I am European with a permanent residency here in Taiwan, my wife is Taiwanese. I want to bring my elderly parents over to Taiwan for retirement. They both have a decent income (pension). The main reason is that my Dad has Alzheimer and the care facilities back home are either very inadequate or outrageously expensive. My idea is to bring them here and hire one or two full-time care givers for my Dad here in Taiwan.
Does anybody have experience in this regard? Can they get a residency? What is the paperwork required? Is it easy to hire foreign (Filipino, Indonesian, etc.) care givers here?
Any comments are, as always, highly appreciated.
I have wondered this also. My wife is Taiwanese and her mother-in-law (which to most people here would be mother) is not Taiwanese. Therefore can her/my mother use the JRFV?
Funny you should ask. My wife and I were just discussing this last week. Her boss is ethnically Chinese but is from Australia. She’s a fairly high level professional and has been caring for her 85 year-old mother here in Taiwan, but she was told her mother must return to Australia because the mother has no work permit or marriage visa or the like, the same as any other foreigner. They (and my wife) thought the law/authorities might make an exception when a relative is that old and is dependent upon on the non-Taiwanese relative who is living in Taiwan. I was doubtful.
After all, the govt doesn’t want a bunch of dependent old people who can’t contribute to Taiwan’s economy to come over here, use the resources, and take up space on this already overcrowded little rock. . . that is, unless they get a work permit or marriage visa like everyone else. I wouldn’t expect the govt makes an exception for old or dependent relatives.
I could be mistaken. I don’t know what the law actually says. But I’m betting there is no such exception.
Hell, I don’t know. I have my married visa, so I’m set for life as far as I know and no longer need to make visa runs or know any of the details of how such things work, which is good because my brain is full and I never really understood that stuff in the first place.
Maybe JFRV is only for ones spouse. Unless you marry your mother, she probably doesn’t qualify.
On the other hand, they must make exceptions for young children of an ARC-holder. Maybe they do make exceptions for dependent parents. I don’t know.
As far as I know, there are a number of permutations accepted by the government as qualifying as “family,” not just spouse.
Seems the main thing is the no-work-allowed proviso, which I suppose wouldn’t be a problem for a retiree.
I know that foreign adults can get JFRV from their dependant Taiwanese citizen kids. I used to think of bring my mother over, too, but never did it. In my case, in the first place, she wouldn’t have been able to deal with the culture shock. Or the plane ride.
I don’t think it’s a case of “a bunch of old dependents not making any contributions” here, actually quite the opposite: As I said my parents have a decent pension (meaning decent back home - which should be really, really good over here!), so they would be spending money without taking anybody’s job - think of it like a long-term, well-behaved Mainland tourist with loaded pockets, and without the political baggage!
As for the culture shock, my Mom likes coming to Taiwan and since Dad’s mind is pretty much gone (Alzheimer) I doubt he’ll experience anything like culture shock. The flight might be a challenge, but nothing a large dose of tranquilizers couldn’t handle…
In fact, the government is desperate for wealthy retirees to live here and spend their cash – they even have special “long stay” visas available for such people. Right now, they’re concentrating on Japanese retirees, but who knows?
Maybe Feiren has more knowledge of this – he knows everything there is to know about Taiwan.
My experience is similar to what the OP described: decent pension; can get along fine back home (in US), but would be able to get much better care here for the same amount of or even less money; health issues with my dad; my wife is Taiwanese and I have an APRC.
Edit: I see there is some good info here. Spoke/wrote too soon.
My situation is similar to yours, and I’ve been mulling this over for my parents. The deal breaker is that my mother uses at least one arthritis medication that is simply not available in Taiwan, and I don’t want to encourage her and my dad to make what would be a difficult move at their age and then find problems in getting the meds they need. They would also need to go through the difficult process of finding a new set of doctors. I also think that the heat and high humidity would be a problem, because they both like being outside. Moving to Taiwan would be difficult enough, and if it doesn’t work out a move back would be demoralizing and physically very difficult.
If they get ARC by any way, they should stay here for 6 months before they are eligible/mandated to join NHI, unless it is a work based ARC in which case they can join immediately through their employer.