Tando I want to know if MY grandfather have a HHR but what if he dont have taiwan id.and has only taiwan passport and PASSED away already did my mother get a TARC?
2)you said lineal relatives what if my mother have siblings 3 of them and all of them left taiwan to live in the philippines and can my mother use there previous HHR to get a TARC?
@Jasonong335933, let’s continue this conversation in the thread on your case.
I think I already posted what I can say in this and some other posts in the thread.
1 Like
Unfortunately my Chinese skills are currently at pre-beginner levels (我只會說一點). I will not be able to convincingly argue my case in Chinese.
Given that the local TECO representatives might not be familiar with detailed issues about NWOHRs, my original idea of getting everything done at the local TECO office might not be the best course of action.
Instead, it might be better to apply for only the NWOHR passport at the local TECO office, since that hopefully should be straightforward. Then for the TARC I could investigate @Lain’s idea about using an agent who is located in Taiwan and can speak Chinese on my behalf to confirm directly at the NIA in Taipei the various procedures to get the TARC and the various rules surrounding what sort of work is or is not allowed.
That said: what sort of agents are available to do this sort of work? @Lain, what kind of an “agent” did you have in mind? I don’t want to burden my extended family members in Taiwan with this issue. Therefore I would prefer some kind of a professional agent for hire like a lawyer or specialist, who could speak both English to me and Chinese to the NIA. Any ideas about how to find such a professional agent?
this one comes up at the top of my search results.
1 Like
I would recommend still trying TECO first. Hopefully their staff has some ability in the local language(s) where you live, and you can start there still as a first step before committing to international travel and buying plane tickets. Just be prepared to need to explain things, and don’t get dejected if they don’t understand the law. Generally speaking, their specialization is not in immigration, and to be fair, they need to handle a broad range of tasks well beyond the scope of immigration only.
That said, the HHR office probably doesn’t support English services very well since it’s a locally-focused service. The NIA may have a bit, but the thing is you’ll be going to the 國人 section/floor which mostly sees and serves Chinese and Taiwanese speakers and forms/writing.
Lain’s suggestion of an agent may be a good option, but I don’t have any useful experience to share there.
Hey @tando,
For this, do you have some related documentation/information?:
This is an old information, which is not applied today. They get TARC and NWOHR status before renouncing original nationality now.
I still see the AF372 category for applying for a TARC saying 前款以外，在國內取得國籍者。
You’re probably right, but would be great to clarify just in case anyone else reading this might need clarity.
this part is wrong now. Previously, they should renounce original nationality before (or when) they apply for naturalization. Now, they should renounce within a year from the approval of naturalization and getting TARC.
Article 9 of Nationality Act
1 Like
What does “get that” mean above? Does it mean to “get a copy of the rental agreement” from the landlord for the 定居 process? I would assume that getting a copy of the rental agreement is regular practice, but I sensed from your sentence that you were stressing the importance of some irregular activity or agreement that must be secured from the landlord. What specifically did you mean?
Assume that the rental property address is registered during my 定居 process to establish my own HHR, and finally get my National ID card with full rights and obligations as a Taiwanese citizen.
Then, assume that I must leave Taiwan for several years (after my 1 year Taiwan-area residency has finished). What would be the general roadmap for what needs to be done then? @Lain you mentioned most of the items above, but I wanted to try to summarize the steps. Are you planning to leave Taiwan immediately after your 1 year residency? If so, then that lines up with one of my possible plans (the plan to get residency ASAP for 1 year, but then leave Taiwan again for several years, but planning to return for retirement).
Assuming one acquired one’s own HHR through the 定居 process and using a rental property as the HHR address, then one needs to leave Taiwan soon thereafter for several years. Would the steps be like this?
- Cancel the rental contract. Does this have any influence on the HHR? Does anything need to be changed for the HHR, or can it be left as-is with the old address of the canceled rental contract?
- Keep the National ID card.
- Apply to be “Overseas Chinese” status. (this needs more research)
- Other necessary un-registration procedures due to leaving Taiwan and “Overseas Chinese” status.
- Stop paying NHI due to “Overseas Chinese” status.
- Leave Taiwan for several years.
- HHR automatically deactivates after 2 years.
- Come back to Taiwan after 10-15 years.
- Re-activate HHR and update HHR with new rental property address.
- Un-Apply/Cancel “Overseas Chinese” status.
- Other re-registration procedures. (this needs more research)
- Start paying NHI again.
Now, the awkward thing about all of this would be the following sequence of actions, done within a short timeframe:
- Establish HHR which, based on the word 定居, means to “settle down”. This might involve a lot of paperwork.
- Immediately apply for “Overseas Chinese” status and leave Taiwan. This might also involve a lot of paperwork which basically contradicts the meaning of #1 – one just settled down in Taiwan, and then gets up and leaves Taiwan?
Would that be frowned upon? Is there a minimum span of time that should pass between #1 and #2? Or am I worrying too much?
When nationals with HHR leave Taiwan for a long period, say more than a year, they are supposed to move out their HHR (~deactivate HHR: 戶籍遷出國外 in Chinese). If they don’t their HHR will be automatically deactivated after 2 years.
The HHR may be conected to NHI, but you need to confirm.
Overseas Chinese” status may be mostly to avoid conscription for young male nationals.
To reactivate a HHR(辦理遷入or恢復戶籍), you need a proof of address again.
As for the address, if you can borrow your extended relative’s address, transcript of the HHR and the relative’s permit can be the proof of the address.
yes, imo
Some sites in Chinese
1 Like
I didn’t mean anything particular other than you’ll need the document so make sure you have it when the time comes. I’ve never rented in Taiwan, so I don’t know what is normal and not when dealing with landlords other than some details other people told me about unrelated processes like early termination of rental agreement.
Also note that the government only recently changed the law to require landlords to allow people to use their address for HHR (I think maybe it has tax implications or other legal implications for the landlords).
I agree with Tando. You probably don’t need overseas Chinese status as far as I know, unless you want to share info about the purpose it will serve to help you in some way (maybe we can confirm or further clarify the validity of any such concepts).
I don’t think 定居 involves a lot more paperwork beyond what you’ll have already done and compiled up to that point.
Socially it may be frowned upon to get citizenship and leave immediately, but legally I don’t think it matters.
Returning to the fundamental issue of my case – the status of my father’s HHR at the time of my birth. There may be a problem.
I’m not sure about this anymore.
The key question is whether or not the status of the HHR, at the time of birth of the descendant, is important.
The optimistic line of reasoning laid out in our earlier discussion argues that expiry of the parent’s HHR at the time of the descendant’s birth does not matter for the descendant’s TARC application:
Unfortunately, I just discovered by re-reading the old threads that in @multipass’s situation, the NIA appeared to require proof that the deceased parent’s HHR was active at the time of birth.
Here’s the quote from @multipass’s thread (cue depressing music here):
This unfortunately seems to match with my case:
- Deceased ROC parent
- HHR currently inactive
- Descendant born overseas
- Need to prove HHR was active during the date descendant was born.
And @paperclip’s case also relied on an active, non-expired HHR, as stated above:
Please, prove me wrong. Do I still have a chance at a TARC (under AF384) if my father’s HHR was inactive (i.e. expired automatically due to long overseas residence) at the date I was born? @multipass, could you perhaps clarify what exactly you had to prove about your HHR to get your TARC application approved? When you say you had to prove your mother’s HHR was “active” at the time of your birth, does “active” mean “not expired”?
I really want that to be true. But I’m not sure that we have seen proof of such a case (born to overseas ROC national with expired HHR) having successfully gone through.
If I attempt to understand the law that tando quoted, it states that these persons are eligible for a TARC (through AF384, though that’s not stated on the page):
Now, what is the exact meaning of 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民? Based on @multipass’s quote above, it seems the NIA took a hardline stance and said that the key aspect was proof that the HHR was active at the time of the overseas birth of the descendant.
Also from @Lain’s thread we see:
Again, implying that active status of HHR a time of birth seems to be required.
Can anyone point to evidence that an inactive HHR at time of birth can be used / has successfully been used for an AF384-based TARC?
If not, then AF384 might not be an option for me.
I think the only glimmer of hope is this part of @tando’s post:
Because of my limited Chinese ability I need time to work through the Chinese wording of the text to see if it really implies the “or originally” as stated in the English translation.
But even if “originally” having had HHR (i.e. HHR was expired at time of birth) still qualifies the applicant legally for an AF384-based TARC, the unfortunate fact remains that, as I understand, the NIA required @multipass to prove that the HHR was active at the time of birth, taking a stricter view of the law. So it could be an uphill battle to argue to the NIA that AF384 does not require HHR active at time of birth, but only requires having “originally” had an HHR. To make such a challenging legal argument to the NIA, I would probably go with an immigration lawyer like the one @tando linked to above (thanks @tando for the link to the Taiwanese immigration laywer).
Thanks for reading. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Hi @Hayashi,
Overall I think it might not be a problem, but I don’t know for sure. If I had to guess, I would guess it’s probably not a problem.
Through the many discussions we’ve had, we’ve discovered that there are actually many statuses of household registration that probably aren’t clearly explained to the public (at least in English terms).
‘Active’ can mean different things. For example:
- Active could mean not ‘expired’ or ‘inactive due to continuous duration outside of country’
- Active could mean ‘not cancelled’ due to renouncing citizenship or losing citizenship for any other reason
I’m also uncertain that these concepts of ‘active’ or ‘not active’ existed at the time when I was born, or at the time you were born. I think we can’t assume the law and execution of the law (i.e. SOPs the government workers used to carry out the related work) in general, and the HHR law specifically, operated the same way without changing over the years.
I’ll try to check later, but at the time I was born my mother hadn’t been residing in Taiwan for multiple years, and I’m not completely sure but I would guess that she may not have returned to Taiwan for multiple years as well.
I think I just had to prove that my mom had a legitimate HHR at the time that hadn’t been cancelled or anything like that, but even so, I think I know of at least 1 case where a person’s parent’s HHR was still accepted despite ‘renouncing citizenship’ (if I remember the timeline of that case correctly).
I really want that to be true. But I’m not sure that we have seen proof of such a case (born to overseas ROC national with expired HHR ) having successfully gone through.
I think we do, for at least a couple of the various definitions of the term ‘expired’.
Can anyone point to evidence that an inactive HHR at time of birth can be used / has successfully been used for an AF384-based TARC?
I don’t think I have evidence handy, but I do believe I’ve heard of this case succeeding. Some people keep information like this somewhat private due to all of the struggles they have with the government around this issue, which can lead to fears of having their legal status here changed/revoked, which is really painful for a lot of children of Taiwanese parents in my experience. So, just because people aren’t rushing to post their personal details online doesn’t mean that there aren’t cases exactly like yours.
At this point, I would say that if you truly want to go through with this and believe it is important to you, you can just go ahead and give it a shot. If you are worried about it not working it, you don’t need to spend the time to try. However, either way you will need to try and see the results to truly know what the outcome will be. I personally think you should get the HHR for your parent first and review it in detail with someone with Chinese language skills and start there. That said, you will be relying on their interpretation, which is going at add another layer of potential confusion, so be sure to ask carefully, or even try doing your own analysis up front and then asking them about anything particular terminology.
Indeed!
Thanks – that would be very helpful to serve as a specific example of what kind of an HHR status you were able to use successfully for an AF384-based TARC. In other words, this can hopefully shed some light on what the NIA expects when it wants to see an HHR that was “active” at the time of birth.
Also, what Chinese word would you use to describe the “active” or “legitimate” status that your mother’s HHR had at your birth? (I assume this would be the same as the Chinese word for “active” that the NIA used when it demanded to see an “active” HHR at the time of your birth.) If your mother’s HHR status at the time of your birth (automatically expired due to multi-year overseas residence, but not canceled, and hence still in some sense “active”) was essentially the same as my father’s HHR status at the time of my birth, then by knowing the Chinese word (or phrase) to describe this “active” status I can make the argument that my father’s HHR fulfills the requirements for AF384.
To avoid confusion, and to attempt to frame the problem in Chinese, would you agree that the problem can be stated as below? All of the Chinese phrases below are copy/pasted from the above discussion; see above for the original references.
-
For an AF384 TARC application, an applicant must prove that s/he fulfills (三) 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民在國外出生之子女，年齡在二十歲以上。(But note this wording was proposed to be changed to 在國外出生， 出生時其父或母為居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民)
-
To prove #1, the applicant must prove the applicant’s parent is categorized as 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民, at the time of the applicant’s birth.
-
The requirement for the parent being 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 “at the time of the descendant’s birth” is implied by the proposed change in wording of the law such that the condition 出生時 is added.
-
To prove the applicant’s parent was 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 at the time of the applicant’s birth, the applicant needs to provide a copy of an old HHR (戶籍謄本) to be obtained from the 戶政事務所.
-
The mere existence of the parent’s 戶籍謄本 proves that the parent was a 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民. Even if the parent moved out of Taiwan for several years, that does not affect (assuming there was no explicit renunciation by the parent) the parent’s 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 status, according to tando’s quote:
-
Having proved that the parent had 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 status at some time in the past, the applicant should further prove that the parent had 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 status at the time of the applicant’s birth (to fulfill the proposed and/or implied 出生時 condition). This is proved by the absence of any indication on the 戶籍謄本 of an explicit cancellation by the parent. (Note: what would such a cancellation be called in Chinese?)
-
Having proved that the parent had 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 at the time of the applicant’s birth, the applicant must further prove s/he is the son/daughter of the parent, by means of a TECO-authenticated birth certificate. (NOTE: in my particular case, my parents’ marriage was probably not registered in Taiwan, so I would probably need to update the 戶籍謄本 to prove the marriage occurred before my birth and hence to prove I was a “legitimate” son of my 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 parent).
-
Having completed all of the above, the applicant will have proved that s/he is the son/daughter of a parent who had 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民 at the time of birth, therefore satisfying the requirement of (三) 居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民在國外出生之子女，年齡在二十歲以上 for an AF384-based TARC.
Agree? Disagree?
Fyi
何謂在台設有戶籍國民及在台無戶籍國民？出國兩年以上戶籍已遷出者屬何者？
答：
- 依戶籍法規定，戶籍登記係以戶為單位，指身分登記及遷徒登記兩大類，其中身分登記包括出生、認領、收養、終止收養、結婚、離婚、監護、死亡、死亡宣告等，凡曾因此而設有戶籍者，即為在台有戶籍者，未曾辦理戶籍登記者，即為無戶籍人士。
- 另依規定出境二年以上應為遷出之登記，其戶籍所在地所政事務所得逕行為之；當事人戶籍遷出後，仍屬有戶籍國人。
2 Likes
Hi, this is such a useful thread! I have just arrived back in TW and in mid-quarantine. I have a NWOHR passport and was planning on going to Immigration to ask about applying for TARC but am finding all the requirements daunting especially since I cannot read or write Chinese and speak poor Mandarin. Can anyone tell me if there are agencies or agents that can be hired to help do this for me that I could give power of attorney to? Thanks.
@tando My wife has automatically lost her HHR after being away for ten years. Is it possible to use a short term lease to renew? Or would it be better to renew under an immediate relative? We were married in Taiwan and we called the HHR office of our marriage certificate and they said we need to get in contact with our landlord from ten years ago! We are staying one month in a place, but I only have 15 days to apply for the ARC. Could we use the short term address? Or would it be better to renew under an immediate relative in an address where we don’t live?
Also our children are NWOHR under 12 years old. Do they need a TARC?
Regarding NHI, would my wife have to wait 6 months to receive NHI? Does this also apply to minor children as well? I read the law is about to change on this but not sure if there is a 6 month requirement.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
if the address is not your property and you want to register as an independent hhr, you need an agreement from the property owner and should show the title of the property to the office. So, I think the relative option is easier.
if they have ROC passport and entry exit permit, they can be defied directly, uric.
yes, if not employed.
Thank you for the quick response tando.
The both have NWOHR passports with entry permits (doesn’t say exit) however it says duration of stay is three months. TECO told us we’d have to apply for TARC for them, but I also read under 12 years they didn’t need.
I am employed so could the wife and children get NHI through me after receiving my ARC?
if they will not get their HHR with their mother, they should get TARC or ARC, iiuc
U12 don’t need background check.
I believe so.
Hi, this is my first post on Forumosa, but I’ve been reading and would like to thank everyone here for all of the very informative and helpful content!
Not sure if it’s best practice here to start a new topic or reply on existing threads, but here is my situation:
- I’m a female over 20 hoping to apply for both a NWOHR passport first and then later (when I can go to Taiwan) an entry permit and TARC
- my father was born in Taiwan but left as a young child for the US with his parents. My mother is ethnically Chinese, but not from Taiwan. They are married and I have a copy of their marriage certificate.
- I have a copy of an old HHR from the 60s listing my paternal grandparents’ names and national ID numbers. My father’s name is there too, but without a national ID number, presumably because he was so young.
- when my father was going through the US naturalization process many years later, he applied for and received an ROC passport, which I also have. This expired after my birth, and has no national ID number in it, meaning that he was probably a NWOHR at the time. He naturalized as a US citizen after my birth, and did not renounce citizenship, although he may not have had citizenship to renounce.
- my father and grandparents are all living, although none of them live in Taiwan or routinely visit Taiwan. As such, there was no active HHR at the time of my birth. I’m not sure if my grandparents still have their ROC passports or ID cards.
Based on this, I think I should qualify as a national and be able to get a NWOHR passport with the documents I already have, but I’m less sure about the TARC. Because my father appears never to have had a national ID number or 身份证, would people say my best chance would be getting one of my grandparents to renew their HHR and go the AF353 route? My grandma and I are planning on visiting relatives in Taiwan next year. How involved would the renewal process be and would it be realistic to complete over the course of a week or so?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
thanks