“To soothe the pain of multicultural families who cannot take care of their parents in their home country.”

Gyeonggi Provincial Assemblyman Lee Ae-hyung (People Power, Suwon) asked to look back at the reality of multicultural families and implement programs for them more efficiently.

On the 15th, Rep. Lee asked questions related to multicultural families to the Gender Equality and Family Bureau during the 2023 administrative audit of the Gyeonggi Provincial Council's Women, Family and Lifelong Education Committee.

At this event, Rep. Lee spoke about the pain of marriage immigrants who cannot take care of one of their parents in their home country even if one of them dies.

Rep. Lee Ae-hyeong said, “There are many cases of marriage immigrants who have married in Korea and their parents in their home country becoming old after 10 to 20 years. In the end, when one of the parents dies, the marriage immigrant must take care of the remaining one, but the current law is. “There is no way,” he pointed out. It pointed out that even parents of marriage immigrants can only receive short-term visas of up to 3 months within the current visa system, and cannot receive long-term visas.

Rep. Lee requested, “Marriage immigrants are shedding tears of blood as they see their aging fathers or mothers left alone in their homeland.” “It is not possible to change the visa policy at the Gyeonggi-do level, but we requested that Gyeonggi-do suggest to the Ministry of Justice that it proactively change the visa policy to address these issues.”

The question Rep. Lee asked has often been pointed out in recent multicultural family debates, and is what marriage immigrants pay the most attention to and feel pain about. In addition, Representative Lee Ae-hyung also proposed Korean language education in various formats and contents and the operation of social integration programs at the basic level.

Representative Lee suggested, “Gyeonggi Province, like the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, is supporting the Korean language education budget, and there is a need to consider various methods of Korean language education, such as learning Korean through K-pop and Korean through dramas.” “Gyeonggi Province should not only provide budget support, but should actually consider ways to improve the Korean language skills of marriage immigrants.”

In a question related to social integration, he pointed out, “What if social integration of immigrants is carried out at the most basic units, neighborhood community centers and resident autonomy committees?” “If the resident council runs a program for multicultural families, multicultural families will go to camps and participate in programs with the neighbors they meet when they step outside the door.”

Rep. Lee requested the development of a program for immigrants in which the resident autonomy committee, market merchant association, etc. operate a multicultural program at least once or twice a year, and the Gyeonggi Province, city/county offices, and family centers provide support.

Regarding this, Yoon Young-mi, director of the Gyeonggi Province Gender Equality and Family Bureau, said, “As both Koreans and foreigners have the same desire to take care of their aging parents, we will carefully review it and make suggestions if there are any.” “We will put even more effort into operating multicultural family programs,”

Mary Eve of Papaya Story