I took these to the local HHR only to realize I couldn’t proceed without a letter or tax certificate from the house owner. They wouldn’t accept the original lease contract.
I messaged the owner, but she got nervous as she misunderstood that I was trying to join her household register.
Thankfully, I had a Taiwanese agent with me who was willing to let me use her address instead. Since she lived in a different district, we went to the other HHR.
I won’t go into details now, but despite hours of discussions we couldn’t convince them to add my wife to my ID or HHR. I offered them three authenticated, notarized, and buttered marriage certificates (one from Taiwan, and one from each of our countries), but no avail.
I was only able to get my ID with the “spouse” part left blank. Meanwhile I assume my wife’s ARC is now connected to the “invisible man”.
Congratulations fellow citizen!
I’m guessing it was nerve-wracking not knowing how to get a Household Registration right at the point of getting your ID. I think the HRO agent should have made sure where you were settling before hand.
Thank you. I am sure we’ll always remember 2022, as the year of our rebirth.
She is an agent-in-training. Actually, she is just a friend who agreed to help me. I have been teaching her about all the common problems foreigners face here. I am encouraging her to start offering facilitation services for foreigners in Kaohsiung. i.e. for a small fee accompany foreigners to various offices (e.g. banks, NHI, immigration, HHR etc…) and help them get things done.
First of all, congrats on getting your Citizenship and your ID! You went through a lot and finally you’ve done it!
This is the part I find the most absurd! Total BS in fact! So Taiwan assumes all new Citizens to have a house in their own name which is almost impossible considering real estate prices here and we don’t have parents, grandparents or great great grandparents who bequeathed their houses in our name.
Again, due to the above stupid bureaucratic rule where us new citizens can’t rent, must own a house blah blah…we have to “beg” our Landlords/Landladies to please let me register ourselves into your precious household and of course, they will scream bloody murder that a foreigner wants to “integrate” himself/herself to their little sweet family. But legally speaking, all landlords must allow tenants to register themselves into the domicile they are currently residing in. One can do this simply by choosing “獨立戶” and registering the landlord’s address as their own independant household.
And what if we don’t have a relative, a friend, an agent who is willing to “loan” us their 戶籍? Will we be in limbo till we buy a house or find another landlord who is willing to “bring us in”? I was lucky my brother had a house in his own name and I slipped into his household and became a citizen. Years later down the road, I was lucky to find a landlord who knew the law and even recommended me to get my own “戶籍” at his place. By doing this, I was even able to apply for the housing subsidy of NT$4000/mth.
I hope you find a way to resolve this problem quickly in the near future as your spouse will have more rights if she was married to a taiwanese citizen.
That should be HRO. HRO= Household Registration Office, HHR= Household Registration.
As in TECO authenticated, right?
That’s what immigration told you you needed.
What’s going to happen when your wife needs to renew her ARC? If this isn’t sorted out by then, things will get complicated when the foreign resident she is the spouse of no longer exists in the system.
Taking a perhaps overly optimistic view, maybe they take her and your last ARC, your Taiwan ID and marriage certificates and refer the case to higher up, then higher up at immigration gets your HRO to add your wife to your HHR.
Thank you, much appreciated. I imagine that everyone going through this process suffers in one way or another. It’s never easy. You did it a while ago if I remember. I bet things were even worse back then.
I agree, I said this to their face. I asked them why they would advise my agent/friend to let me use her address, knowing that I don’t live there, but not allow me to use my true address, which was on my ARC just before applying for citizenship?
No answer.
Thanks for sharing. This is next on my list of things to do.
I paid her 5000NT to help me with the citizenship process and to fix the bank stuff, which we’ll do on Friday.
I swear they are not making it easy. It’s the same thing all over again, everything I went through in 2018 trying to get her a spouse visa/ARC. I have been talking to TECO for 3 days, just to get an appointment for authentication. Still haven’t got it. They keep passing me from one person to another.
Ah! Thanks for the correction… I think my brain is just mush from dealing with all the red tape in Taiwan.
Correct.
TECO authenticated + reauthenticated by MOFA Taiwan + Translated & Notarized in Taiwan…
They said :
We don’t accept Taiwanese marriage certificate for two foreigners
We don’t accept your foreign marriage certificates because they are too old. You need to get new ones.
I told them I can’t get a new one because I renounced my citizenship. They wouldn’t beleive me. They kept telling me that when a Taiwanese quits Taiwan citizenship, their records still remain, so they assume it’s the same case in every country. I tried to explain to them the very “special” relationship Pakistan and China has, and how Pakistan refuses to serve their ex-citizens if they are nationals of either Taiwan or Israel. That’s a very exclusive group that I am in right now.
For my wife, I told them we can get it, but we’d rather we didn’t have to, because it costs time, effort and money. Especially time, since TECO Manila is currently giving out authentication appointments for Nov 2022
I honestly don’t know. I feel anxious to ask immigration about her ARC. I don’t want them to take it or say it’s invalid or something.
I am sorry but I am not so optimistic. I had a translator with me that day, and she told me how upset the people were in HRO. They were upset why immigration threw this issue in their lap.
They kept calling immigration repeatedly to ask why they didn’t put my wife’s name in the settlement papers knowing that she was on a spouse ARC all these years.
They then also called Tainan HRO (who issued my Taiwanese marriage), and argued with them for one hour.
Yeah…I naturalized back in 2015. It was little different back then where we had to renounce our citizenship first and then get naturalized. If for some reason I got rejected, I would be in limbo, neither here nor there.
Yes, this is a pretty straight forward process but…you would still need your landlady to provide you with the latest House Tax certificate (房屋稅單). This might prove tricky if she’s scared/nervous that you will “join” their household. Just assure her you will have a 獨立戶 (Independant household registration) with the same address. You will get your own Household registration booklet (戶口名簿) and you will be the 戶長 (Head of the house) while your landlady will still have her own 戶口名簿.
Trust me, it will get better in the days ahead. The first month or so I was also very frustrated as I had to update everything with some hurdles coming my way where I had to explain why I wasn’t a citizen of my Original country anymore and that I can’t get any documents (esp passport) from there anymore. But in the long run, with that ID, I was able to accomplish a lot, get a lot of Govt. benefits, got the “special payment” when my daughter was born, my kids getting subsidies etc. Just hang in there mate.
Because it is a useless document (for non-Taiwanese). It’s barely accepted in other countries and worst of all, Taiwan itself doesn’t accept it.
Reminds me of that guy who flew in on a Taiwan NWOHR passport last year only to be sent back to the US because immigration wouldn’t accept a Taiwanese passport.
Hopefully you won’t have to fly back to the PH just to get married again (doubt the PH gov’t would let you in the first place if you’re already registered there). If they need you to get a TW marriage certificate and your wife has an APRC, you should technically be able to register your marriage in Taiwan without having to go thru all the other hoops (interviews and what not). An acquaintance of mine just got that done earlier this year after getting her APRC. Otherwise…best of luck I guess, dude. I feel you
FYR when my wife submitted her papers for naturalization last year she provided a copy of our marriage certificate TECO authenticated in 2009 but reauthenticated by MOFA in 2021. The procedure was not very smooth but after several phone calls they accepted it.
I am sure we’ll always remember 2022, as the year of our rebirth. 
So Taiwan assumes all new Citizens to have a house in their own name which is almost impossible considering real estate prices here and we don’t have parents, grandparents or great great grandparents who bequeathed their houses in our name.
I imagine that everyone going through this process suffers in one way or another. It’s never easy. You did it a while ago if I remember. I bet things were even worse back then.
