I’m confused by your reply. The average foreigner living here isn’t ‘registered to’ a family; if you rent an apartment, you aren’t listed on that family’s HR. You simply don’t have an HR. And you are required to let the police know your actual residence address.
Once you marry into a family, things change. You become listed on an HR. Many locals don’t actually live at their HR address, which might be that of their parents. When they rent an apartment in Taibei, they don’t bother letting the police know that they’ve moved out of their parents’ Tai2zhong1 apartment. They seem to get away with it. However, I’m not sure there’s any benefit to them other than laziness; when they want to vote, they have to return to their HR location, and there’s no cost AFAIK to just stopping into an HR office to register your move.
Whether foreigners who are listed on an HR are given the same flexibility in practice is not clear to me, but I would assume that you’re ok once you’re married to a local. Much greater offences seem to get forgiven (like getting caught teaching kindy).
Yes, I had assumed that the household registration for locals had a similar function as the address registration for foreigners. It’s good that it’s not, because I don’t live where I’m registered either.
I once failed to let them know that I had moved and they wanted to fine me 5000 when I went to change the address. ( My boss talked them into not fining me in the end, though.)
Right. The huji tengben will be printed out at the household registration office for you, upon request. The hukou mingbu is the copy of the HR book kept in the family home. When you want to add a spouse to the HR, you need to take the HR book to the HR office; but after you’ve done this at the HR office, then when you go to apply for the JFRV and its ARC, you need the huji tengben.
Holy crap!
Getting a Letter of Marriage Status (Single proof document) from the SA Liason Office in Taipei takes 2-3 months @ NTD180.
That’s too long!
I’m applying for that document myself over the phone for R50 at the Department of Home Affairs today and getting my mom to courrier this one express back after the colouring stamps of the Taipei Liason Office in Pretoria. Maybe it’ll only take about 2 weeks.
What you want to do is gather all info in advance, e.g., write down how long each doc takes, and then apply for each one that far in advance, so that they all arrive at the same time (otherwise some of the ones you get first may expire before you get the last ones). It worked for me.
Yes, I agree. I have the Police Clearance Document already pending in SA.
Those are the two big and time consuming ones. It was quite an inky finger application at the NIA to get the identification verification to SA for the PCC document. Oh, by the way it’s not done by the Police of Foreign Affairs anymore. (The Finger Prints that needs to go back to SA for the PCC application is done by the NIA nowadays). I found this out from one day of driving between the two a couple of times, haha.
This proves to be a very time consuming and patience testing experience. Not to mention the cost.
Ok, mental note. Getting a Letter of Marital Status from the Republic takes 6-8 weeks. You might want to consider doing this one first even before applying for the PCC.
Omg! This is taking long.
But the post above about going to the immigration office mentions nothing about the marriage registration in your home country. Is it different for people from different countries, then?
Why do it there? I did mine at the SA “embassy” for the PCC. I hope its valid. Or STILL valid, its already been 3 months and it hasn’t even been sent to my SA address yet.
The registration office had a fit originally when we told them we applied for the single status through the SA “embassy”, and told us they don’t know why they issue them if they know they are invalid and not accepted. However when we went to get married at the registration office, they had absolutely NO hangups with it.
Can I change address with marriage papers at all? We actually moved about 4 months ago, but misplaced our lease, so I never changed my ARC details. I thought instead of trying to explain to them now why I didn’t do it, I could just say that I just moved in with my wife…
I think Elf is talking about the “single proof” document that you need when you get married here. I did the marriage registration that you’re talking about, but immigration never asked for it. Waste of US$30. They never mentioned it when I called them and went over there, so I would assume they don’t require it anymore. I would call and double check though.
I think Elf is talking about the “single proof” document that you need when you get married here. I did the marriage registration that you’re talking about, but immigration never asked for it. Waste of US$30. They never mentioned it when I called them and went over there, so I would assume they don’t require it anymore. I would call and double check though.[/quote]
Guys, I’m talking about both.
You need a ‘Single Proof’ document, otherwise known as a Letter of Marital Status check to get married firstly in Taiwan. This document takes 2-3 months to get through the SA Embassy of Taipei and cost NTD180. (If someone knows how to do this quicker I’d like to know please).
You need a Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) to apply for a JFRV after you’ve married. This requires finger prints (I did them at the NIA), the PCC get’s issued in your home country and takes also 2-3 months to get. I’m not sure about the cost though. I’m at NTD350 already and should be rocking up another NTd150 to get it here. (Again if someone knows how to do this quicker please let me know)
[quote=“gusbologna2000”]I just went to Immigration yesterday and was successful in getting my new ARC. It takes them a week to process.
If you already have a resident visa through work, then you don’t need to go to MOFA. You can go directly to Immigration. However, they told me your work ARC needs to have at least a month on it before it expires for you to apply.
They asked me for:
ARC and passport (they take a copy and look at the original)
Health Check
US Criminal Record (needs to be translated into Chinese and notarized)
Local Criminal Record
Household Registration
Lease (they take a copy and look at the original) (I’m assuming you only need this if you don’t live at the address that’s on your household registration)
Spouse and Spouse’s ID
Application form with a photo
They were a little concerned with my photo; I gave them the normal ‘Taiwanese’ size, which seemed to be too small for their application form. They measured it next to their demo photo, then just seemed to let it go. Guess I got lucky. They have the measurements on the application form if you want to get the exact size though.
Good luck![/quote]
Everything went down exactly like gusbologna said, including the problem with the photo size. I happened to have a bigger photo on me though, as it was the same size as the one needed to get your US visitors visa. I was in and out of there in about 15 minutes!
Yeah! Thanks for all the help, everybody!
I can’t believe how stressed I was, and then the whole Immigration step was so easy!
[quote]I just went to Immigration yesterday and was successful in getting my new ARC. It takes them a week to process.
If you already have a resident visa through work, then you don’t need to go to MOFA. You can go directly to Immigration. However, they told me your work ARC needs to have at least a month on it before it expires for you to apply.[/quote]
They don’t mention that on the website. Did you just get MOFA to authenticate PCC and do the rest at the NIA?
BTW, I went for health check today. The price for marriage type has gone up to just under NT$1800. I think the goverment has stopped some of the subsidising on foreigner health checks.
[quote=“Equilibrium”][quote]I just went to Immigration yesterday and was successful in getting my new ARC. It takes them a week to process.
If you already have a resident visa through work, then you don’t need to go to MOFA. You can go directly to Immigration. However, they told me your work ARC needs to have at least a month on it before it expires for you to apply.[/quote]
They don’t mention that on the website. Did you just get MOFA to authenticate PCC and do the rest at the NIA?
BTW, I went for health check today. The price for marriage type has gone up to just under NT$1800. I think the goverment has stopped some of the subsidising on foreigner health checks.[/quote]
I didn’t go to MOFA at all. I got the Criminal Record Check from the FBI, then sent it to TECRO in the states to authenticate it. Once it got back here, I had my wife translate it and went to the court building in Xindian to get the translation notarized. Once that was done I took all my things to NIA.
That sounds a lot easier, but I’m wondering if that is official way of doing it now or if you got one of those “right person, right day, wind blowing north under a Venus moon” TW things.
I’ll try it out anyway. MOFA would take 3 days to authenticate PCC. How long did notarizing it at the court take? I’m also wondering if there procedure is different from single status. The single status had to be notarized by a lawyer and then authenticated by MOFA too.
I thought everything was going well. I just realised I completely forgot about the local criminal record check. How long does that take?
Also…I saw in a post, that for NIA, you need to take lease with… We actually moved about 6 months ago, but I never changed addresses as I misplaced our lease and landlord is not at all helpful. My idea was just to take household registartion and say I just moved in there. Or do they definitely want an actual lease?
I didn’t do a local criminal record check. I asked if I needed one, and they said no, the one from my hometown would suffice. I’ve been here almost 15 years, but they still only wanted the hometown one. YMMV
They definitely asked me for the local police check at Immigration, but it only took three days to get to me. Also, she asked to see my lease, and I told her to just take the household registration address which she did, no questions asked. So no lease shown.
YMMV