Getting an APRC -- A success story

Legal Visa & Residency
1

I have lurked from time to time, but this is the first time I have posted to this forum.

I got my APRC in late '03, and the reason I lurked on this forum in the first place was to glean information pertaining to just that.

While I was undergoing the ordeal, I kept detailed notes about what was going on just to help me keep things sorted out, and also for my own amusement. Since then, I have gone back and fleshed those notes in a bit, and they have evolved into something that may actually be useful to someone.

I now have a fledgling little ESL website, and I have made this journal freely available for download there in the hopes that it may provide anyone interested in applying for an APRC a few useful tidbits of information–and maybe a chuckle or two. (It’s in the form of a 24-page Word document.)

This forum was helpful to me back then, and this is one way for me to give something back.

Go to: gregs-class.net/about.htm

The link is clearly marked and near the bottom of the page–and if you find it useful in any way, I’d enjoy hearing from you.

Thanks for a great forum!
Greg

P.S. I hope I am posting this in the right section.

2

thanks to gr for the journal, I did find it useful!
This is my first time posting as well, also because I want to apply for PARC. Still not sure what the short-term benefits are (I read through this Forum up to about a year ago, when I decided the posts might be out of date…), seems one can work just as easily/freely/or not with the JFRV, right? although I did get the clear message about insurance in case anything (God forbid) should happen to one’s spouse…

So here’s my question: I’ve been in Taiwan under various legal auspices for almost 10 years, but I got caught by the “continuous” rule for ARC. However, last year I got married, so I should be able to use the 5-year rule, which specifically states that either visitor or residence status can be counted, home free, right?
Ha, no. FAP Taipei last week informed me that their interpretation is that I should be MARRIED for 5 years. gr mentioned that also in his journal, and I saw an older post that cited the FAP Q&A to that effect.
However, it creates an absurd situation! As the FAP admitted, I should either:
a) pretend I never got married (the wife would like that…), and then wait out the 7 years
b) pretend I never was in Taiwan until the day we got married, and then wait out the 5 years.
both of these are :loco:

more to the point, neither is supported by the law. the Q&A cites Art. 23 of the Law and Art. 40 of the Implementing Regulations. Sorry, I’ve read both (in Chinese – I can read laws quite adequately, albeit slowly), and it just doesn’t say this there. They have the “continous” rule, the day counts, etc. in detail, but nothing about how long one had been married.

I insisted the FAP show me the official document that justified their interpretation, and eventually they found 3 pages of a longer “zuoye guiding” from the NPA, which I had them copy for me. Then I thanked them and left because it was already after 5 and it seemed like it wasn’t their fault. So I was less than thrilled when I got home and found that the pages they gave me did NOT contain this provision…

I am currently trying to get the NPA to submit a complete set of regulations governing these cases, if it’s not there, I have ways of making the FAP comply. But I don’t want to use these methods to get any special privilege, only to enforce the real law…

Has anyone got a precise legal citation to this regulation? Or any court cases, experience, etc. related to this issue? I’d be very interested.

3

Legal residencey does not include any time spent on a visitor visa as this is not a resident visa. This rule is apllied in all countries.

SO the 5 years would be from the time you first had your ARC…

4

Anyway, if you’re married, why do you want PARC? A JFRV-based ARC is better, and even if the worst happens – death of your spouse, divorce, etc. – you’ll still be eligible for PARC for a two-year window after you lose your JFRV-based ARC.

5

Point taken, but not all of us are married and may choose not to get married for some time. So, for me, this information is very useful. Thanks Greg :bravo:

6

Point taken, but not all of us are married and may choose not to get married for some time. So, for me, this information is very useful. Thanks Greg :bravo:[/quote]
Sorry, I was responding to tianoka, who IS married.

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:blush:

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Tiaoaka, from early posts on this forum by Hartzell:

If you are married, it is 5 years in Taiwan, which doesn’t have to be residence, and is 5 years in total, not just the time you’ve been married.

Previous posts have indicated that others have struck the same problem as you - the police say that it has to be 5 years of marriage or esidencey or both. The make stuff up that’s not in the law. You need to apply again, and if you get refused lodge an administrative appeal.

But, I’m also curious. Do you see any benefits of PARC over JFRV?

Brian

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[quote=“Satellite TV”]Legal residencey does not include any time spent on a visitor visa as this is not a resident visa. This rule is apllied in all countries.

SO the 5 years would be from the time you first had your ARC…[/quote]
If you have had an ARC for 5+ years and then spent some time on a visitor visa, does that break the continuity so you have to start your ARC time all over again? (My situation - unmarried).

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No. But the police may tell you otherwise. If they do, politely but firmly insist that you are going to apply, Make it clear that you are going to file an appeal and that you know that other people have successfully appealed on the same grounds. You need them to process your application–once it gets accepted I think you have a good chance of success. But make sure you get a receipt or a letter saying they refused to accept your application. The receipt or letter is the basis for your appeal, so you reallyy need it.

Taipei City and Taoyuan Co. are both relatively reasonable about processing and approving APRC applications. Taipei County has consistently been a problem. You might want to consider moving to improve your chances.

PM me if you need more help.

11

[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Tiaoaka, from early posts on this forum by Hartzell:

If you are married, it is 5 years in Taiwan, which doesn’t have to be residence, and is 5 years in total, not just the time you’ve been married.

Previous posts have indicated that others have struck the same problem as you - the police say that it has to be 5 years of marriage or esidencey or both. The make stuff up that’s not in the law. You need to apply again, and if you get refused lodge an administrative appeal.

But, I’m also curious. Do you see any benefits of PARC over JFRV?

Brian[/quote]

Thanks to all for the input!
Apparently, however, the requirement of 5 years of marriage for the 5-year plan IS supported by the law (whether or not it’s logical policy is another matter). It goes like this:
I read Art. 23 of the law as saying: “if one is a spouse…, then one must have resided for 5 years…” The other reading, which more than one knowledgeable (i.e. familiar with legal matters) Taiwanese friend tells me is more plausible, is "a spouse … who has resided for 5 years… " This is obviously quite different in English, but apparently the second reading makes more sense in Chinese, and thus whether one would win a case in court on this basis is doubtful.
I am still waiting to get the “zuoye guiding” which supposedly (according to the Taipei FAP) further clarifies this issue. Then I will have a complete set of all pertinent laws and regulations…
FYI: there are 4 laws in total for all visa matters: in order of rank, they are

  1. the Entry, Exit, and Immigration Law
  2. the Implementing Regulations (“Zhixing Xize”) of the Law
  3. the “Foreigners Visiting, Resident, and Permanent Resident Banfa,” and
  4. the “Zuoye Guiding” of the Banfa.
    The first 3 are available online in Chinese at law.moj.gov.tw The 4th, exasperatingly, is not, so I am working to get a hard copy.

Brian is right about the residency vs. visiting. Both can count under the 5-year plan for spouses, etc., but only ARC status counts toward the 7-year plan (and there must not be any gaps, so I am afraid Juba would be out of luck-- Art. 40 of the Implementing Regulations is quite explicit about that…).
A more subtle question is whether changing the ARC basis (i.e. from work to JFRV) would count as as a “gap,” thus affecting the accumulation towards the 7 years. The fellow at the NPA that I have been dealing with at first said it would mean you had to start over, but when pressed to double-check, he came back and said that it wouldn’t matter, as long as the changeover didn’t create any gap. But, not having that in writing, I hope that interpretation sticks…!
Because I have decided to get the JFRV now, and under the above interpretation, I would be eligible for the PARC when my 7 years is complete, sometime in 2006.
At that point I will need to consider again the relative benefits of PARC vs. JFRV. If I could have gotten PARC now, I would have one clear benefit of saving money, since I am shelling out 4400 (US citizen rate) for the JFRV, plus 1000 for each year of ARC, so paying 10,000 for PARC seemed like a good deal. Sadly, that won’t be happening, so maybe I’ll delay getting the PARC next year. Although then tehre is still the regulation about how you have to apply for PARC within 2 years of eligibility… That appears to be clear both in Art. 23 of the Law and in Art. 40 of the IR also.
By the way, I haven’t seen any law (unless it’s in the Zuoye Guiding) that indicates one has a two year grace period after widowing, divorce, etc. as mentioned by Sandman. I rather doubt that’s the case actually, but if he or anyone else has the citation for that, please do pass it along.
Add oil!

12

That information came from RIchard Hartzell in one of his posts a while back. I can’t vouch for its accuracy. Perhaps send him a private message?

13

On the topic of how the 5-years for a foreign spouse is calculated.

Check out this old post.

The second ‘guest’ is Hartzell

[APRC status and foreign spouse

The reference to the two-year eligibility period thing is here (but no source):

[Residency law amendments

14

This sort of nonsense is the result of not having anybody in the legislature that can read or write properly. You think the overpaid brats in what passes for a parliament here would at least hire a lawyer to draft stuff like this.

The mountains laboured…

15

OK, color me confused. So far I’ve seen several different interpretations of APRC qualifications, so it’s quite interesting to read this discussion. Before this I had thought that I was not yet eligible for an APRC, but now it looks as if I might be under some of these interpretations.

To give a history, other than a few short trips to Taiwan, I consider having arrived in Taiwan to live starting in November 1999. Initially I was using a 5 year multiple entry visa since I was not yet married. I married an ROC citizen in November 2001. Due to a combination of my visitor visa being valid and laziness, I didn’t get my ARC based on marriage until December 2002. Since November 1999, I’ve stayed in Taiwan at least 183 days each year, which adds up to just over five years.

According to the interpretation of total time spent in Taiwan of five years in Taiwan and now being married, I can qualify for an APRC now.

According to the interpretation that it starts when one is married, I would qualify in November 2006.

According to the interpretation that it is based on time since obtaining an ARC, I would qualify in December 2007.

I had previously been under the impression that the last interpretation was the correct one. Any comments on my situation?

I also see a lot of comments that an APRC is worse than an ARC. Other than the requirement of staying 183 days per year each year, is there any other drawback?

16

Thanks again for the further input, especially to Brian for tracking down those “historical” posts on the topic!

But on both counts I have to say Hartzell is wrong…
The five years does indeed start from the time of marriage. As explained in my last post, I originally believed the same interpretation that Hartzell mentioned in
[APRC status and foreign spouse
but apparently it’s not well supported…

As for the “two years rule”, both Law Art. 23 and IR Art. 40 are explicit, there is no room for interpretation there: one must apply for the PARC no later than 2 years after becoming eligible, i.e. if you continue (with the ARC, etc.) in Taiwan for 2 more years after filling either the 7-year period or the 5-year period for spouses, you would lose the right to apply for PARC.
Nonsensical? Yes. But also clear. A prime candidate for amendment, if such a thing is on the cards…
As for what happens if you were eligible through marriage, etc. and then lost that eligibilty, there is nothing in the law about any grace period, etc. of any length. Therefore, unless it is appearing is some other regulation (such as the elusive “Zuoye guiding”, etc.), it doesn’t exist, and nobody should act on the assumption they can use it…

To clarify jlikc’s situation, the law is clear that you can count all the time you lived legally in Taiwan after marriage. Thus, you should be eligible in Nov. 2006. There may be some fuzziness from the police as to what date they consider to be the start of your marriage:

  1. the date on your marriage certificate
  2. the date you registered your marriage at the household registration office (might be the same if you got married in Taiwan)
  3. the date you got your marriage-based ARC.

In principle, the marriage certificate should govern. Interpretation 2), however, might suit a local bureaucratic mind, so if it doesn’t make much difference, I would suggest waiting until that date was passed also, just to be sure. As for interpretation 3), it’s just plain incorrect: IR Art. 40 is explicit that that time can include either residency (i.e. holding an ARC ) or visiting. But it probably “makes sense” to some police people, so it wouldn’t be really surprising if you ran into that. Be prepared with a printout of IR Art. 40…

17

Thanks for the information. We were married in the US in November 2001, and our marriage was recognized by the Shilin Court and registered with the household registration office in January 2002. I will try in November 2006 to apply and see what happens. Since my current ARC needs to be renewed in December 2006, if they say I need to wait until the household registration date, I will need to renew the ARC again. I hope anyone else in a similiar situation applying before then will update this topic so we can keep up to date on the situation.

18

[quote=“tiaoaka”]
The five years does indeed start from the time of marriage. [/quote]

Where (in the law) does it say that? Have you got a quote?

Again, where does it say that?

I’m not being argumentative. I’d just like to get to the bottom of this.

Brian

19

sorry, I didn’t get online at all this past weekend…
I did give references to the law in the previous posts, but for Brian’s and everybody’s convenience, here are the specific clauses in Chinese (I haven’t got any English translation of the law handy, but anyway, “only the Chinese is official” etc. etc.)(newcomers might wish to note the convenient – in Chinese–law database of the government, law.moj.gov.tw/ This category of laws are found under 內政法規 | 警政目 ).

First, the two year application rule:
“Entry, Exit and Immigration Law” (入出國及移民法), Art. 23, Para. 6:
申請永久居留，應於第一項之居留及居住期間屆滿後二年內申請之。
And also the “Implementing Regulations” of the same law (入出國及移民法施行細則 ) , Art. 40, second sentence:
其申請永久居留，應於本法第二十三條第一項之居留及居住期間屆滿後二年內申
請之；
Both are explicit that application must be made within two nears (二年內) of fulfilling the time requirements in Art. 23, para. 1.

Now, the need to be married for 5 years, as I explained in a previous post, is also basically explicit, but one could be misled by an alternate translation of the law (hence the need not to rely on translations…). Again, Art. 23, first paragraph:
…或居住臺灣地區設有戶籍之國民，其外國籍之配偶、子女在我國合法連續居住五年…
The key bit is the second part (the first part just emphasizes that the Taiwanese spouse/parent must have household registration in Taiwan):
配偶、子女在我國合法連續居住五年
which should be read “a spouse or child who has legally and continuously lived in the country for 5 years…” i.e. that one is already a spouse or child before starting the counting!
Rather than the other reading, which is “if you are a spouse/child, you must have resided 5 years…”
Of course, like everyone else, I prefer the second reading, it also seems to make more sense to me as a policy. But that isn’t what being used, and apparently the first reading is more natural to a native speaker.

Note that, for spouses and children only, the period can include non-ARC time (but still subject to number of days/year, etc.), as per IR, Art. 40, first sentence:
所稱合法連續居住，包括合法停留及居留之時間，合併計算。
In order to make this distinction, they had to use two different characters for “living” or “residing” (居住 instead of 居留), I bet most English translations find that difficult to cope with.

Hope that clarifies these two questions! I am still waiting for the mysterious “zuoye guiding”, but not as urgently as before, since I just got my JFRV-based ARC last week…! When I get it, if there is anything very interesting, I will post again…

20

A couple months ago it finally dawned on me that an APRC might be worth the trouble, so I started the process. Kind of too bad it took me so long to figure out that I want this.

I got my No Criminal Record by sending an application to the Indiana State Police along with a set of fingerprints which I did myself. [I now have fingerprinting equipment and tyro (but successful tyro) skills, BTW, in case anyone needs the service. I’m in NeiHu.] Sent the result along with translation, and check for US$45 to TECO in Chicago. English and Chinese copies came back duly chopped.

Tomorrow I go back to the Military Hospital in NeiHu to get the results of the physical exam I took there last week. Looks like I may have all the paperwork ready by early next week.

My main and best trick for negotiating official protocols is to take my wife Lisa with me. She is really good at getting people to like and respect her, as well as being sweet and patient in dealing with bureaucracy. I’ll try to dress reasonably well, too, of course.

What’s got me worried now is the 2 year window. We got married in August 1995, so we’re going on ten years. And our HuKou is in XinDian, so I’ll be applying through the famed BanQiao office.

Don’t know what’ll happen. Anyway, I aim to give it my best shot.