Thai workers wearing out welcome in Taiwan

another insular (and misguided) Taiwan-based 'human rights activist' gets a letter published in The Nation:

Again, thousands of Thai workers rallied in Taiwan [last week], demanding better treatment. In television interviews, some workers said they had been forced to purchase low-quality food at inflated prices, while better food was available from Korean companies in Taiwan.

It's easy to clean up these misdeeds, but some newspapers have published negative comments about the workers.

Taiwan's population is ageing, spurring the demand for foreign labour, but its relatively closed society tends to discriminate against outsiders.

Many jobless people in southern Taiwan never think about who's doing the hard, dangerous work for them.

Whenever an election comes along, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party promises to reduce the number of Thai workers, as if they are responsible for every problem in Taiwan!

This attitude is reinforced by negative media coverage. A strike last summer involving Thai workers was an embarrassment for the ruling party.

It has lost every election ever since. Chen Chu, the former chairwoman of the Council of Labour Affairs, is now seeking to be elected to the post of mayor of Kaoshiung city.

Neither she nor her party wants to hear anything about Thai workers.

When a matter of human rights turns into a political one, foreigners of lower economic status will not receive justice. I fear that Thai people do not know about Taiwan's love of realpolitik or the miserable condition of their brothers abroad.

Dr Weiming Wang

Taipei

Boo hoo, cry me a river. Some of these Taiwan based activists should come to Bangkok and see how Thailand treats its foreign workers - like shit.

And frankly, one has to consider the class of Thais being exported. Generally, only the most desperate, uneducated and criminal Thais are willing to expatriate themselves to find work. Most of the construction sector in Thailand is facing a labor shortage, so it really says something that these folks who are rioting in Taiwan were unemployable back home.