I’ve a criminal record for a white collar crime I did commit and was convicted for 9 years ago.
The sentence was one year (suspended). Luckily it does not appear on my police certificate and it will be completely deleted from the system in two years.
Now the issue is that the different ARC visa forms ask something like “have you ever had a criminal record”.
I am afraid that my application will get refused based on the criminal record. Has anyone experienced a similar situation?
I am considering hiring an immigration lawyer.
They’ll only know what you tell them, but you will ultimately be breaking the law if you don’t and they later find out. Don’t see how they would find out though, unless for some reason you were under intense scrutiny. I know people who have had their marriage visa and ARC approved despite having a criminal record, for silly things. Ultimately it would depend on the seriousness of your crime and the reason for your application. From what I’ve heard, if your wife and child(ren) are Taiwanese nationals, they’ll accept you no matter what and won’t really ever deport you as they feel you have a responsibility to provide for your family.
A) If your criminal record gets erased in two years, I would be waiting on that so that you don’t get branded for the rest of your life in a foreign country. If criminal record checks turn up nothing when you apply or when you apply after it’s erased, it sounds good to me but…
B) Consult an immigration lawyer for further information.
I guess wait for it to be deleted from the system (I’m assuming you are not from the United States, they do NOT delete records at all, in fact even arrests show up even if you were ultimately found not guilty or charge dismissed).
But this is not the USA and I am not sure they’d even find it. Not all countries are like US and Canada where even insignificant records are absolute disqualifier.
The problem is that my country is a real caretaker 
I already moved abroad, and a few months later I got a letter from the local authorities.
It stated that they were informed by my country of origin of my conviction and that I was currently on probation.
I was baffled, but it had no consequences because it was another member state of the European Union.
Now the situation is different of course, I am not on probation anymore and it is a country outside of the EU, and this time I would not tell them where I moved.
But you are right, I should wait for the record to be erased. If there wasn’t Covid this is what I would have done anyway and used the 90days visa-exempt stays as they don’t ask for criminal history and I never and a problem with those.
Well EU to EU is like Texas to California. Records/judgments are shared.
Also usually when you are on probation you are supposed to obtain permission before moving elsewhere. So it was your probation officer who notified the other country.
Once you are off probation then they have nothing to do with you.
They’re not an absolute disqualifier in Canada. (Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/inadmissibility/overcome-criminal-convictions.html. People with criminal records can even work for the government, though as with immigration, certain specific crimes make them automatically ineligible.)
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You get deported if your sentence is over two years prison time.
I know someone that had a police caution which displayed on their police certificate
After 10 years, such caution was removed from their record and their police certificate for immigration purposes no longer displayed it
However, there are two types of “clean” police certificate where they came from, one has wording that implies there’s no record and one that implies there is no “current” record
they were able to get ARC using a certificate which was worded to say that there is no “current” record. As far as I know they weren’t asked about it either
Not always. You can be deported but iiuc it is ultimately up to the judge.
In the US even minor crimes like shoplifting is deportable, and judges have nothing to do with it. It’s always ICE.
But like I said not many countries do it like the US, and most the time it would have to be something severe to trigger deportation. In the EU 3 years sentence seems to be the agreed upon line.
I can confirm that in the EU you can get a permanent residency even with a very long criminal record. In most EU countries there is this concept of automatic rehabilitation after a certain amount of years. usually between 5 to 20 years depending on the sentence. Although you have to stay completely out of trouble during that time.
No it is the law
If the conviction is spent then it is not meant to show up. You may if you are from the UK need to contact them to remove it as it does sometimes not happen automatically. Also if the ARC is tied to a job and the job is specifically related to your crime it may get mentioned. It would in a background check in the UK, not sure it would be the same in this instance but worth checking.
A UK one will show that there is no current record. Immigration could then easily find out what the previous record was. In my acquaintance’s case, it doesn’t look like they did.
There used to be a some regulations on a gov Taiwanese website informing about policies regarding the issuance of visas with criminal records. I remember reading less than a year ago, but I cannot find it now. In it they talk about the statute of limitations for criminal records. They all had an expiration date started from the time when the excon was sentenced and even for hard felonies there was an expiration date of a few years depending on the crime.
I found it. For foreign criminal records please read the last paragraph:
Source of info:
https://www.moi.gov.tw/english/News_Content.aspx?n=7630&s=143762
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