It noted 27 cases where it found reunification was not currently feasible, including one "because the parent's location has been unknown for more than a year … and records show the parent and child might be US citizens".
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which China despises because it shuns reunification between the island and China, suffered a heavy defeat.
Just as Germany reinvented itself after the war, and just as it achieved reunification, this is seen as a defining moment in the country's history.
Taiwan, which split with China at the end of a civil war in 1949, insists that it wants reunification, but under terms to build a democratic China.
The aim is not to cut off precious donations and volunteering resources, but to redirect it to reunification and reintegration services, which link children back up with their families.
Soviet authorities allowed this emigration to take place by calling it "family reunification," in order to avoid the appearance that anyone was unhappy living in the Soviet state.
European officials sharply criticized the Greek Cypriot leadership last week, accusing it of misleading Europe into believing that it would support reunification after Cyprus was invited to become a member in 2003.
However difficult it may be to think of the struggle over Elian as the product of a misguided effort at family reunification, it might once have been no easier to imagine what it would take to break the Gonzalezes apart.
Even China, which claims Taiwan as its own, says it wants a peaceful solution to the stand-off, though it insists that reunification with the mainland is the only solution and refuses to rule out using force should Taiwan make a dash for independence.
The government padlocked it soon after reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, gutted its interiors toward the end of the decade and has since been trying to tear down what's left of it.
Would it allow Korean reunification?
