Taipei, Aug. 11 (CNA) The increasing number of new immigrant families pose multilayer meanings to Taiwan society as it represents a challenge, a must-do task to learn from different cultures, and an opportunity for a brand new future, participants to a seminar on new immigrant issues said Saturday.
"The biggest challenge for any foreign spouse coming from Southeast Asia is the language barrier. However, observations showed they picked up language quickly. And, contrary to the conventional thinking, their children, being in a multi-culture and multi-lingual family, are at an advantage, " said Tang Jing-lan, chief executive officer of the Good Shepherd Sisters Taiwan, in a seminar focused on international marriages.
As of June 2007, the number of marriage migrants to Taiwan has surpassed 390,000, including 136,115 coming from Southeast Asian countries and 256,590 from China, according to a Ministry of Interior (MOI) statistics.
There are still many stigmas to be eliminated in Taiwan about new immigrants, for instance that most children with "foreign mothers" have learning difficulties and growth retardation -- both false concepts that have been proven incorrect by numerous surveys, said Edwin Yang, a professor at the College of International Studies and Education for Overseas Chinese, National Taiwan Normal University.
In fact, Taiwan and Vietnam, where most foreign spouses came from, are both countries with diverse cultures, which is why shouldn't be difficult for Taiwanese to accept and learn from a different culture, Yang said.
"We're now at a time of a global village and our generation will be citizens of a global community who have to be always learning something new. I'm glad that my children and I have the opportunity to learn from the Vietnamese culture, " said Lin Jian-chung, who was married to a Vietnamese 10 years ago and have three children. Lin is now a volunteer for Eden Social Welfare Foundation (ESWF).
However, Lin said, the husbands and family members should also learn to help their wives to adjust to a new environment, culture and language.
The future of Taiwan will be at least slightly different because of new immigrants, said Chien Ya-huei, who works for ESWF. The latest statistics showed that 11.69% of babies born in Taiwan in 2006 were born into new immigrant families.
"It's possible that we will have legislators whose mothers are Vietnamese. And our national policy will have to take care of people who came from new immigrant families, " she said.