Okay so one of my mates has made a new girlfriend here in Taiwan. She’s a foreigner and she’s from South East Asia. I feel her immigration situation doesn’t quite calculate and I’m trying to warn my friend.
She told me she currently holds an APRC, and that she found a job 2 months after arriving in Taiwan.
She also told me she’s been here for 6 years and arrived when she was 19. She has held that same job up until today, and that job is in a trading company. She works on a computer.
This does not make sense, right? Something is fishy/illegal here. I’m thinking perhaps she has signed up as a blue collar worker and started engaging in white collar work.
Exactly. If she’s Filipino, Indonesian or any other South eastern nationality, that does not limit her only to a blue collar job. She might be telling the truth regarding having a white collar job.
However, as Bumclouds points out, the math does not add up. Even if she is -probably, I presume- listed as Overseas Chinese, as many of South East Asia white collar workers I know, fellow students or editors or finance people.
OTOH, Bumclouds, there is just so much you can do. Your spidey senses are telling you something is afoot, but if the affected party -your friend- cannot or doesn’t want to see it, then, aside from speaking your piece -which will not be well received- there is little you can do. In matters of the heart, the worst blindness comes from the one who shuts his eyes, as we say in Spanish.
Never get in the way of a guy and his girl (or a girl and her guy). If they are headed for a crash you have to let them crash. If you intervene it probably will cost you a friendship (at least).
Both me and my girlfriend sat him down at the dinner table and told him what we thought. We told him straight up we think she’s illegal and we think she’s sus.
My mate was just visiting me in Taiwan for a few days. He wasn’t planning on coming back. Now he plans on quitting his job as a lawyer to come here and find her again.
No. What you NEED to do now is butt out. Is your friend a child? You have made your concerns known to him. It is now up to him and HIM ALONE to decide how he should proceed.
Except that he can’t read her ARC, while the OP can. Even if his friend was concerned and asked to look at her ID himself he wouldn’t be able to make head nor tail of it. The OP can offer to help read it, if his friend so desires.
In this case, I would say that his friend might not know what help to ask for. In most western countries, people don’t have a piece of ID that can potentially show whether or not you’re married. Therefore, bumclouds can offer this information, along with the offer to read it for his mate, before taking your advice to butt out till asked for help.
I know meddling in other people’s affairs is bad, Sandman, but my friend is not too clued up. He hasn’t the vaguest clue how the immigration / work permit rules are here and he thought everything was kosher. So my Taiwanese girlfriend and I had to clue him up in order for him to make an informed decision.
I don’t know whether you’d consider that to be meddling or looking after your friend.
Well, you’ve already told him you think his love is a scammer. Has he asked you for further help to check her out? If not, you can ask if he’d like you to help him out. Further than that, no. He’s a lawyer. He can’t be completely clueless.
