Just to share my own experiences as I go through this process:
First, I asked TECO in the US for clarification on whether or not translation and/or notarization of the police statement were needed before sending them to TECO, and here is the response, FYI:
[quote]Before you send the non-criminal background check to our office for certification, it needs to be notarized by Notary Public first. The translation is not required from our office, you have to check with Taiwan aurhority if they need the Chinese translation. If they require translation, you have to translate it into Chinese by yourself. The fee for certifying original non-crimainal record is US$15.00 per certification, and the fee for certifying translation is US$30.00 per certification.
If you are not sure if the translation is needed at this moment, you can just certify the original copy here. Later on, if you are already in Taiwan, and they require translation certified, you can certify the translation at the Local Notary Public (¦a¤èªk°|)in Taiwan.
…
If you have questions, please call (312) 616-0100, ext. 302.
TECO in Chicago[/quote]
I then contacted MOFA, who informed me that
- a translation is not required.
- even though I’m in my fourteenth year in Taiwan, a criminal check by the Taiwan police is not acceptable. It must be from an American law enforcement agency. I called different staff members at different phone numbers at MOFA and got the same answer on this.
For the criminal background check, I asked my hometown police (Moline, Illinois, USA) if they could do this and they mailed it to me the next business day, pre-notarized, with the following content, and free of charge:
[quote]I hereby certify that I am the Chief of Police for the City of Moline,
Illinois, and in that capacity I have caused a search to be made of the
criminal arrest record files of my own police department identification
files. Using the above name and descriptive data of the above named
individual, I further certify that I find no arrest record information.[/quote]
They also informed me that a fuller criminal background check is available for a fee at the state level, and I have already emailed away for application forms for that. It would be interesting to see whether the MOFA is satisfied with the city-level version before I present the state version (although for expediency I’ll probably just hand them both).