A foreigner’s experience in 2018 trying to get residence visa for a Filipina Wife

Thanks for sharing the link. I had no idea there were some limitations.

Famous b****** in the HK office. I remember them giving me some s*** along the same limes when I was there .

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Hi Nonso. I’m having same problem with my Pakistani husband regarding his Taiwan Visa. I’m a Filipina-Chinese with TW National ID, but my husband is not allowed to apply for ARC, so I want to seek legal advise from a lawyer. This Taiwan Law towards foreign spouse is not fair and I have contacted BOCA through phone calls and email, but they don’t give me any valid reason why they don’t grant resident visa to my husband??? We have been to local government offices to seek for help but they can’t do anything about BOCA’s decision, so I guess consulting a lawyer would be the best way! Hope you can give us your contact for legal advice. Thanks in advance!

Hi Nonso. I’m having same problem with my Pakistani husband regarding his Taiwan Visa. I’m a Filipina-Chinese with TW National ID, but my husband is not allowed to apply for ARC, so I want to seek legal advise from a lawyer. This Taiwan Law towards foreign spouse is not fair and I have contacted BOCA through phone calls and email, but they don’t give me any valid reason why they don’t grant resident visa to my husband??? We have been to local government offices to seek for help but they can’t do anything about BOCA’s decision, so I guess consulting a lawyer would be the best way! Hope you can give us your contact for legal advice. Thanks in advance!

Hi Wujialing, Taiwanese laws for families/spouses in general are indeed unfair and they tend to get even worse if you happen to be from a poor/developing country.

In your case, being a Filipina (even with an ID) trying to get a Pakistani spouse here is going to be very difficult. My situation was reverse. It took me 8 months of struggle to get it done.

A few questions though :

  1. How do you have Taiwanese Citizenship ? Were you born here or previously married to a Taiwanese (assumption) ?
  2. Where did you get married to the Pakistani guy ? You met him in Taiwan? What kind of a visa was he on ?
  3. He needs to apply for a Residence Visa from a TECO, before he can apply for a spousal ARC in Taiwan.

My wife was in Taiwan and we got married locally but she still had to leave Taiwan and go though the whole visa process again.

As far as I understand you cannot convert to spouse ARC directly from a visitor visa or blue collar ARC.

Hi. Fuzzy_Barbecue thanks for writing. To answer your questions…

  1. I am an oversea Filipino-Chinese, living in Taiwan with my family. I was born in the Philippines but my dad is Chinese and emigrated to Taiwan in the late 80’s
  2. We got married in Pakistan, and had our marriage registered in Taiwan Household office as we finished and passed our marriage interview in TECO Malaysia. We have completed and followed all the procedures required by TECO Malaysia and Boca, even with the chinese translations of our documents and had it attested in Taiwan Consulate Office in Hong Kong as instructed. (Btw, we met through a friend and we flew to Malaysia to meet and the rest is history…)
  3. My husband is now here in Taiwan since January this year under visitor visa of 60 days and extendable 2x (total of 180days stay), he flew to Malaysia this month and applied a new visa to re-enter, after 6 days he returned to Taiwan. Sadly, TECO Malaysia issued the same visitor visa with 60days and extendable 2x (180days). Both old and new visa have a remark of “TS: can not change to residency”. I feel so bad cos everytime I call BOCA and asked why my husband can’t be granted a Resident Visa since I am a Citizen here, their answers are different all the time, one said that his case is not special for others have same problem, while other staff said bcos of his country. I have asked help from other government offices but it was useless!
    Is there any suggestion or advice from you Fuzzy? Your help will be appreciated. Thank you so much for taking time to read.

where did you already ask?
Did you ask legal aid foundation? They would financially help you to get a lawyer, depending on your income.
https://www.laf.org.tw/en/
https://www.laf.org.tw/en/index.php?action=service&Sn=20

Did you contact to TransAsia Sisters Association, Taiwan (TASAT),?
http://tasat.org.tw/enPage/290
http://tasat.org.tw/page/115
The case on the Chinese page has some similarity to your case.

This case is similar too. @Hana, do you have any update?

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Hi. Fuzzy_Barbecue thanks for writing. To answer your questions…

  1. I am an oversea Filipino-Chinese, living in Taiwan with my family. I was born in the Philippines but my dad is Chinese and emigrated to Taiwan in the late 80’s
  2. We got married in Pakistan, and had our marriage registered in Taiwan Household office as we finished and passed our marriage interview in TECO Malaysia. We have completed and followed all the procedures required by TECO Malaysia and Boca, even with the chinese translations of our documents and had it attested in Taiwan Consulate Office in Hong Kong as instructed. (Btw, we met through a friend and we flew to Malaysia to meet and the rest is history…)
  3. My husband is now here in Taiwan since January this year under visitor visa of 60 days and extendable 2x (total of 180days stay), he flew to Malaysia this month and applied a new visa to re-enter, after 6 days he returned to Taiwan. Sadly, TECO Malaysia issued the same visitor visa with 60days and extendable 2x (180days). Both old and new visa have a remark of “TS: can not change to residency”. I feel so bad cos everytime I call BOCA and asked why my husband can’t be granted a Resident Visa since I am a Citizen here, their answers are different all the time, one said that his case is not special for others have same problem, while other staff said bcos of his country. I have asked help from other government offices but it was useless!
    Is there any suggestion or advice from you Fuzzy? Your help will be appreciated. Thank you so much for taking time to read.

Hi Wujialing,

If you are a regular Taiwanese (with local ID/Passport/Household registration), then normal Taiwan laws should apply, which means your spouse should be able to get an ARC and even an APRC/Citizenship after 3 years of lawful marriage to you (a Taiwanese national).

I didn’t know they had exceptions for Taiwanese citizens based on the nationalities they marry. That would be discrimination.

I think there should be at least ten or more cases in Taipei where local a Taiwanese woman is married to a Pakistani. Most of those Pakistanis are citizens already because they married long time ago. I think they are all friends and they get together for Friday prayers in the main mosque. I would strongly recommend your husband to visit the mosque on Friday and approach the head of the mosque and ask for help. Many Pakistanis there speak absolutely fluent Chinese and may be able to guide him as their case is exactly the same as yours (assuming Taiwan treats you like a regular Taiwanese).

Other way could be to check whether your husband can qualify for APRC after 3 years of marriage… but that would mean you would have to keep doing this 180 days visa process for at least 3 years, which I know will be a big hassle.

Unless you are fluent in Chinese, better to take someone with you and go directly to the BOCA office in Taipei. It’s harder for them to turn you away when you are standing in front of them. Make sure you print some laws of Taiwan related to marriage / ARC etc. So they know you know your rights.

In my case I was in the south, so all I could do was send them emails and making calls. I literally send emails everywhere. I even sent faxes to Ministers addresses directly. I even went to the green party office in Tainan and even they found some guy to push the head of NIA. I fought with the NIA and the embassies, and finally I personally went down to the TECO in Manila. But by the time I got there, they already knew who I was, because they got complaints from so many different directions. They were incredible nice to me then, even let me skip the queue and quietly gave the residence visa to my wife without any further hassle. It was a bitter-sweet moment. I succeeded in the end, but it cost me 8 months of pain and tens of thousands of NT$.

So all I can say is don’t give up, know your rights, and fight for your rights.

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they request different procedures for marriage between a national and a foreigner from designated twenty something countries.

it should not happen, but seems not rare that a spouse from SEA is rejected to get a resident visa multiple times. A lawyer, as @wujialing looking for, should do a help, I think.

Or, @wujialing, did you already try to ask for some help from representative/parliamentary/lawmaker of your district at any level?

he should be on ARC for 5 years to get APRC, or for 3 years to naturalize, so anyway he needs to get through the BOCA as a first step.

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they request different procedures for marriage between a national and a foreigner from designated twenty something countries.

Oh, I had no idea about this. Thanks for confirming. I had just assumed that the rules would be the same for every foreigner a Taiwanese marries. It’s a pity to hear that it’s not.

Just curious, what countries are in that list ?

FYI

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Taiwan bureaucracy in my experience is very efficient, especially in processing papers. The only caveat of course is, that the papers you are processing followed their KNOWN set of rules.

Trouble or red tape often arises when bureaucrats encounter special cases they don’t know anything about. The standard action for most part is to reject the application and get rid of the problem immediately.

So I would say that Taiwan bureaucracy is efficient but some bureaucrats are IGNORANT and LAZY!

For example, one of the requirement for APRC or Taiwan Citizenship is you must have earned, during the preceding year, an average monthly income that is twice the monthly minimum wage. For this, you need to show your previous year’s income tax return as proof. A bureaucrat in Taipei’s Zhongshan District Household Office in charge of all these applications interpreted this law as “net income (minus all the deductions you apply for in your tax) divided by 12 is the average monthly income”. Thus my application was rejected. However, when the same paper was submitted in Tamsui’s Household Office (I moved to Tamsui just for this sole purpose), they rightly interpreted the law as your Gross Annual Income divided by 12, and approved my application. Same law, different bureaucrat interpretation!

If, in most cases where you can not chose a more favorable bureaucrat to deal with, look for a POLITICIAN (a self-serving bureaucrat looking for a controversial cause to champion). Ask favors from your Taiwanese friends to help you find one.

@wujialing Contact Lorna Kung and I am sure she will be more than willing to help you. She knows a lot of politicians. If she does not respond to your message, just go to St. Christopher’s Church and ask them to help you contact her.

@Fuzzy_Barbecue I’m really sorry about your experience, and sorrier that I only read this post now. I would have saved you a lot of trouble and grief if I saw this post earlier. All your wife had to do was to get a visitor visa that do not have a “can not change to residency” stamp, and then she could have applied for a resident visa here in MOFA office by showing the authenticated marriage certificate and a medical certificate from one of their authorized hospital. She would have received her ARC in less than a month. Seeing that you will be applying for a Taiwan Citizenship soon, DM me if you need help or information you cannot find in this forum.

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and, many spouses from SEA are struggling to get the visa.


very agree. I think this root may be more efficient than the lawyer root.

It is way easier to find a “fixer” to process a Visitor’s Visa than a residence visa in the Philippines.

But a lawyer route could leave some records that could be used for future cases, while the politician route wouldn’t, no?
That is, assuming both ways can get it done.

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@dasaint

I wish I had talked to you earlier. Totally agree with what you said. I have had similar experiences over the last 5 years. i.e. If you get refused at one branch office, just try another because there’s a good chance the person there follows a different interpretation of the rules. I have had such experiences at Banks, Telecoms, NHI offices, even TECOs etc…

One of the recent bad experiences I had was when I joined a new company in 2018 and they asked me to open an account at Taiwan Business Bank for receiving salary. I had already been in Taiwan for 4 years by that point and was shocked when I was turned away by the a big branch office due to my “nationality”. My local colleague was with me there, so there wasn’t any language issue. The guy at the bank was super rude and commented to him, “what if he does money laundering or sends money back home for criminal or terrorist stuff”. My colleague even showed him my Gold Card ARC (I am practically the only one from my country who has that in Taiwan) and told him that I was his manager. The bank still refused. Went to another smaller branch office just a couple KM away and they accepted instantly (no questions asked)…

Thank you for your offer. I will definitely take you up on that as I am still fighting for a couple of issues.

Regarding my wifes ARC, I had tried almost everything. After she was first rejected, I tried to get her every other type of visa too. They rejected every single type because they had already identified her by that point and told her that they knew that in reality she was going to Taiwan to be with her husband so she needed to apply for the “spousal” residence visa and follow all the stupid conditions that go with it.

I had even secured her an admission in NCKU and got an admission letter for that. They wouldn’t even give her a student visa. Real bastards, those guys!

The only way we survived those 8 months was due to the Philippines 14 days visa-free entry. In that way she could bypass the TECO and come visit me for 2 weeks at a time, but due to the costs I could only afford it once every 2 months or so. At one point she couldn’t even come visit me because TECO refused to return her passport, accusing her of lying to the embassy about purpose of her visit ( student visa in that case ).

I was nearly driven to madness. I know I am not allowed to say illegal stuff here but can I at least say that I “thought” of these things… Here’s are some of the extreme actions I considered :

  1. Getting her here by an illegal boat (no clue how , though)…
  2. Quit my job and go into hiding together next time she came via 14 days visa-free entry (& destroy my career and future in the process)
  3. Quit my job and leave Taiwan forever, and be with her in some other country (face possible long-term joblessness…)

Thankfully I was talked out of these thoughts by friends (and even some people here on Forumosa). But this is what Taiwan does to you. They say they want you, they need professionals and foreigners, they want diversity etc… but somehow they don’t make you feel like you are welcome.

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Just so you know, in the Philippines, as it is in many civilized country, it is illegal to withhold a person’s passport. You could have lodged a complaint in the Philippines Foreign Affairs office, and the person who withheld the passport would have been in trouble, or imprisoned.

As to the bank account issue, you could have told that guy in the bank to call his manager and let him know that it was your new company, who I am assuming releases the payroll thru their bank who is requiring you to open the account. I am sure the manager would not want to lose a big account (your company’s). I am pretty sure if the manager was involved, that guy would have been reprimanded.

Unfortunately there are still a few bigoted Taiwanese who sees as foreign people as taking the jobs that was meant for them. I have been working here in Taiwan since 2000 and got my APRC in 2009, then the Taiwan ID a year later.

If you’re planning to apply for citizenship here, I suggest you to take the language exam which is done quarterly in your Household Office, as early as you can . This way, if you don’t pass, you can wait another 3 months and take the exams again. I took the written exam and passed on my first try without understanding any Chinese characters. That was a lot easier than taking 200 hours of Chinese language course :slight_smile:

Again, if you need help or any info, just DM. Thanks!

How’s that possible?
Weren’t the questions in Chinese?

is it still quarterly in southern taiwan?

Yes. I believe this is true for the whole Taiwan. Just ask in the Household Registration office where you live.

Questions were in Chinese. Answers are multiple choice. :slight_smile:

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