Time for Taiwan to Get Serious About Retaining Its Top Foreign Talent

2020 brought Taiwan another four years of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who won January’s election in a landslide, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) also retained its majority in the legislature. Aside from that, Taiwan saw its economy grow by 3.38% in the final quarter of 2019, beating earlier estimates of around 3.04% growth.

According to Taiwan’s Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), the main driver behind the better than expected growth is the return of Taiwanese investors to the island, ushering back significant amounts of capital along with new employment opportunities for both local and foreign candidates.

The companies moving back their operations to Taiwan will require a significant amount of qualified labor in order to conduct a successful transfer of their operations. This is good news for job seekers both local and foreign—there may not be enough local candidates to fully meet demand, and local candidates may lack the language skills to reach South, Southeast Asian, Latin American or European markets. Taiwan could make good use of the foreign graduates that have studied in Taiwanese universities.

However, Taiwan still seems to lack a coherent strategy to retain its foreign talent. There is no doubt the government has the intention to do so—it has signaled as much on numerous occasions—but it currently lacks a consistent plan to inform possibly interested parties about changes in government policy and how to best make use of them.

For the said policies to be successfully utilized it is necessary to facilitate the right information to foreign graduates and companies. For now, it seems like neither the thousands of foreign students enrolled in Taiwan nor the companies doing business in the country are getting enough information about this topic.

If more foreign employees are to be retained in Taiwan, it is crucial to implement education campaigns in universities and presentations to companies that might be interested in hiring foreigners. Local companies would benefit from knowing the exact procedures and tools available for them to hire foreigners. In the case of foreign graduates, information on how to obtain a work permit or set up companies in the island would be well received by entrepreneurs who wish to start their business in Taiwan, along with those who wish to work for a company but do not have a clear idea of how the process goes or what documents will be necessary.

This is so important because Taiwan is missing out on capable foreign talent that has studied in its universities and could help it fight the talent imbalance caused by Taiwanese graduates choosing to work abroad, along with the country’s low birthrate. However, even though Taiwan has made a lot of changes to attract foreign employees—introducing the entrepreneur visa; the approval of the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals; extending the time that foreign graduates can remain in Taiwan on a job-seeking visa to one year—it has not found a way to effectively deliver this information to interested parties.

Quite often, foreign graduates who wish to stay in Taiwan begin their journeys with almost no information of how to do it. Many of them believe that it is hard to get a work permit; the word on the street is that Taiwanese companies have to pay more to hire a foreigner than to hire a Taiwanese employee. This is certainly the case for foreign white-collar employees who did not study in Taiwan and whom must be paid a salary no lower than NT$47,971 (US$1,575) in order to qualify to get the said permit, but this does not apply to foreign students who have graduated in Taiwan.

Those who have completed their academic programs within Taiwan are eligible to use the point system work permit option which evaluates different criteria like level of education, language and working experience among others, to give a work permit to qualified applicants. But this process must be initiated by the hiring company—a candidate cannot complete this on their own.

There is also the misconception that opening a company in Taiwan is complicated and expensive, but initiatives like the entrepreneur visa have eased the process by allowing up to three individuals to obtain an Alien Resident Certificate, or ARC, with a single application for up to one year without even setting up their company beforehand.

Companies are also affected by this lack of information. Many of them are not aware of what regulations they must abide by when hiring a foreigner, or how to apply for work permits. There is a misconception that hiring non-Taiwanese candidates who have graduated in Taiwan is a complicated process, and that their salaries must be very high, which may prevent Taiwanese companies from hiring the qualified labor they need in order to expand their business to new markets.

In reality, if a company fulfills the criteria to hire foreigners described in the Qualifications and Criteria Standards for Foreigners Act and presents the documents to prove that the employee reaches the minimum 70 points in the work permit table mentioned above, it should obtain the work permit for its foreign employees in around three weeks. Companies can even apply online through the website of the Workforce Development Agency of the Ministry of Labor. As for high salaries, the 70 point table describes a range that goes from 31,520 (10 points) to 47,971 (40 points), so it is possible for companies to hire foreigners without having to reach the latter amount.

If Taiwan’s plans to retain foreign talent are to succeed, a good and well-structured information campaign it is required to let people know exactly how they work. There are many outstanding qualified foreigners that have already integrated into Taiwanese society after studying for many years in Taiwan and would love to have the opportunity to make Taiwan their new home. Taiwan will also benefit from keeping them within their workforce to contribute to their tax collection system and foster innovation.

The policies are already there. The next step is to effectively deliver the information so that they don’t go to waste.

(Cover photo by Hunters Race via Unsplash)