Got me one of these today.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news_images/20160227/p15c.jpg
Still not a citizen and no ID number, that’s at least two years away if it ever happens.
You get something that says it’s a Taiwan passport, looks exactly like a Taiwan passport but is not really a passport.
Very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Certainly not happy.
The ROC motto ‘How to extract all joy from immigrating somewhere…’
Congratulations! Isn’t full citizenship and ID no. just a year away?
No but thanks anyway.
I must travel for work so at least two years away with minimum 270 days/year in country.
I also have to travel a lot so may struggle to do that. If I couldn’t do that I would have to wait 5 years at 183 days/year.
I’ve already lived here 17 years. 17 years continuous residency in Taiwan.
I already had a ‘huji’ through my wife for over 10 years but they claim I have ‘no household’ and give me a no household passport. This is the process everybody must go through. It’s called a Taiwan Overseas Passport or NWOHR passport.
This passport does not give visa-free travel anywhere so I must use my original passport for travel in reality.
I also must also prove I renounced my citizenship within one year or they will take this crappy passport back off of me along with the TARC and then I would reapply for a JFRV based ARC (that or get a foreign professional exemption which God knows how that will go as the process is brand new and sure to be a clusterfuck).
Nope it’s no guarantee I will hold onto it.
Ah, that complicates things. I assume you’ll be getting your Irish citizenship back.
I’m afraid to give it up to be honest even if in theory it should be easy to reapply.
Also how do I travel in the meantime? Could take six months to go through the renunciation and re-application process, who knows. There is an unknown factor there.
Because it does not have a national ID number foreign countries assume you have no right of abode and therefore could not guarantee to be deported back to Taiwan.
No visa free travel and not accepted by Europe or US (except bizarrely , Ireland). Can travel on visa to some Asian countries.
Just look at this map.
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Could be quite tricky for a while.
Will try the non renunciation route first but will have to be ready to pull nuclear option.
It’s a total bullshit process but that’s the way it is! I have massive sympathy for people whose only ID is this document.
Rooting for you. Hope they let you in without renouncing.
Totally understandable. An Irish passport is one of the best in the world visa-wise, so not something you want to risk giving up. But at least you have the reapplication option. As an American, there’s no going back. Anyway, good to have you out there on point blazing a trail for the rest of us.
Has anyone with “second class citizenship” (passport but no ID no.) considered suing to get the ID no.?
You were a foreigner before your naturalization. While you were listed in the comments column of your wife’s household registration, you did most definitely not have your own entry in her family’s huji.
It’s a bothersome system - particularly in your situation. It might be less bothersome for those foreign spouses who never bother to apply for APRC, but directly go for naturalization after 3 years. Adding another year to wait for household registration would still put their total waiting time below the 5 years necessary for an APRC.
IYes it’s all legal semantics though isn’t it.
I am listed in her huji but not part of the household. I am a legal spouse and resident with my kids , listed in the Huji book but not part of a household in Taiwan. That just makes no sense.
I never had an APRC I had an ARC by JFRV…it means I have residence by ‘joining family’. Joining family as part of a household. I pay taxes as part of a family unit and my health insurance contributions for my family are assessed according to my earnings.
I must still go through this process even though I have been part of a household for 10 years. They even process my application through the local household registry office. I do my taxes as a joint family unit.
Having to reside for one single whole year in the country without exiting or these further abitrary two or five year exit limitations.
Just complete bullshit. It’s like I arrived yesterday or something. Even then you don’t issue a passport and then tell people you can’t travel outside the bloody country!! Or issue a passport that is barely functional?
How messed up is that?
What SHOULD happen is they give you a local ID FIRST then you apply for the passport with local ID inside with no restrictions whatsoever. Just regular citizens rights. The system is the wrong way around in terms of residency requirements and how to issue functional passports that allow you to live and work in the modern world.
Here, here.
What is teh logic behind that? If our paperwork has been checked and all, and they actually have 5 years to revoke our naturalization IF we have lied about any of teh required ddata, why are we locked up here a whole year? We really have to take this up to the relevant authjorities. It makes no sense.
If they say something like that is the way they do it in the US, then we can explain why they do it that way there and why it does not work here. Anyways, what would be the logic behind such an argument? taiwan has its own legal system, and it shoudl aim for the highest possible respect of human rights, not find excuses to ignore them.
To Brian and readers of this thread: I actually cannot understand all the ins and outs here (certainly NOT YOUR FAULT–it’s a sign of how convoluted the process is). But it did occur to me that the bureaucrats that have devised this ridiculous path to naturalization are following a similar logic used by the bureaucrats who devised the initial APRC scheme (before the awesome reforms)–that is, candidates needed professional circus training to juggle all the paper work and forms in the near-impossible time frame that was (then) in place.
My hope is that you will sincerely and honestly communicate to the front line folks (or better still the managers) at the Xinbei NIA office (or whoever you are dealing with) the massive problems you have identified. I remain convinced that there is will at the top to clean up the process and such feedback may actually help to get things changed–something I have observed repeatedly over the years, especially when the system is obviously disadvantanging white collar folks, as is obviously the case with you, with the unreasonable restrictions on travel you are facing.
Guy
I am going the same route in a couple of years. You should be totally safe if you are born on the island of Ireland. After you renounce you are still ‘entitled to be an Irish citizen’ and you should be able to just reapply for a passport again straight away.
Also - not that you necessarily need to point this out to them - but the republic of Ireland does not recognize the existence of the Republic of China, so your original renunciation has no legal standing in Ireland. The renunciation of Irish citizenship is only valid if you have citizenship of another state.
One ‘manager’ in the Xinbei NIA office managed to nearly get me barred from re-entry when they cancelled my ARC when I was overseas before handing me my TARC.
The immigration officer at the airport then stamped my passport visa free admission 3 months and told me I needed to get a resident visa lol.
Had to go the NIA office where they were telling me ‘this shouldn’t happen’…but it did because you fools cancelled my ARC before giving me my TARC.
(PS an important detail about the TARC, you do get to keep your original ARC number which is a united ID number, and they also give you another household ID number. I was worried about this as changing number might cause issues withlabour insurance and also contracts that I have, I still
use my ARC number for eveything)
Then they made up a story saying I shouldn’t have travelled but there was no such restriction nor was there any instruction to not travel. I had asked them for a date on when I would receive the TARC but all they do is send you a text and call you randomly in the next day to pick it up.
The Senior NIA officer then spent an hour on the phone with MOFA officials to tell them they needed to sort out their procedures. Then he went into the computer system and changed my re-entry record. At least he was very helpful.
I did hear him referring to '新的國際法、 a few times.
Through this whole process nobody has sat down and explained anything to me. I have to extract information myself bit by bit and mostly by my own research online.
The documentation and regulations are spread between three or four departments or agencies (household registration office who check documents and ‘advise’, ministry of interior who validate the residence documents and issue cert of naturalization, NIA who issue the TARC, ministry of foreign affairs who issue the passports).
When I complained to the senior NIA officer that the 1 year exit rule is an impossibility and really weird he just said I can do it in 2 years or 5 years. There’s no point to go into
It because he didn’t make the law did he?
There’s nobody to actually talk to and there is not really a proper ‘citizenship’ process. It’s just a bunch of certificates and documents on the way to getting a national ID. One day I might get the ID card and that’s it. That why I said the whole process is also very uninspiring! They are going about it all wrong.
The most interesting part so far was applying for the Taiwan (overseas) passport along with Taiwanese people and how it was processed so quickly, it only took 3 days.
Wow, this sounds like a potential clusterfcuk…uh, scratch the “potential” part.
It makes it slower than it should be. For instance the household registration office collects and reviews applications for the Certificate of Naturalisation and submits to the Ministey of Interior.
The ministry of interior may review and ask for further material to the household registration office, who in turn will ask you for the material. To get the local household registration office to accept my application I had to change my ‘huji’ to the local address. Thiis is all meant to help the applicant with their applications (and each local household registration office has ppl who are appointed to do this for you) but it’s a very slow process.
As somebody who had to process multiple work and study permits and ARCs in the ‘bad old days’ it doesn’t surprise me. I am mainly frustrated at how long everything takes.
It sounds like the Xinbei guys are idiots compared to the Taipei City NIA office folks I’ve dealt with. Especially during the Plum Blossom card process (but also before) they have been consistently professional and helpful.
I have dealt with idiots in Hsinchu City though–but this was before the NIA was established, and we were still dealing with the cops to handle routine residency matters!
Guy
If you do the renunciation thing an extra safety step would be to get EU and Common travel area visas in the ROC passport first. Just in case! INIS in Dublin are a travesty by the way. I posted my wife’s passport to them and it took two months, letters from my local TD, and threats of legal action just to get them to acknowledge they had received it. They made me want to renounce, no joke, ha ha
Can someone explain what the “bad old days” with ARC/APRC were? What changes were made, and when? Reason I ask is I have just gotten my first ARC a few months ago (married a Taiwanese in the States a few years ago and we subsequently moved here this year), so I’m getting interested in all this APRC/citizenship stuff if we do end up staying here for 5+ years.