This story was produced in cooperation with the Pulitzer Center.
Taichung City, Taiwan – Bernard keeps himself low.
The 45-year-old Filipino migrant worker who works on the streets of Taiwan gives way to the eyes and often checks his facial mask to ensure that his appearance is hidden.
To hide his accent, he often speaks in an almost whisper.
He often rejects the invitations on social occasions by his compatriots and feared that a “Judas” could report him to the authorities.
Bernard set in one of the many electronics factories of Taiwan and legally came to the island in 2016.
Since June 2024, however, it has been one of the growing population of workers without papers. He accuses his broker, a private employment agent, which migrants are usually assigned, for his current situation.
Bernard’s Broker tried to confiscate his passport, he said, then tried to convince him to resign and to forego severance payments from his employer.
He declined both times, he said and caused a crack between them.
“You (brokers) only talk to you if you move in payments or if you want to wake you up,” said Bernard, who asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of effects, said Al Jazera.
The brokers in Taiwan take the wages of their customers and have a significant impact on their conditions and professional prospects, which means that their relationships are susceptible to abuse.
When Bernard’s contract had expired in 2022, his broker was put on the black list among other employers.
Bernard was desperate to support his daughter’s training in the Philippines, and let his broker let off and decided to surpass his visa to work strange building jobs, he said.
Nowadays, he said, he feels “like a bird in a cage”.
In public, Bernard would not even speak the word “undocumented” in any language and only gesticulate with his hands, which he ran away.
Taiwan’s undocumented workforce rises quickly.
The number of inexplicable migrants on the island has doubled over the past four years and reached 90,000 in January in January, the Ministry of Labor.
Despite Taiwan’s image as one of the rare liberal democracies in the region, a growing number of Southeast Asian migrant workers live under constant deportation and without access to social services.
Taiwan institutionalized his broker system in 1992 to rationalize the recruitment of workers.
Brokers influence almost all aspects of the life of a migrant employee, from where they live, to their meals, the conditions of their employment contracts and even the way they access public services.
Proponents of migrant rights say that exactly this level of control causes a large number of employees to flee from their jobs.
According to official data, over a third of all complaints made by migrants in the Ministry of Labor are broker.
From January 2025, Vietnamese made the largest proportion of the undocumented 57,611, followed by Indonesians at 28,363 and Filipinos with 2,750.
Joy Tajonera, a Catholic priest who heads the Ugnayan center, a protection between migrants in Taichung City, said that the Taiwanese government had chosen a relaxed approach for this topic.
“The system enables the broker that the power is used to the disadvantage of migrants,” Tajonera told Al Jazera.
“In the meantime, employers play innocent.”
Brokers usually calculate migrants a monthly service fee of $ 50 to 60 to dollars and also collect fees for job transfers, hospital insurance, vacation and most required documentation for working in Taiwan.
In some cases, they set up age limits for certain jobs.
Tajonera said that many workers without papers can actually earn more without a broker. “Then you lose all social protection and health insurance. It’s not that you want to run away. It is your situation, you can no longer stand it.”
“Shameless and stupid”
The Ministry of Labor in Taiwan said in a statement that the increase in migrants without papers had been driven by pandemic disorders of the deportation.
There were various steps to improve the conditions for migrant work, including the increase in the minimum wage, the implementation of regular inspections of personnel authorities, the introduction of a new suspension mechanism for agencies with high rates of ABCONDING workers and the promotion of the countries of Labor programs to reduce agency fees.
“By organizing workers in industrial migrants and one-stop orientation sessions for budget supervisors, the ministry aims to improve the awareness of the employees for legal requirements, to inform them about the risks and consequences of the at most and to ensure that employers fulfill their responsibilities of the administration,” said the ministry.
Since last year, however, the Taiwanese government has also increased the maximum penalty for migrants who have surpassed its visas from USD 330 to $ 1,657.
Lennon Ying-Da Wang, director of the public migrant Shelter The People Association, described the step of the government to increase the punishments “shameless and stupid”.
“Instead of running away
Wang said that a lack of protection, especially for those who work in childcare and fishing, is the main reason why many migrants flee from their jobs.
None of the industry is subject to the monthly minimum wage of 944 US dollars according to Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act.
Wang said that migrants in practice often receive half an amount minus deductions by brokers.
“Migrants only want a decent salary,” said Wang. “But there is an unspoken rule among some brokers, no migrant workers who ask for help from shelters. That forces them to run away.”
Despite his sympathy, Wang, as director of a state -financed institution, can record migrants who have fled from their employers because they are subject to deportation.
Harmony Home, an NGO catering for young mothers and children without papers is located on a quiet, inconspicuous road on the outskirts of Taipei.
While women and children who stay in the Harmony home cannot be deported for humanitarian reasons, the state is not obliged to owe the costs of their care or medical needs.
The Harmony Home, which has recorded more than 1,600 children in the past two decades, has recently seen a strong increase in minors through his doors, said founder Nicole Yang.
“Last year we had about 110 new children. We already have 140 by April of this year,” said Yang to Al Jazera.
“We also take care of 300 others who live at home while her mother works.”
Li-Chuan Liuhuang, a Labor expert at National Chung Cheng University, said that the broker system will be difficult to “uproot” immediately, but could improve the government by “making the recruitment process and the cost structure more transparent”.
In Lishan, a mountainous area of
Liuhuang said she would like to see that such migrants can work with adequate occupational safety at farmers, but she believes that this would not be easy for the public.
“The government has to make more efforts for this type of dialogue,” she said to Al Jazera.
Mary, who asked to use a pseudonym, said that she was escaping from her job as a childcare worker to work illegally in various mountain companies after she was frustrated because she earned less than half of the minimum wage and ignored her broker.
Mary, 46, sat next to a cabbage field and said she always felt anxious in the city in the city.
But in Lishan the rules are different because landowners have an unwritten agreement with the authorities about the outliers.
“There is no way that the boss has no connections to the police. He always knows when they will come and asks us not to go out,” she said to Al Jazera.
Nevertheless, there is no guarantee to avoid abuse in the mountains.
After the harvest, employers sometimes hold back payments and threatened everyone who complained to the deportation, said Mary.
“If I complain that the boss does not give me the salary, I will be reported. Who will help me?” she said.
