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Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Taiwan

J.Y. Interpretation No. 497 (entry and residence of people from mainland China)

Constitutional Court of Taiwan (Judicial Yuan) · Taiwan · 1999-12-03 · National court

Citation: J.Y. Interpretation No. 497
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided against the migrant side

Question

May rules issued under the cross-strait statute restrict entry and residence of people from mainland China?

What the court decided

Yes. The restrictions were authorised by statute and did not breach freedom of residence and movement.

In plain language

Taiwan limited how people from mainland China could come and stay. The Constitutional Court said these limits were allowed.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Taiwan membatasi cara warga Tiongkok daratan datang dan tinggal. MK menyatakan pembatasan itu boleh.

Pertanyaan: Bolehkah aturan berdasarkan UU lintas selat membatasi masuk dan tinggalnya warga Tiongkok daratan?

What happened afterwards

  • 1999-12-03: Interpretation issued.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/tw-jy-497-1999/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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