What can Taiwan and the United States learn from each other's guest worker programs?

Abstract

This study argues that employers in newly industrialized societies such as Taiwan, like their counterparts in postindustrial economies such as the United States, practice outsourcing and recruitment of guest workers in the transnational labor market. This case study focuses mainly on female guest workers within the context of the Taiwanese government's guest worker policies. It also discusses the calls for immigration reforms in both Taiwan and the United States to achieve a more reasonable and flexible guest worker program. The article compares and contrasts guest worker programs in Taiwan and the United States and analyzes the positive aspects of each society's guest worker program/proposal that the other society can adopt. Since Taiwanese feminists, human rights activists, and church-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have advocated for the revision of immigration policies to safeguard foreign workers' rights, guest workers in Taiwan have become entitled to more legal protection than their counterparts in the United States.