses 
and annual 5.1 percent of divorce rate.  County police 
and household affairs officials, however, suspect that 
the figures do not reflect the real dimensions of the 
 
TAIPEI 00000738  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
problem.  Instead, they estimate that the divorce rate in 
the County would be even higher if many Taiwan parties to 
these arranged marriages were not too reluctant or 
ashamed to initiate formal divorce proceedings based on 
grounds of abandonment by a foreign-born spouse.  As 
divorce proceedings often end in the deportation of the 
foreign spouse, many of the women simply choose to 
abscond and not go through a divorce. 
 
¶6.  Tainan County, a leading agricultural area in 
Southern Taiwan, in 2004 announced over 9,000 newborns in 
the County, with one seventh of the newborns born to 
foreign mothers.   The County also announced that nearly 
2,000 "new Taiwanese" (ref B) have enrolled in public 
schools this year.  These enrollments are expected to 
increase in the following semesters.  An official of the 
County's Education Bureau admitted that the increasing 
enrollment of these "new Taiwanese" has begun to strain 
severely the County's educational resources.  As has 
happened in other places in Taiwan, school teachers in 
the County have to arrange additional courses for these 
students since they were found to be comparatively slow 
learners, possibly due to the limited language skills or 
educational background of the mother. 
 
¶7.  According to Chen Kui-ying, Section Chief of the 
Social Affairs Bureau in Kaohsiung City, the Executive 
Yuan has set aside approximately USD 40 million over the 
next ten years for assistance activities associated with 
foreign brides.  In Kaohsiung City, Chen said, that a 
special task force consisting of officials from the 
Bureaus of Social Affairs, Education, Civil Affairs, 
Cultural Affairs, the Police Administration, and the 
Information Department, has been organized to develop 
programs to help the foreign brides learn Chinese  and 
better integrate into the society.  In addition, Chen 
went on to say that the City Government also has offered 
a subsidy of over USD 220,000 annually each to several 
major social organizations, including the Eden Social 
Welfare Foundation and the Kaohsiung Branch of Taiwan 
Fund for Children and Families to support the integration 
of these women into local society. 
 
¶8.  Hsu Shu-jong, a teacher of the community university 
in Fengshan in Kaohsiung County, who is also an active 
volunteer of NAFIA, an NGO devoted to human-care issues, 
has long devoted herself to helping minorities, including 
the foreign brides in town.  She confirmed the government 
has become more willing to concern itself over the lives 
and futures of migrated spouses.  Hsu, however, opined 
that the government's distribution of financial aid has 
been less appropriate and applies only to the activities 
that meet the government's strict criteria for 
assistance. (e.g. sheltering from domestic violence, 
Mandarin training, and legal aid).  Hsu went on to say 
that the government needs to institute appropriate 
regulations to govern the actual migration of these women 
into Taiwan and, at least, stop the illegal labor and 
marriage brokers.  (Note: According to a December 29, 
2005, Taipei Times articles, the proposed amendments to 
the Immigration Law currently are under review in 
Taiwan's Legislative Yuan.  One KMT lawmaker on the LY's 
Home and Nations Committee has suggested that all 
advertisements and commercials for marriage brokers 
should be banned. End note.)  Since immigration into 
Taiwan will become more and more common, she noted, the 
government and the entire society need to develop an 
active and efficient strategy to transform the burdens it 
now perceives accompany these migrations into a positive 
influx of labor into the work force. 
 
¶9.  The Foreign Affairs Police (FAP) in Taitung were 
quick to point out that the actual level of domestic 
violence in the arranged marriages of Vietnamese women to 
men in Taitung is half the rate of local Taiwan-Taiwan 
marriages.  Taitung's FAP officer devoted to domestic 
violence issues says the shelters for abused women take 
in Vietnamese spouses readily, without prejudice. 
However, the Taitung Foreign Affairs Police noted that 
demographic trends over the next few years are likely to 
cause the Taiwan central government to pay far more 
serious attention to these foreign brides.  Of primary 
concern in Taitung is that strong networks forming among 
Vietnamese brides will lead them to organize voting blocs 
 
TAIPEI 00000738  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
that eventually will influence local politics around the 
island.  Currently, these networks function only to 
shelter and protect abused women and/or to provide 
informal counseling on how to extract women from a bad 
situation. 
 
¶10.   Below are figures provided by local Foreign Affairs 
Police of numbers of the foreign brides coming from 1) 
Vietnam, and 2) other Southeast Asian Countries, e.g. 
Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, who currently reside in 
Southern Taiwan in 2005: 
Area        Vietnamese Brides   Brides from other SEA 
Countries 
Chiayi         3055                  3789 
Tainan         4783                  5869 
Kaohsiung       6990                  8882 
Pingtung        3416                  4518 
Taitung          668                  879 
Penghu          600                  800 
---------------------------------------- 
Total          19512                  24737 
 
¶11.  Comment.  Social and cultural pressure on Vietnamese 
brides in Southern Taiwan is enormous as they try to fit 
into a society that sees them, in the media and 
privately, as a problem.  Government attempts in southern 
Taiwan to integrate them effectively are only beginning 
to address some of the issues these women face in 
entering and living in a foreign area.  Ongoing 
discussions on revising the immigration law hopefully 
will include clauses that expand and protect the rights 
of foreign spouses.  However, it does not seem yet that 
the government intends to focus any of its programs at 
educating Taiwanese on diversity or multi-cultural issues 
as they relate to Vietnamese brides.  End comment. 
 
Thiele 
 
Keegan