The Taiwan Association of Family Caregivers reports that an eye-popping 160,000 among our sick and elderly benefit from the attention of foreign caregivers working in our homes.

Some political leaders are calling for an exclusion of foreign workers from long-term home care service. More than a few employers of foreign caregivers are shaking their heads in dismay. Caregivers from Taiwan reportedly demand three times the amount of money as do their foreign counterparts.

Treatment of workers from the Philippines, Vietnam, and other lands is an issue that only a few of my students are willing to discuss with me.

Apparently unaware of the hard-heartedness she was pointing to, one of my students said that a foreign caregiver had suddenly disappeared from her house. "We don't know how she did it, but she discovered where my mother hid her passport, and she took it and ran away."If you stole my passport, I'd want to run away from you too. But also: If the employer was treating the employee properly, why hold and hide the passport?

Whenever we treat workers (foreign or local) in ways we ourselves don't want to be treated, we bring shame upon ourselves and our country. Plenty of abuse happens in the United States. I hate to see it happening here, too.