EDIT: the friend in question joins the thread on page 2 as “Deported”.
A friend to a number of Forumosans sent the following email to us today, and is apparently being deported, so I’d like to ask on her behalf whether she has any options at this point. (I tried searching but couldn’t find relevant info.)
Are there any additional avenues of appeal? Will she ever be able to return, e.g., after a year or two? Is there any way to get a postponement of the deportation date so as to be able to better put her affairs in order before leaving? Would the situation be much worse if she left a little later than her deportation date, e.g., paying a fine?
Thanks in advance for any help on this urgent case!!!
Oh, I thought it sounded like the same thing. It sounds like her ARC (“residency”) has been cancelled, and she has a grace period of 2 weeks to leave; she also said the kindie was fined $150,000 for illegally employing her. I believe her main (ARC-providing) employer is standing by her and wants her to stay.
I’ll clarify with her shortly. She’s a lurker on Forumosa, so I’ll encourage her to register to join the conversation directly. She’s a great gal who has volunteered selflessly to help AnimalsTaiwan and Taiwan’s stray animals, so I really want to see if we can help her!
When one is deported, there is usually an escort straight to the airport, or to the dentention centre first. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. (But not happening to me, thankfully)
It would be really great to speak with this person first hand as we have seen before how third hand information can sometimes prove to be inaccurate.
If indeed this teacher has an ARC to teach and is deported for the second job at a kindergarten, then this would be the first case that I have heard of of this happening in many years.
There are some things that don’t make sense to me, and hopefully Dragonbones can encourage this person to join up so that we can get to the bottom of this.
First of all, to my knowledge if you are deported for a visa offence you are not prohibited from returning to Taiwan indefinitely. You are generally prohibited from returning for a period of time which seems to be anything from one to five years.
A foreigner who had committed a crime here would probably not be able to return forever, but that is because they wouldn’t qualify for a visa to return rather that one is not likely to be given.
If a teacher is blacklisted then the CLA has stated that the teacher will be permanently prevented from obtaining a work permit to teach here again, but a teacher blacklisting by the CLA would not affect the teachers chances of securing a visa to come here.
When the teacher says that she can’t return does she mean that she cannot get a visa to return, or does she mean that she can’t work here again?
That would seem to suggest a visa related matter. Who told her this? It seems to me that it is likely to have been either a misunderstanding or an exaggeration as I can’t believe that she would be prohibited from ever returning to Taiwan based upon working illegally.
I think that we need to confirm exactly what she was told and by whom before we jump to any conclusions.
As Maoman says, this does not sound like a deportation that would warrant someone being banned from ever returning to Taiwan. Someone who had done something so serious as to warrant a ban from ever returning would be detained and escorted to the airport by the authorities and placed on the airplane, not allowed to wander the streets for two weeks.
The time period given sounds more like the teachers work permit was cancelled. This is the standard period given in this case, and this should not effect any future application the teacher may make for a visa to return to Taiwan.
Who reviewed the case? Did she ask for an appeal? What did she appeal? Who did she appeal to? This is all highly unusual and sounds more like an employment issue than a visa issue.
Who did what?
I guess that the answer to that depends upon the answer to the question - Who reviewed the case previously? Generally speaking the FAP would be the people to speak to about residency concerns, BOCA about visa concerns, and the CLA about working concerns. We would need to know what the details are before we could advise who she needed to speak to.
I believe that she would, but it would no doubt depend upon the reason for her deportation. I doubt that she would be barred from ever returning to Taiwan for a simple breach of visa conditions and this is why it seems that there has either been a misunderstanding or an exaggeration.
It seems that she has already had four months since she was caught so I would think that it would be difficult to get much more of an extension.
Generally speaking thoough, I believe that the CLA can grant an extension if your deportation is on work related matters. I think that Scott Ezels case is a precedant here.
I think that it’s pretty safe to assume that overstaying in these circumstances would not be to her advantage.
The easiest visa to get to enter Taiwan, provided you’re from an eligible country, is a landing visa. Just come here on a plane. Automatic visa for 30 days. I bring this up only to say, I’m still stunned that any person whose visa is cancelled, who has been in Taiwan for some time working, always seems to get such a short time to pack up and leave. First I heard 7 days. In this case, 14 days. Hartzell, this would be one for your “stuff to fix” list. Namely, if a person has been here on a resident visa (not a temporary situation), then he or she should be given a reasonable amount of time to prepare to permanently relocate, which should be at least as long as the most casual tourist has to visit – 30 days. One week or even two weeks notice is just not enough to reasonably move your life. Really, by the time that your head has absorbed what’s happening, you’d even be past the time limit to get cheap plane tickets.
Did she have a working permit with the company?
You could have a working permit through company A, and therefore also get an ARC, but still be working illegally at company B. Why would the Education or Labour department have issued her a work permit if they knew the school was illegal? Or do they do that?
e.g. working at one of the larger kindergartens will usually not get you deported because they are often registered as language centres or whatnot so they can employ non-Taiwanes English teachers.
My friends girlfriend got busted like this. She was substitute teaching without an ARC, still on her visa. Cops came to the school, and they took her info. A month or so later, she decided that Taiwan wasn’t for her, the relationship didn’t work out etc. She went to Thailand for a month, then decided to give Taiwan and the lover another shot.
She was stopped by the police at the airport, and wasn’t allowed to enter Taiwan. They held her in a small room until she could get a one way ticket out of here.
Worst is that the cops warned the boss of the school that she was subbing at, but the boss never told her.
From the account the Dragonbones has given, she knew four months prior that she may be deported.
From what I read above, she may have had a legal job (work permit and ARC) with one employer, and was working illegally for the kindergarten on the side. It is not known whether her legal employer knew or encouraged this, but it would be interesting to find this out.
Was she prevented from entering due to the previous problem with the illegal teaching, or was she prevented from entering because she didn’t have an onward ticket. The regulations pretty clearly state that you must have an outbound ticket to be allowed into the country, and although this is not always enforced, is it possible that this was the reason that she was not permitted to enter Taiwan?
I was talking about all cases like this, and even in this case, from date of official notice. Prior to that, she was in limbo, with a possible outcome of nothing happening at all. Under those limbo circumstances, I don’t think most of us would start buying plane tickets and selling off furniture.
I was talking about all cases like this, and even in this case, from date of official notice. [/quote]
Yes, fair enough. Agreed that two weeks is rather short, especially for someone who has been here for years. I guess from the governments point of view any longer than two weeks would be too long considering that you couldn’t work, but I do take your point.
But now it seems that both the case that DB mentioned and the case that B9 mentioned involved people clearly working illegally. They were working in schools without having a working permit at that school…which is illegal, isn’t it? (one had a working permit, but only at another school, and the other was teaching on a visa, which is clearly illegal).Even if you have an ARC and a working permit at one school, shouldn’t you at least register your other job?
I know many people teach illegally, but if you get caught tough for you. Or am I wrong? At least it’s better now than before when it was difficult to teach at two places legally.
This is my working assumption, but I haven’t been able to have a conversation with her on the phone without interruption long enough to find out this info. I just got off the phone with her, and encouraged her to hustle over to an Internet cafe to join the thread, so you should see her (as “Deported”) in a few. Thanks to all so far!!!
Hello all…thanks for your replies and your time…
I have just today spoken with the owner of my school…a differeent school from the one at which I got busted, and she is trying to help me.
Here’s the scoop…
I worked at a Kindy where, of course, it is ilegal to work as a foreigner, and the police came in one day, got some pics of me teaching (with microphone on and everything) and took me down to the station. I continued to pleade innocence and signed a statement which in effect said that I was just visiting my friend who WAS the principle of the school. She (the prinicipal) and another apparently “big whig” guy of this school assured me that they had connections and that everything would be OK…silly me, I believed them…until yesterday, when a letter was delivered to both of the other schools where I work legally telling of the need for me to be out of the country in 14 days…
Who sent the letter? Have you received any correspondence? What does the letter say exactly? Can you scan it and post it? It’s important to know precisely what’s going on before anyone can help.
