After Taiwan's government rejected a petition to ease rules for foreign permanent residents to gain citizenship, campaigners pushing for the change are fighting back. TaiwanPlus speaks to David Chang, head of Crossroads, the nonprofit group behind the campaign.
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00:00The government says it won't budge on its requirement that permanent residents have to renounce their original nationality before they can become Taiwanese citizens.
00:11What is your reaction?
00:13The response that we received from the Ministry of Interior was completely expected.
00:18The way the mechanisms for the petition website work is that the agency that is executing, which is the naturalization process, which is the Ministry of Interior in this case, would be the one to respond to the petition.
00:32However, as our petition proposal and our campaign proposal centered around is about legislative reform.
00:40And overall, this is kind of out of the boundaries of the Ministry of Interior.
00:44Overall, for our campaign, we have been emphasizing how the petition is really just the first step in our campaign.
00:52It was simply a tool to formally garner and gather and present public support and attention to this issue,
01:01which in essence would also help us to more deeply engage legislators as well as other relevant government officials to really kind of start bringing this issue into the public discourse and to be into consideration.
01:17What is the crux of your campaign?
01:20Why should Taiwan be making it easier for foreigners, for permanent residents to gain citizenship?
01:26We're against the backdrop of Taiwan's population issues and demographic issues, as well as talent shortage.
01:34Taiwan really does need to be looking at options and solutions to help resolve and help counter its population loss and talent shortage.
01:47Permanent residents actually are very low hanging fruit.
01:50These are folks who've been in Taiwan for extended periods of time, many for more than decades, who've already integrated into Taiwanese society, who are contributing, paying taxes, paying into social welfare systems and have proven their loyalty to Taiwan over the years.
02:06It's time for Taiwan to really kind of integrate them officially and to close the inequalities between, you know, foreign residents and allowing them to become officially become citizens and enjoying the benefits and also paying the obligations and fulfilling the obligations as citizens in Taiwan.
02:24And as far as their children is concerned, allowing their children to also become citizens and adding to the workforce and citizen population.
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