Last week, Minister of Labor Hong Shen-han (洪申翰) told the Legislative Yuan that in January, a delegation led by the ministry's vice minister visited Taiwanese businesses operating in India to assess how Indian workers are being used in practice. He said the two sides are still working through procedural details — administrative processes, documentation requirements, and health screening standards — and that the first cohort of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year.
The announcement triggered immediate public concern, focused heavily on women's safety. India has been the site of several high-profile sexual assault cases that drew international condemnation, and many in Taiwan see those incidents as grounds for serious caution. The anxiety is not unique to Taiwan, nor is it entirely unfounded, even if elements of it reflect generalized stereotyping.
The policy itself did not begin with the current government. In 2024, under then-Labor Minister Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春), Taiwan and India signed a memorandum of understanding on migrant labor recruitment. At the time, rumors spread online that the government intended to bring in 100,000 Indian workers. Officials denied the figure and dismissed the claim as a "cognitive warfare" operation — a framing that would resurface. The issue faded without a formal launch, and returned to prominence only when Hong stated that the target for this year is 1,000 workers.
Two Bad Defenses
What is most troubling is not the policy itself, but how the Lai administration has chosen to defend it. Faced with public opposition, the government reached for two responses — both deeply unpersuasive, and one frankly disqualifying.
The first was to suggest the policy originated with opposition parties — the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party — and that the Democratic Progressive Party therefore bears no responsibility for it. This is simply untrue. Every stage of this policy, from its initiation and development to the signing of the MOU and the current effort to finalize administrative procedures, has taken place entirely under DPP governance. Attributing responsibility to parties that have been out of power for over a decade requires a generous redefinition of political causation. If opposition parties wielded that kind of influence from the sidelines, Taiwan's nuclear power debate would have been settled long ago.
The second response is worse. Administration officials — and, previously, officials from the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) era — have repeatedly attributed public skepticism about Indian migrant workers to manipulation by "hostile forces" or "foreign interference," treating it as cognitive warfare directed from outside Taiwan. When the MOU was eventually signed in 2024, an unnamed official went further, suggesting that opposition to the policy was damaging Taiwan-India relations and undermining the solidarity of the so-called "Milk Tea Alliance." The final conclusion offered by the government's framing was that critics were pursuing a "deeper agenda" — to erode public trust in the government and mobilize workers, youth, and women against official policy.
An Echo of a Darker Era
This line of reasoning carries an uncomfortable echo of an older political era in Taiwan, when the ruling party routinely characterized any dissent as an attempt to "drive a wedge between the government and the people." That it is now being deployed by a party that once stood in opposition to exactly that kind of rhetoric makes it no less troubling — and considerably more cynical.
It is also spectacularly counterproductive. Attributing every policy controversy to an omnipresent enemy conducting information operations becomes less credible each time it is invoked. Domestic labor policy is a legitimate subject of public debate, not a front in an existential ideological conflict. And the concerns many Taiwanese women have raised about personal safety are real, regardless of who may or may not be amplifying them.
The Case for the Policy — and Its Weaknesses
The government's stated rationale for the policy is not without merit. Taiwan currently draws its migrant workforce from only four ASEAN countries, while Singapore sources from eleven, Japan from fifteen, and South Korea from seventeen. Diversifying the pool reduces structural risk. There is also a strategic dimension: expanding ties with India fits within the New Southward Policy framework that successive Taiwanese governments have pursued, and India is the most significant partner within that framework.
These are reasonable arguments. But they have not been made persuasively, and in their current form they leave significant room for skepticism. Diversification is a valid goal, but India is hardly the only available option — if some countries are ruled out on geopolitical grounds, others remain. And the geopolitical rationale underpinning the New Southward Policy has shifted enough in recent years that it no longer functions as a strong standalone justification.
Get Your House in Order First
The Lai administration has the tools to make a better case. It could engage the public with substantive policy arguments, address safety concerns directly, and explain what specific measures will govern how Indian workers are recruited, placed, and protected. What it should stop doing is dismissing critics as unwitting dupes of foreign manipulation.
There is also a more immediate credibility problem. As of February this year, Taiwan had approximately 865,000 migrant workers registered in the country, and over 90,000 who have gone missing from their registered placements. That is not a record that inspires confidence in the government's ability to manage a significant expansion of the migrant labor program. Before asking the public to trust that Indian workers will be safely and properly integrated, the administration would do well to demonstrate that it can account for the workforce already here.
