To hide his accent, he often speaks in a near-whisper. Often, he declines invitations to social occasions from his fellow countrymen, worried that a “Judas” among them might report him to the authorities. Hired at one of Taiwan’s many electronics factories, Bernard came to the island legally in 2016. But since June 2024, he has been among Taiwan’s growing population of undocumented workers. He blames his broker, a private employment agent to which migrants are usually assigned, for his current predicament.

Bernard’s broker tried to confiscate his passport, he said, then tried to convince him to resign and forgo severance payments from his employer. He refused both times, he said, causing a rift between them. “They [brokers] only speak to you when they come to collect payments or when they want to trick you,” Bernard, who asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of repercussions, told Al Jazeera. Brokers in Taiwan take a cut of their clients’ wages and have significant influence over their conditions and job prospects, making their relationships prone to abuse. When Bernard’s contract expired in 2022, he said, his broker blacklisted him among other employers.

Desperate to support his daughter’s education in the Philippines, Bernard ditched his broker and decided to overstay his visa to work odd construction jobs, he said. These days, he said, he feels “like a bird in a cage”. In public, Bernard would not even utter the word “undocumented” in any language, only gesturing with his hands that he ran away. Taiwan’s undocumented workforce is rising fast. The number of unaccounted-for migrants on the island has doubled in the last four years, reaching 90,000 this January, according to the Ministry of Labor.

Despite Taiwan’s image as one of the region’s rare liberal democracies, a growing number of Southeast Asian migrant workers are living under the constant threat of deportation and without access to social services. Taiwan institutionalised its broker system in 1992 in a bid to streamline labour recruitment. (Al Jazeera)