Dogged by labor shortages and a plummeting birthrate, Taiwan recently has agreed to open its doors to up to reportedly 100,000 Indian workers despite xenophobic outbursts across social media platforms for what the islanders call “3K jobs” – dangerous, hard, and dirty. In doing so, Taiwan is joining other countries actively striving to expand the introduction of Indian labor including Germany, Italy, and France as well as countries in the Middle East. Singapore and Malaysia, both of which already have sizable Indian populations, are also on the list.

But as labor force mobility increases globally with cheap transportation, increased education, growing female mobility, shifts in the global economy, amendments to international immigration policies, and socio-economic changes, protests against in-migration have become a boiling social issue, especially in Europe and the United States. Taiwan is finding out it is no different. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a UK-based think tank, said that the social and institutional challenges facing migrant workers represent a key drag on Taiwan’s otherwise rosy assessment in the EIU’s Democracy Index.

Taiwan’s opening to Indian workers is not going to be warmhearted. Netizens are predicting, without foundation, that the number of sex crimes is likely to rise with the arrival of so many men from India, which has been slapped with the derogatory term “country of sexual assault.” The misgivings are despite the lack of effect that Taiwan’s existing foreign workforce of 700,000 migrant workers from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines has already had on the local crime rate. In 2022, the combined crime rate of migrant workers from these four countries was 59.46 per 10,000 people, which is about half the crime rate of the locals.

But with a local labor supply hopelessly tightened due to a manufacturing boom, the island, with a population of 23.5 million, has no good options other than to follow in the footsteps of Japan, which signed its own MOU with India last year, and South Korea, which is negotiating one. In February, it was reported that the construction industry is expected to grow by 3.4 percent in 2024 and expand at an annual average of 3.9 percent between 2025 and 2027, supported by investment in renewable energy, rail and road infrastructure, and water infrastructure. The sector is expected to need an estimated 15,000 migrant workers alone, officials say. The Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2023 reported there are only 186,000 nurses in the domestic healthcare system, with losses of about 5,000 nurses each year leaving for other countries including the United States, where they can triple their annual earnings over that they are paid in Taiwan.

India, which surpassed China in 2023 as the world’s biggest source of permanent migrant labor, saw more than 400,000 of its citizens leave for jobs in other countries in 2021, the latest year for which statistics are available. Migrants from India outnumbered those from other countries in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Sweden.

“Risk diversification is the most plausible reason for the Taiwan-India MOU in the face of a global shortage of skilled workers, as Taiwan’s supply of migrant workers would be seriously affected if only one of the four existent sources was to stop cooperating,” said Reinhard Biedermann, a professor for international relations at Tamkang University in Taipei. “Geopolitically, I could also imagine that Taiwan is already preparing for the event that the China-led RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership] intensifies further – the Philippines now being also involved –as India would constitute one sole source of labor that is distant from China.”

The content of the MOU signed between the two governments has still not been made public, and officials have since denied a report by Bloomberg saying that Taiwan would recruit up to 100,000 Indian workers. Nevertheless, Taiwan quickly saw the emergence of multiple aggressive social media groups, such as “Oppose the Increase of Indian Migrant Workers,” which recruited a total of about 5,000 members.

After those groups held street rallies that were covered by Western media, Indian media picked up on the developments, with the Indian television station NDTV publishing a commentary headlined “Racism, Disinformation Cast Shadow On India-Taiwan Cooperation.” The popular Indian online education platform Unacademy streamed a video titled “Do Taiwanese people discriminate against India?” It didn’t help that Minister of Labor Hsu Ming‑chun released her policy with the pledge that Taiwan would first recruit workers from north‑eastern India because they have a “fair skin color.”

Lan Peijia, a professor at the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, was cited in Taiwan’s Chinese-language media as finding that Taiwanese people’s rhetoric about foreign ethnic groups is “usually highly sexualized.”

Looking ahead, Shen Yu-chung, a political scientist at Tunghai University in Taichung, pointed out that follow-up communication with all parties and interest groups in society will be important. He cited calculations showing that due to Taiwan’s young and middle-aged population declining rapidly, Taiwan will need to introduce at least 400,000 foreign workers before 2030 to supplement the loss of labor force.

“Taiwan’s elderly population is growing rapidly, and the demand for long-term care labor has greatly increased,” Shen said. “While Taiwanese young people have low willingness to engage in the 3K industry, foreign migrant workers have become indispensable for Taiwan’s social welfare care.”