Criminal Record issue (UK to Taiwan)

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Does anyone have experience or knowledge of applying for visitor or residents visa but with prior criminal record from UK (teenage misdemeanors from 20 years ago)?
I’m due to be married in Taiwan in June and would like to come over and live, probably early next year. I understand that for visa application I will need to provide criminal record check. Recently I decided to get a Subject Access Disclosure to check and found that there were things showing from the late nineties.
Does anyone have any experience of this or know where I can find out for sure where I stand with this matter?

2

Is a misdemeanor still on the books after 20 years?

3

According to my Subject Access Disclosure. Caution and a conviction show up from 1997 and 1999 respectively.

4

This is not the United States and in Taiwan we don’t punish people forever because of foolish things 20 years ago.

Unless your records was in the past 5 years and serious they won’t care.

5

Thanks! Any idea where I can get official guidance on this?

6

I read it on some NIA website but I forget where. Taiwanese government website is hard to navigate…

7

Thanks. I’ll check it out.

8

I’m from the UK. You can get them removed from your record.

9

The exceptions are ABH GBH and Child Abuse.

10

Also immigration matter is an exception.

11

Great! Any idea how I go about doing that?

12

You should get a solicitor to do it. It doesn’t cost much.

13

I think if I read the rehabilitation of offenders act correctly, records are “spent” automatically after a certain amount of time. How long depends if the severity of the sentence.

Your offense was most likely already spent unless it falls under certain exceptions. In all other case forced disclosure is actually a criminal offense.

However I really don’t know what changes with the UK becoming a police state… Not like the US is any better considering they keep all charges on record, even if it was dismissed or found not guilty and you are forever stained for this. Americans like to punish anyone who are even accused of a crime and I remember reading a certain EU directive that was designed to combat this.

Now I never been to the UK but I read up on the laws because I was looking into going there in the past.

14

They are spent. So if he applies for a job he doesn’t have to disclose it. But he can get these removed from the database now, so they won’t show on the searches

15

Not Murder etc?

16

Yeah meant to type etc