Edit: Laws were different for father vs. mother prior to 1980 Feb. 9, sadly, so ignore this comment here. Still reading through things.
On a side note, this is interesting to read: 法規鬆綁暨新創法規調適平台 - 法規鬆綁建言 - 議題內容
I’m still reading it, but might have implications for other people applying for passport+TARC.
he could renounce his right to inherit some property just by signing a paper saying all are inherited by other people. Even if he renounced his nationality, he still had a claim to the property if he didn’t sign the paper…
this is the only way you can confirm. No matter how long you discuss here, we cannot know more than you know.
This thread may be related.
This is helpful
Some more analysis on this point.
My understanding is that my father – as a full ROC citizen – somehow “sponsored” (for lack of a better word) my mother’s naturalization application to become an ROC national (after my birth), even though my mother never lived in Taiwan. In other words, as the spouse of a full ROC citizen, my mother somehow qualified to become a naturalized ROC national.
That would imply that at the time of my mothers naturalization to ROC nationality (after my birth), my father was probably still a full ROC citizen, since he was able to “sponsor” my mother’s naturalization application to become an ROC national.
The only other possibility is that my father was actually an NWOHR (lost ROC citizenship and HHR, but not ROC nationality, and had NWOHR status), and as an NWOHR he was able to “sponsor” my mother’s naturalization application to become an ROC national.
Do you know anything about the conditions under which an ROC citizen or ROC national (i.e. NWOHR) is able to “sponsor” their spouse to become a naturalized ROC national? Does such “sponsorship” require the “sponsor” to be a full ROC citizen?
is your mother’s race Chinese? If so, it was much easier to get Taiwanese nationality than now in old days.
South-east Asian, so not 100% “Chinese” but maybe close enough geographically and in appearance to satisfy the authorities back in those days.
According to Nationality Act promulgated on February 5, 1929, by the National Government of the Republic of China, a foreign female who married to taiwanese and renounced her original nationality got Taiwanese nationality, until the Act was amended in 2000.
It said nothing on HHR.
Do you know if “Taiwanese” here means full ROC national with HHR, or does “Taiwanese” also include overseas Taiwanese NWOHR without full citizenship rights? In other words, did the “Taiwanese” spouse who “sponsored” the foreign spouse need to be a full ROC citizen with HHR?
As I edited the post, the law said nothing on HHR. And, actually, it said “Chinese”.
Thanks for checking.
This means that in my case, the mere fact that my father “sponsored” my mother’s naturalization to become an ROC national, does not necessarily prove that my father was a full ROC citizen (with HHR) at the time of sponsorship.
I have it and can have it translated when the time comes for the TARC application (I am in no hurry to do this).
It does seem that parents’ marriage status does figure into the passport application process – in other words, this question already needs to be addressed at the very first step, when applying for the NWOHR passport.
From the USA(Chicago) TECO office webpage:
https://www.roc-taiwan.org/uschi_en/post/58.html
It would be impossible to get a “legal acknowledgement” from my father since he is deceased. Therefore, the route of attempting application as the child of an unmarried ROC citizen seems impossible, since I cannot prove that he acknowledges me as his legitimate child. My birth certificate would prove he is my father, but I think that does not meet the standard of proof required here – proof that the unmarried father acknowledges the child born out of (legal) wedlock.
So I think it makes most sense to attempt to proceed with the NWOHR passport application based on the actual status in the USA, which is my having been born to married (in the USA) parents, even though said marriage was likely not recorded in the Taiwan HHR.
Unfortunately this carries with it the risk that Lain mentioned above:
I think this is the only route left – to rely on the assumption that he was still a citizen at my birth (and possibly at his death), and hence updates to his HHR might still be permitted after his death as a citizen (see my to-do list in Taiwan below).
Yes, I hope that for the first step, the NWOHR passport application, simply providing the TECO-authenticated copies of the marriage certificate and birth certificate will suffice.
As an additional note, my web research indicates I might also need to provide a ‘Parent’s Agreement on Child’s Surname’ document which seems to be this one: https://www.roc-taiwan.org/uploads/sites/64/2012/11/Parents-Agreement-on-Childs-Surname.pdf (see reference on p. 2 of the sample passport application form at 檔案下載).
I am assuming/hoping that the passport application can be done completely outside of Taiwan at the local TECO office.
Then, summarizing the above replies, during my next trip to Taiwan I could proceed as follows.
Then, I think everything should be up-to-date in my fathers HHR for a NWOHR passport application and/or a TARC application. (It’s even possible that the NWOHR passport application might be able to proceed before doing the above checks and updates in Taiwan.)
Is there any other important information I should verify while in Taiwan? Any other documents I might want to request for future reference?
As mentioned above, I have the death certificate for my father, and as his son (which I can prove with the birth certificate) I hope my case will be similar to yours such that I, being the deceased’s son, will be allowed to view and update the HHR at the HHR office.
What I want to avoid is any situation where my still-living mother might need to physically travel to Taiwan for some procedures, because that is basically impossible. Based on my above plan-of-action, can you think of any situations that might require my mother’s physical presence in Taiwan?
Finally, to follow-up on one last point that I did not understand:
Is this point referring to the same point we have been discussing above, namely, whether or not my father had valid past HHR (and if it was ever fully cancelled), in order to justify my future TARC application under AF384? Or, are you referring to something other than AF384 here?
There has been much information added in the meantime, so let me just quickly add my notes to those where I can:
*As some kind of proof: I did the same before, i.e. went to the HHR office with my birth certificates inquiring about my mother.
Do you know anything about the conditions under which an ROC citizen or ROC national (i.e. NWOHR) is able to “sponsor” their spouse to become a naturalized ROC national? Does such “sponsorship” require the “sponsor” to be a full ROC citizen?
I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say this 100% sure, but at least today, an NWOHR cannot sponsor any kind of citizenship or TARC application. Also remember what I said about whether you are considered Taiwanese: Your claim of nationality by birthright can only be inherited by an ROC citizen, not an ROC national.
I didn’t have time to fully go over tando’s resources yet, but I base this on a specific kind of interaction when “becoming” an ROC citizen:
It would therefore imply that your father was a citizen. But if I didn’t misunderstand something, we don’t have a prove (yet) whether your father was still a citizen at the time of your birth, do we?
About ROC citizens giving up their citizenship:
Put simply, for people like your father, they will never lose their right to obtain ROC nationality/citizenship again, even after renouncing their ROC citizenship temporarily. The process of re-acquiring citizenship for those people is … it’s not complicated per se, but you need to bring lots and lots of documents, make several different applications, and other stuff. The government has been simplifying this process over the last couple of years though. To put this in perspective, if your father would still be alive and would ask in Taiwan “How can I become a citizen again?” (assuming your father was a full citizen in the past), the clerk would hand him a ready-made printout and tell him to “simply” follow this form (http://house.chcg.gov.tw/files_house/83_1040507_喪失中華民國國籍者申請回復國籍暨戶籍登記流程表.pdf).
About the passport application:
Yes it can be done completely outside of Taiwan at your local TECO (proof: me, I think multipass, and others). For people becoming NWOHRs, this is simply the usual route. Unfortunately, my memory about my passport collection is a little bit vague because I didn’t know (yet) to focus on all the little kinds of details that you will later be aware of. Just some random information: I can’t imagine the document you linked about an “Agreement on Child’s Surname” to be a big problem … you are already an adult, so I don’t think your parents would need to do something here. FWIW, I can’t remember filling out this form (even though it’s also mentioned for the passport application at my local TECO website). I think it’s rather like this: In your case, your father is the ROC citizen, so you will have his surname in Taiwan.
About your last question about my use of “dependent”:
This is mostly related to TARC applications AF353 or AF384 (which I’m most familiar with). The offices in Taiwan use this term to ask who your dependent is, which means whose HHR you use for your TARC application. The question whether the HHR is active or not is something different, the point is simply that there needs to be an HHR which will later become your HHR, too.
Let’s assume your father has had an HHR (because of his military service and other things), so he could become your dependent for your TARC application. However, you wouldn’t be eligible to apply for a TARC if you are not considered Taiwanese by birthright (i.e. the question whether your father was a citizen at the time of your birth).*
*Ignoring some specific exceptions.
To be precise, however, we are talking about the possibility of sponsorship of an NWOHR application, not sponsorship of a citizenship application or sponsorship of a TARC application. Conceivably, sponsorship of an NWOHR application might be subject to less strict rules than sponsorship of a citizenship application or of a TARC application.
The time of my mother’s successful acquisition of NWOHR status, based on my father’s sponsorship, was after my birth.
Therefore, if we assume that successful acquisition of such NWOHR status for my foreign mother depended on full-citizen status of my father at the time of approval of my mothers NWOHR status and ROC passport, then: because my mother received her NWOHR status and passport after my birth, it must be (according to the above logic) that at the time of my birth, my father still had full citizenship status, in order to be able to sponsor – after my birth – my mother’s NWOHR application.
But: The possible flaw in the logic is that we don’t know for sure if only a full citizen husband (and not a NWOHR husband) can sponsor a wife’s NWOHR application – tando indicated the law did not specify explicitly anything about the requirement for the sponsoring husband to have HHR (and hence full citizenship). Your interpretation makes sense to me, that only a full citizen (with HHR) can sponsor such a NWOHR application for a foreign spouse – but through some contorted logic it still might be argued that an NWOHR husband might be able to sponsor a NWOHR wife, since neither husband nor wife live in Taiwan at the time of the sponsorship.
Personally, I want to believe that only a full citizen can sponsor an NWOHR application for a foreign spouse, which would mean that my father, who sponsored my mother’s NWOHR application after my birth, should have been a full citizen at that time with a non-cancelled but possibly automatically-deactivated (due to years spent away from Taiwan) HHR.
Of course, checking at the HHR office in Taiwan is the only way to be 100% sure, but slowly, I’m starting to believe that all the conditions may be fulfilled in my case for NWOHR → TARC → 1 year residency → citizenship.
yes, iirc, the law didn’t require the citizenship of the husband. Just being a Chinese national should have been enough. Though, that mean your father did not renounce his nationality at that time, so did have a valid deactivated HHR, if he ever had a HHR at some point.
Thank you for pointing this out. It helps in trying to plan the schedule for and sequence of activities, across the globe, that need to be done to complete this quest. Do you happen to remember the length of validity of such authorized documents? 1 month? 6 months? 1 year or more?
As a general note, which may be of use to others: I found another web page that explains one NWOHR’s application process in good detail. This person’s case is different than mine in many respects, but there is still a lot of information there that could be useful for NWOHRs. Here are the pages:
Well, when I did my application for the passport (and maybe TARC also, I can’t remember), they asked about my dad in some capacity – I think maybe for consent, or documents. However, I just told them that he divorced my mom and I haven’t talked to him in a long time and he doesn’t have anything to do with the situation, and they accepted that. If I recall correctly, I think maybe they accepted it because they divorced, and I think that information is listed on the death certificate under marital status. If your parents did not divorce, I suppose conceivably there could be a difference here that I do not have first-hand experience with. Maybe Lain or someone else can comment on their case if their parents hadn’t divorced and their non-ROC/Taiwan parent was still living. Obviously, these details get pretty personal, so it would make sense if people don’t want to share that information.
For the agreement on child’s surname, in my case I didn’t do this. I did have to declare my Chinese name with a specific form that also needs to have a Chinese version (I think this needs to be notarized, not sure about authenticated – but I can’t fully remember at this point). I actually had done this several years prior to inherit a small piece of land in Taiwan, so I just showed them that again. I tend to agree with Lain that you shouldn’t need to get the agreement on child’s surname since you’re an adult, but since in the past they asked about my dad, I’m not entirely sure how far they go with requiring a parent to do paperwork if the parent is still around and the parents did not divorce.
I think those blog posts you linked to are a good starting point, but as you can see in the discussions here, there are a huge number of different possible parameters per applicant, especially for those of us who don’t fit the ‘standard’ model (i.e. parents of different national/racial backgrounds, marriage and birth locations scattered across the globe, deceased parents, renounced citizenship due to immigration to a country which requires it, etc.). Anyone reading those summaries should be sure not to give up if the model doesn’t appear to fit them, and continue research in detail, in my opinion. Likewise, anyone reading those summaries exclusively might not realize how complicated the situation can get and how they may need to prepare many more/alternate documents or proof to get through the process. They should also know that there are other methods and processes, like applying and getting approved for the TARC outside of Taiwan. I’m not trying to be overly critical, but just want to make sure people understand that the process can be so much more nuanced – one person’s experience with their own application process and their understanding through their own eyes may help with some similar areas, but also may not apply to other people in different situations.
For example, the part 2 blog post states:
The date your residency begins is the day the immigration office approves your application, not the date you land in Taiwan or when you submit your application. You can opt to have your residency card mailed (takes about a week) or to return to the immigration office to pick up in person.
This could confuse some people. This is true in the case of if you apply while in Taiwan, which of course is the context that the author wrote it in, so there’s no problem with that, but let’s say you can’t get it all wrapped up while there, and need to go back to the other country, or if you applied while outside of ROC/Taiwan. In some important situations, your date of residency doesn’t begin only when the immigration office approves your application. It’s actually when 2 conditions are present: immigration office approves your application AND you are in Taiwan. For example, if you apply and get approved for the TARC July 2020 while in Toronto, Canada, the approval date is what is used as the ‘start date’ and the expiration date will be x years after that (usually 3 years, I believe). However, if you show up to Taiwan in November 2021, you can’t say “my residency started in July 2020 so I’d like for you to approve my national health insurance application” under the current 2nd generation health care regulations. In this scenario, the date you land in Taiwan is very important for measuring the duration of your residency. Obviously the author does not mean to mislead people in this way, but I just worry that people who aren’t familiar with the little details and terminology will get the wrong impression about some things when they’re not explained in extreme detail/precision.
Maybe I just have issues. Maybe because it keeps saying “you” and “you’ll” and “your” and doesn’t apply to me, it throws me off. Not sure.
The last thing I want to mention is that it does sound like your dad was probably a citizen when you were born. That said, Taiwan was a much darker place back then. It was under a martial law (the longest in the world up to that point), didn’t have a presidential election until 1996, and a lot of families had suffered deeply. Giving up ROC citizenship at that time probably didn’t seem crazy at all to a lot of people, and some people never really felt comfortable coming back. So, in case anyone else reads this in the future and is going through a similar thought exercise as your case – I think it’s reasonable to think that someone could have decided to renounce citizenship as a way to remove themselves from an inheritance or contractual agreement/obligation at that time, even though it might sound extreme today. Maybe there are/were some other advantages to doing that which we are unaware of (i.e. faster, more direct, tax burden avoidance, prevents other peoples’ inheritance from being blocked, politically blacklisted from going back to ROC/Taiwan, etc.).
I think most probably you can get a TARC based on AF384, but if not, you still can get a TARC based on employment. 1 year on the TARC also gives you a HHR. (It might be a 3 year on a work based TARC, I’m not sure now, but anyway, you can apply for a HHR after some length of stay on the TARC.)
This is still the next step that I’m planning to do soon, after the coronavirus situation winds down.
Then, I have some questions about the next phase, when I plan to use my passport (without household registration) to apply for a TARC in Taiwan and establish residency for 1 year to obtain full citizenship.
My next questions are about the timing of moving to Taiwan and applying for the TARC.
Question 1: I am thinking about moving to Taiwan sometime after retirement in my 60s to establish residency for 1 year and gain citizenship. Age doesn’t matter for a TARC application, right?
Question 2: To apply for the TARC, I have to pass a health examination. It seems to me that the health exam is concerned about communicable diseases, and not about chronic or existing health conditions (such as, heaven forbid, cancer or other serious illiness). Question: assume that, due to unfortunate circumstances, a NWOHR who wants to apply for a TARC has some existing health condition like cancer. Would that be grounds to deny the TARC application? Or, is the purpose of the health exam only to ensure that the TARC applicant has no communicable diseases?
I found this health exam: https://www.roc-taiwan.org/uploads/sites/90/2016/06/Health-Check-up-CertificateForm-Bfor-resident-visa-application.odt . That is supposedly for a “resident visa” application. I don’t know if that is the same health application used for TARC applications.
If the health application for the TARC not only requires that the applicant have no communicable diseases, but also requires that the applicant be in good health with no existing conditions, that could affect my decision about the best timing to try moving to Taiwan and starting the TARC process.
Question 3. After applying for the TARC, when am I eligible to enter the national health insurance system?
Question 4. If my wife wants to live with me during the first year while I am establishing residency on the TARC, she must leave Taiwan every 90 days, correct?
Question 5. If my wife wants to live with me after I have established residency for 1 year and acquired full citizenship, is that a relatively easy process for her to join me on something like a spouse visa? Will she be eligible for national health insurance (perhaps after a waiting period of 6 months)?
Question 6: I’d like to understand the statuses that I will go through while establishing residency. The latest relevant information from this thread is from Lain’s post above:
Therefore, I think that I will go through these statuses below. Comments or corrections would be appreciated!
Good luck on your endeavor, it’s good to be prepared. I’ll give some input where I can:
Question 1. [About age]
Yes, it doesn’t matter. But of course, if you apply for passport or something else now, then they might already be expired when you want to apply for the TARC (just speaking in general). NWOHR Passport and Entry Permit expire separately from each other.* In any case, you can renew these documents provided there is no unforeseen change in the law.
*You should get an Entry Permit with your initial NWOHR passport application (it will already be attached in it). This one is only valid for 3 years if I remember correctly. If that has expired and you renew it, the new Entry Permit should be valid for the validity of the passport (this is according to some guidelines). I actually had to do the latter, renewing the Entry Permit.
Note that a similar approach is possible as well: Apply for the TARC in the near future, but only start accumulating the “residency days” when you are ready. The TARC might be expired by then (it’s valid for 3 years), but a TARC holder can always renew it.
Question 2. [About health examination]
It’s this document: https://www.immigration.gov.tw/media/22363/健康證明應檢查項目-乙表.pdf (just for reference and for others who can’t open ODT).
From my understanding, you don’t have to worry about being “good enough for residency.” They just check whether you have one of those grave communicable diseases. [If it’s something more sensitive, I can also answer your questions about the health examination via private messages.] Also, depending on where you are from, you only have to do an X-ray check against tuberculosis, and they will take blood to check against hepatitis and whether you are vaccinated against measles. I originally wanted to show them my vaccination form, but the doctor simply didn’t bother because it will be in the blood.
Question 3. After applying for the TARC, when am I eligible to enter the national health insurance system?
After 6 months of staying in Taiwan. Something noteworthy, this is actually not bound to your TARC application; the eligibility for NHI just depends on your duration of stay. Now, when you apply for it, you obviously have to have any kind of residence permit (ARC/TARC/real ID) which is the point a “normal” foreigner cannot go further (together with the fact that it’s not possible for foreigners to ever reach the required amount of continuous stay using a visitor visa).
Question 4. If my wife wants to live with me during the first year while I am establishing residency on the TARC, she must leave Taiwan every 90 days, correct?
There seems to be a case for spouses of TARC holders currently residing in Taiwan under “Foreign spouse of foreigner or ROC citizen without household registration.” However, I must admit that I’m not really familiar with spouse cases because I’m not in that situation. Perhaps other people have more input on this matter.
In any case, I would assume that you will need to bring over your marriage documents and register the marriage in Taiwan. Registering a marriage without having HHR seems like a difficult question though to which I would like to know the answer myself as well.
For NHI: If your wife can somehow stay over 6 months, then she is eligible. But as far as I know those spouse, work, or student visas automatically sign up the holder from the beginning anyway.
Question 5. [About wife joining after acquiring citizenship]
See #4, with the difference that you are now a citizen with HHR, so registering your marriage in Taiwan is an every day matter I suppose. Spouses joining (or being the spouse who joins) is probably Forumosa’s bread and butter topic.
Qustion 6. [About different statuses]
Status 1: Correct.
Status 2: You have a residence permit which means you can stay. You are still an NWOHR. I wouldn’t say that there is a “permission to your own HHR” or something like that. Rather, you simply don’t have HHR. Throughout some legal documents, this status is being referred to as “establishing residency.”
Status 3: Yes, you are still an NWOHR. Yes, you will later get added to the HHR of your dependent. Just to clarify some specific parts though …
Status 4:
Status 5: Yes, this is mostly the case of status #4, but it’s important to clarify that nothing happens automatically: First you stay a year, and then you apply for what is called “定居,” settling down for lack of a better word.
Something noteworthy: You would be a national with HHR—a citizen!—without a proper passport. After acquiring the ROC ID card, you are eligible for the “national with ID” passport, but which is also done proactively. Leading into …
Status 6: Well, you are a citizen, so just consider what happens when Taiwanese go abroad. The HHR “deactivates” automatically after 2 years, but can be made active again anytime. NHI usually does not expire if you don’t want to (you would just continue paying it), but as an “Overseas Taiwanese,” you also have the possibility to stop paying NHI for a period of time if you know that you will be outside of Taiwan longer. NHI can then simply be activated again later. There is some bureaucracy involved in that, e.g. a minimum period that you need to pay so that you cannot hop on and off NHI anytime, but in any case it should just be what other Taiwanese have to handle from time to time as well.
By the way, you might want to look into being an “Overseas Chinese/Taiwanese.” This is actually an official status in Taiwan. If you have official residency in another nation (e.g. possess that nation’s passport), you can sign up for being an Overseas Chinese (Taiwanese). This mostly affects matters of NHI and conscription, so perhaps is not so interesting for you, but anyway. For NHI it’s e.g. the possibility to stop paying temporarily (see above).
What happens if … my apartment rental contract expires?
Something that is related to Status 3, just as an addendum: To stress this, where you live is not in any way related to your HHR. Nothing happens to the HHR if you don’t have a place to live in Taiwan. Of course, one would assume that you could always live at the address of the HHR, but let’s say that it is your uncle’s home and you can’t live there, then you could very will live under the bridge in Taiwan, and still have an HHR. The rental contract won’t affect your HHR. It will just “deactivate” after 2 years of being away, but can then be reactivated like mentioned above.
Just tell me if you want something clarified or if you have other questions, I’ll be happy to help! However, as mentioned before, I can probably be more specific when my residency is complete. Until then some parts are just what I have researched myself.
Thank you for this advice! This is an interesting approach indeed. It would be beneficial from the standpoint of starting all the wheels in motion that could be started, as soon as possible. From a risk reduction standpoint this seems beneficial – better to apply for and receive a TARC now and renew it later, instead of waiting to apply for the TARC later when the rules may have changed.
I’m living and working now in a different (but nearby) country, and having full-time work makes it difficult to take extended vacations, though I can take off the occasional week or two. The “usual” TARC application method that I’ve read about so far was to enter Taiwan on the entry permit, then in Taiwan apply for the TARC, then receive the TARC in Taiwan after a few weeks, and then start residency immediately.
However, this procedure would need change if I want to get the TARC as soon as possible, but only start my residency later (maybe much later, several years later). This is because, while I am still working full-time, I probably can’t stay for a few weeks in Taiwan on vacation while waiting to receive my TARC.
So, the question becomes: how can I apply for (and receive) a TARC if I can only stay in Taiwan for a maximum of (for example) one week at a time on vacation?
I can think of 2 alternatives:
This however implies by omission that picking up the actual TARC after approval requires a (hopefully brief) visit to Taiwan – again, my restriction for now is that I can’t stay in Taiwan for several weeks at a time due to work.
Another complicating factor is that a health check is apparently needed at the time of the TARC application. I wonder how that would work if the TARC is applied for outside of Taiwan. It might be that all or most of the paperwork can be done outside of Taiwan, but the health check and maybe some final paperwork would need to be done in Taiwan.
Then, after getting the TARC, can its renewal be done outside of Taiwan, or would that require a brief trip to Taiwan for renewal? If it can be renewed outside of Taiwan, that would be ideal. Then I would have in hand the NWOHR passport and the TARC, both indefinitely renewable (?) outside of Taiwan in the local TECO office. When I’m ready to use them (after retirement), I just fly on over, establish residency, and spend my twilight years in the land of my ancestors.
[EDIT - added later] Reviewing another post by @dadapunk, it seems that the TARC is not indefinitely renewable – it seems like it may be only renewable 2 or 3 times. Does anyone know specifically about how many times a TARC can be renewed?
For example, if an unused TARC is only renewable up to 2 times, that means it would be usable for up to 9 years (first validity of 3 years, plus 2x renewals, each 3 years each, means 9 years). If renewable 3 times, it would be usable for up to 12 years. But this is an important fact to know – if the TARC cannot be renewed indefinitely, it might make more sense to wait a couple of years until I’m closer to making the move to Taiwan, before applying for the TARC.
I’ll continue working through the other points in your post. Thanks again for taking the time to respond!