I don’t think there’s much difference in the procedures for most folks who aren’t ‘outstanding foreigners’!.
Main difference is you get 1 year to renounce your original citizenship upon receiving ROC citizenship.
Yep, my pal that I told you about can pick up his temporary ID now and he has one year to renounce.
Cool…they issue temporary IDs now? How does it look like…any sample pics?
They always have. The TARC.
Ahh…the TARC…I thought you were referring to some sort of new Temporary Taiwan ID without the ID number
Requisites have been officially released: http://www.ris.gov.tw/cs/763
From the Foreigners in Taiwan FB page:
The Department of Household registration has now added a web page that explains the process for ‘high level’ professionals to become dual citizens under Article 9 of the recently amended Nationality Act.
A high level foreign professional can initiate the process by contacting the appropriate central government agency window listed in the 申請推薦理由書之各中央部會主管機關聯絡窗口 (the first PDF on the page).
The contact window will explain what documents are needed to demonstrate the requisite achievements in “technological, economic, educational, cultural, art, sports, or other domains” as defined by the Standards for Defining High-Level Professionals for Naturalization announced in March.
Note that if you cannot identify the correct contact window, you can contact the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry will ask the Executive Yuan to determine the correct agency.
After documentation has been submitted, the agency will complete an application for a recommendation of naturalization (歸化國籍之高級專業人才推薦理由書) and review the supporting documentation. If the agency approves the recommendation, it will forward the case to the review committee “organized by the Ministry of the Interior and conducted by relevant agencies and impartial individuals.” If the committee approves naturalization without loss of original nationality, the foreign professional can start the naturalization process at his or her local household registration office by submitting the approved 歸化國籍之高級專業人才推薦理由書.
The new webpage explaining the process and listing the contact windows is currently available only in Chinese.
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This is great news! Now if I only qualified for the damn thing…
I’d give it a shot. They will run out very soon of people who have rescued orphans and fed the sick for 50 years!
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I’m an ordinary foreigner. I started a business, pay taxes, obey the law… I’d like to see the US quit handing out passports to ordinary Taiwanese just to see if the rules relax for us here.
At the same time, I read that APRCs used to be very difficult to get. So maybe, as it goes along, the rules will relax for this as well.
Again, try it. As I said, they were offering this deal to my pal who is also a business person, has an MBA and other degrees, is successful in his field and has no other outstanding quality I can think of, aside from being a devoted father.
Next year may be a good time for me to apply. Why not? There are a lot of us who bring good things to Taiwan.
I rest my case about the 50 year requirement:
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – An Italian Catholic Sister who has worked in Taiwan for 55 years was next in line to receive citizenship under recently changed nationality laws, reports said Friday.
…
Sister Elena-Pia Prongia, 85, who is known in Chinese as Chao Hsiu-jung (趙秀容), said recently her greatest dream was to obtain a Taiwanese passport.
…
After arriving in Taiwan in 1961, she soon moved to the mountainous township of Jianshi (尖石) in Hsinchu County, where she set up a kindergarten which mainly benefited the impoverished children of the remote area.
In 1972, she and two other Catholic missionaries were stuck in the mountains for four days during a typhoon, and when they returned to their home base, all buildings had been swept away by landslides. Her parents visited her and decided to help fund the reconstruction of the church and kindergarten.
So the new law is designed to give you citizenship just before you die so non-Taiwanese cannot actually get the benefits of Taiwanese citizenship.
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Damn, only twenty-odd years to go…oh wait, I’ve already been a citizen for nearly a quarter of a century. My bad.
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20 years here, no citizenship. Hope I last the next 30. wait, i do not have to give up my nationality anyways…
Yeah you and how many.
you only had to be ADOPTED to get it right?
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How many? Thousands, tens of thousands? I don’t know exactly, but it’s a lot. I was legally adopted, but you could be married or have some other connection or situation, in addition to renouncing your original citizenship.
Ain’t nobody got time for that
It’s also not enough to renounce citizenship and be married or have resided for a certain number of years (even though you get one year grace period these days unless a ‘special’ foreigner’, some poor bastards from places like Vietnam became stateless in the old days when they had to renounce first) .
You have to stay in the country without exiting for a year at least post receiving the TARC. You can also do it with 270 days in country in each of two consecutive years or 183 days/year for five years. So screw you if you need to travel for work and make a living in the modern world. During that time you are supposed to use the crappy ROC Overseas Passport for travel , however that passport needs a visa almost everywhere and also has no national ID number so rubbish for anything in Taiwan.
Still a mighty pain in the arse and really bloody slow and arbitrary process! Why you need to do this post receiving the naturalization certificate and TARC and having ALREADY lived 10 or 20 or 50 years already in the country …no reason whatsoever. Just some arseholes made these rules.
By the way this rather harsh scheme , as far as I can tell, was originally aimed at their own stateless ‘Zhonghua Renmin’ such as the army in Laos or Tibetan refugees etc. it is a refugee scheme at heart.
Those guys and their descendants have been treated horribly for decades not even being able to get labour insurance or health insurance until recently! Their own army…so if you feel bad as a westerner trying to immigrate sometimes imagine how they felt!
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Great post–thank you!
Guy