Emails are not giving me any productive responses still, making it feel like my prejudice of emails hardly ever being useful for complicated things wasn’t far off the mark after all.
Though I’m tentatively making money online, at the current pace it won’t be much more than a band-aid over my problems.
Relatives have tentatively responded to greetings but replies have been slow and concise taking several days to get a single line of text.
Finally feeling that the situation is stagnating again, I decided to consult my father about this.
The end result of Q&A is:
It’s too late to do anything because I’m already over 20 and it’s my fault I didn’t do something about it before.
It’s too late for me to find any work legal or not so I should just give up on it.
It’s impossible that any relatives would lend me (or him) money because relatives mostly dislike him for constantly borrowing money from relatives and friends (and never returning).
Verdict from him is I should somehow find a way to make a living online and give up ever legalizing or doing normal work.
Yeah, okay. What now? Am I supposed to obediently listen to him or do I have to flat out leave the house without a single dime, walk straight to the nearest National Immigration Agency or AIT and ask what to do if I’ve overstayed but don’t have any money to leave, do necessary paperwork or pay any fines.
My entire struggle at the moment is to avoid having to do that because it’s as good as having no plan and throwing myself out to the winds of fate. Even if I were to do that, I wanted to at least obtain legal knowledge of how cases like mine are handled but with how unproductive emails are, I don’t seem to be able to even do that.
Sorry if this came off as a bit of a rant but I’m beginning to get tired of things running in circles.
Your father is Taiwanese. You do not go to NIA. You are a citizen of the Republic of China foremost to stay legally and work legally in Taiwan.
Your father is wrong and what he says just amounts to abuse. You can go to any police station and accuse him of kidnap and overall abandonment. Firts, get yourself to an institution like V or Maria House or anything else. You cannot continue living under the radar forever. Your father will die someday. You may have a health issue. You have to think long term for yourself.
As said, yours is not the first of these cases. If you want to stay, you have the right. If you want to embrace being a foreigner and leave this island, you can. Don’t look at what you did not have or did not do before, but rather at all that can be done.
Let’s just assume this is real. If I were under your circumstance. I would break the decision to two first: ultimately leaving the country or not (abandoning your father or not).
Leave
What are the problems I would encounter if I decide to do so? Problems at customs? Suppose you earned enough for a ticket out.
Given your age, you still have options. You don’t have a degree and the real world (in the long run) would need a degree for most advanced work. You are unfamiliar with how the outside world operates.
Do working holiday and start earning more to get your life started. It also gives you an idea of what real shit is actually like in society without being drowned. Become a trainee for a profession where an degree is not as important. Cook maybe?
Stay
Then definitely fight for your citizenship rights.
I believe you are a smart and logical person given the way you delivered and responded messages. But guys we are talking about someone who hasn’t left a house for 22 - 5 years and no TV. Let’s be realistic here if the story is real.
Uh, what’s V and Maria House? I lightly Googled it but I didn’t get any immediately obvious results.
Also yes, there’s mainly two paths for me to go through as you explained. I honestly don’t have any attachments to Taiwan for me to want to stay here so I’m leaning towards leaving but there is in any case too little information for me to judge for now since there’s still the matter of my father.
I’m sure problems with my lack of education will occur regardless of which path I take but as long as I can temporarily find a job that allows me to be self sufficient I can work my way up from there, or try. At the very least I understand that keeping the status quo isn’t going to help me in that area.
The thing is, regardless of which path I take it’s going to require some degree of money (which I’m not even certain of how much I need to be honest) and that drives me to be careful with my actions because I don’t know the consequences of being caught in this situation without any money to cough up.
It’s also why I’m trying to dig out information for my case before taking any reckless actions but… Well at this point it seems as if I should just bite the bullet and see what happens if I’m caught.
Finally as for the fact that I’ve barely left my house for over a decade… I want to believe that I have acquired most common knowledge and etiquette but frankly I can’t say I’m too confident in my social skills as someone who hasn’t talked to a stranger face to face for the entire time.
No, I’m not afraid of going outside although I’m unwilling to do so more than necessary because I’m not supposed to be allowed to go outside.
When I talk about getting caught, I’m talking about going to relevant agencies to consult my problem in person.
On the bright side that will more likely than not bring me answers immediately.
On the dark side it’s confessing that I’m overstaying right to the relevant agency. I don’t quite think that they’re supposed to just shrug and let me go on with life as usual after that.
I’ve heard fishermen earn quite a lot. Probably enough for you in one run. And seeing you have no attachments. Bah, wild idea.
I was actually referring to the not so ideal side of society. Many of us here bicker about. Why do you flash to left turn when you actually turn right? Probably a bad analogy. But so many curve balls here compare to the West.
Don’t worry, you’ll survive. Given that your story is real. I imagine in the worst case, mass propaganda, donations, sympathies, and some rare do-gooders reaching out. Though overall crappy, this place ain’t cold blooded.
There is absolutely no need to do anything like that. It would be asking to be taken advantage of and could result in a life being ruined (human trafficking, being used as a “patsy” etc.) just when light is appearing at the end of the tunnel. I agree that seeking help from an NGO like Icon suggested is an excellent idea, but I don’t have any knowledge of the ones that would handle a case like this.
Hena, if you find yourself in legal trouble and want to fight it, even if the authorities consider you a foreigner, you may technically be a victim of human trafficking already and therefore qualify for legal aid despite lack of legal residency. However, as explained above, you are apparently an ROC national either with household registration or entitled to it, so the only problem should be your ability to prove this fact (and to get registered, if necessary). An intelligent person with the authority to send you to a detention center and then deport you would realize this and not take any drastic action. The world is full of idiots though, not to mention criminals, so it’s still a good idea to be cautious.
Your father has trouble grasping the big picture, and that’s probably why he’s ended up the way he is and caused great difficulty for you. It’s your job to be smarter.
Yeah that is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to do any reckless charges. It essentially puts my fate on the hands of whoever happens to deal with my case at the time. It’s honestly just one huge gamble, if I meet a good guy then perhaps things will get processed smoothly. But if I’m unlucky then…
I’m also interested if there’s any NGOs that handle cases like mine.
Also as for how I generated income, I generally ran through all of the online work sites I could dig out with varying degrees of success. Most of them flat out don’t seem function properly at all if you live outside of America or specific countries (e.g. mturk and survey sites) but I still managed to get some money from a few sites… Honestly not a very helpful sum considering the time thrown in though.
I won’t blame government agencies as they probably have a significant amount of emails to go through every day but the previous mails really weren’t producing anything noteworthy.
It feels very good after all that to receive some responses to emails that aren’t borderline systematized answers.
I thank the people who advised to try seeking help from NGO’s as they have been much more productive so far.
Still not sure where things are going to go yet though.
Finally the road to sorting everything out is becoming a little more visible than before.
In the end after drawing a circle around various places I ended up back at AIT. Maybe not that surprising though since I would eventually have to either go through them or some agencies in Taiwan regardless of how things turned out.
Now I’m here for one question that I want opinions on since I ultimately need to make the decision myself and one request for advice.
First of all…
Right now I have two paths I can take. Either I can legalize my status through this and that and continue staying at Taiwan finding legal work here… Or I can return to America and find work there instead.
The question mostly consists of which country is better for me given my bad starting conditions of lacking education and no money whatsoever with possibly a debt on top of that. A good point of staying in Taiwan is that I actually have relatives here but… Well to begin with I wouldn’t be in this situation if I was capable of receiving support from them so it feels like it ultimately makes no difference. Both countries are equal in that I have no friends as well.
Another notable point is that in Taiwan my confidence of fluently reading/writing isn’t that great although I don’t think I would have any problems in merely talking. On the flip side, while in America I would have no problems in reading/writing, I’m kinda wondering what my English sounds like as I barely require to speak English here. Of course it’s not as if I’ve forgotten how to speak English though… Actually before language problems, I have to face the fact that I barely have proper conversations with anyone at all…
These problems might be smoothed out with a little effort while living normally though.
And now for advice…
Though I made a point of this before, I do not have the support of my father on this. In short, how am I supposed to convince him to let me go through with legalizing? Of course leaving without informing him is always an option but that’s more of a worst case scenario choice for me. The ideal is that I finally begin changing things with his support but… Again, I don’t know how I’m supposed to convince him.
You should try to get your Taiwanese status sorted out first, even if you make up your mind that you’re going to leave. The US isn’t suitable for everyone, and you may want to return to Taiwan, even if you don’t return to your current home.
As for how you can convince your father to stop being the way he is, I don’t know. Maybe you can’t. Social workers, police, lawyers, psychiatrists, spiritual counselors… some people are so stubborn, it would take an army to change their minds.
You mentioned he’s losing his ability to earn money due to his age. Does he agree about that? Does he have plans for retirement etc.?
You need to move away from your father it looks you may have been kidnapped from the US at a young age and he was afraid of the authorities finding you or him. You are an adult now.
Maybe there is a warrant out for him in the US, can you search for your mother?
First of all though you should regularise your ID in Taiwan as YY mentioned.
Who have you talked to over the decade? Your father only? In Chinese? What do you do every day? Who feeds you? Do you cook? How have you made some money online? Fill us in on some details man.
Hena since this site is frequented by many English teachers, please do share how you managed to hone your writing skills to the point where they are.
Your writing is better, more mature and succinct than most 30 year old fully educated native English speakers. How you pulled this off with no formal education and nothing more than an Internet connection and a coldhearted Taiwanese father tinkering around with some home schooling is a miracle.
Please do share the secret of your success. We could be talking genius level here.
