Here’s the deal:
I will be getting my Masters Degree in December and since my boyfriend lives in Taiwan, I’d like to live and work there in the future. So how complicated will that be and how do I find a legal job?
I was told, with a MA I need at least 1 year work experience in a related field in order to get a work permit. Is that true?
Are there any differences in getting a work permit, if I work for a Taiwanese or foreign company?
Should I even consider working for a Taiwanese company or are salaries too low and rights too little?
What else besides degree and experience is needed to get a work permit?
What else do I need to know?
[quote=“mesheel”]Here’s the deal:
I will be getting my Masters Degree in December and since my boyfriend lives in Taiwan, I’d like to live and work there in the future. So how complicated will that be and how do I find a legal job?[/quote]
Finding a teaching job should be easy. But that might not be a legal job if you are not from an English-speaking country.
[quote=“mesheel”]
I was told, with a MA I need at least 1 year work experience in a related field in order to get a work permit. Is that true?[/quote]
I think most things you need two years, or the ability to prove you are truly a pro in your field. What’s your field?
[quote=“mesheel”]
Are there any differences in getting a work permit, if I work for a Taiwanese or foreign company?[/quote]
It is the same piece of laminated paper. It really depends on where you are working. If a trade office (ie embassy) wanted you, or you were the manager or key staff of a big foreign investor here, they could get you a work permit pretty quickly. If it was some foreign or local company, there might be some troubles and hoops.
[quote=“mesheel”]
Should I even consider working for a Taiwanese company or are salaries too low and rights too little?[/quote]
Salaries are low and rights are little, although there are some exceptions to this somewhere. Not sure where. I wouldn’t work for a Taiwanese company again unless they offered me a fortune, or at least the right to goof off all the time.
[quote=“mesheel”]
What else besides degree and experience is needed to get a work permit?
What else do I need to know?[/quote]
You’ve got to love going to the police station and dealing with all the hassles, the paperwork, etc.
I actually didn’t want to work as an English teacher, since first of all it’s not my mother tongue and second, I was hoping I could do something related to my studies…I’m an Art Historian, but I guess hoping to find a job in that field is pretty unrealistic, since there are enough Taiwanese Art Historians around who could do the job…=(
To get a legal non-teching work permit here you need:
1- photocopy of degree/diploma
2- reference letters of previous related work; with a MA, one year or more is required(i think you can fake this, not like the gov’t calls up your references, they just need to rubber stamp it)
3- 2 photos
4- health exam
5- signed contract
6- photocopy of passport page with your photo/info
**7- foreigner hiring form… this is a standard gov’t form the company can get it from the gov’t office(or website).
But on this form it requires:
the usual name, address, passport number etc.
Plus contract info: position, salary, start dates, contract length.
It also has company size, number of foreigners already with company. Companies are limited to the number of foreigners they can hire, plus if the company is too small or has too little capital, they cannot hire a foreigner!
And this is the hard part, it requires the company to fill out the reasons they need to hire a foreigner instead of a local, plus it also has what related skills the foreigner has… this should be done by the company but with some companies it is done by YOU since the company prolly doesn’t know what to write, unless they’ve done it before… it also has to be written into Chinese!
Enough gov’t red-tape for you yet? Not done yet hehe. It takes around 5 working days for the gov’t to assess your work permit and to say whether they are willing to approve you or not. If you are approved, you take your work permit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MOFA) to get yourself a Resident Visa. You need to give them:
1- passport
2- one photo
3- filled out application form
4- photocopy of work permit
5- photocopy of passport page of photo/info
6- photocopy of passport page with current visa(tourist)
7- NT$3000 fee
This will take about 7 working days, they give you a slip to pick up your passport… you don’t need to worry about your visa status after you give them your passport.
On salary: in many cases, if not most cases, if you’re Taiwanese getting a standard taiwanese job with little or no experience, you’re gonna get paid dumplings. Foreigners may get paid more if they can bring something extra, but not very much if you’re gonna do the same job as a local.
Here’s a comparison:
teach english at a buxiban: say with no exp, around 500NT/hour… a 6 hour day, 5 days, 4 weeks = ~60,000NT/month
typical “normal” job, little to no exp: 8-10hrs, maybe 12 hour days, ~30,000-40,000 monthly salary, under 30,000/month to start is not unheard of.
When I was in N.America, I got ~USD$40,000/month doing high-tech…
My new contract at a Taiwanese company here is ~NT$45,000/month, with 14-month salary and stock incentives for roughly the same level of work, you can do the math…dumplings!
You don’t need to get married to work legally. Marrying only means you can get a JFRV(family resident visa) so you can stay legally. What this also means is you can skip the red-tape of needing to secure a work permit in order to get the resident visa and stay in country.
Well, I guess, I will be able to do all the formalities, once I found a job, but what worries me is finding that job first…=(
Got a MA, but only part time working experience in variouse fields, which will probably turn out not to be related to my future job. So how am I going to find a job in Taiwan??? Any suggestions?
I don´t suppose the language schools require 2 years of experience from all the English teachers they hire, or half of them wouldn´t be able to do it . Or do they all just fake it??
It is 1 year of experience with an MA. If you had a Ph.D., you could be hired with NO experience whatsoever for any job you can talk them into (provided a Taiwanese couldn’t do it, if you don’t qualify for open work rights for being married or for an Article 51 for having done five years of hard time already).
The bottom line is, “We don’t really want you here.” (“We” being the authorities, obviously.)
When you get here, if you do get a remunerative job, you can then have the pleasures of being denied phone service, credit cards, debit cards, etc. etc…because “we” really want to encourage foreign business.
Mesheel you don’t have a passport from the US, UK, Canada, NZ, Aus or SA right? So you can’t teach legally. I know less about working legally in other fields, but I thought there was a limited number of about a dozen fields that were allowed to hire foreigners. Art History isn’t one of them. I guess it wouldn’t be impossible, but could be difficult. I suppose you’d have to find a company that was very keen to hire you for something and able to bend the rules a little.
I have lived in Taiwan nearly 30 years. I have known some foreigners who were employed in various capacities by the NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM. That might be worth checking out after you arrive. There is also a TAIPEI FINE ARTS MUSEUM that you could check with.
Thanks brian…your not much of an encouragement…=( I know though…you are quite right. Who needs an Art Historian in Taiwan…? I was not even dreaming of getting a job in that field, but I was hoping to get something else besides teaching.
Hartzell, I will contact the NPU as soon as my exams are over, but museums usually do not have too many jobs for MA’s. I know a guy who works as a translator at NPU though…We’ll see.
If nothing works, I either get married or write my PhD…
-Getting “married” in Taiwan only requires you and your taiwan “hubby” to sign some papers. I was told it now only costs NT1000 to register the marriage and voila, legal to stay, legal to work.
-I myself am considering taking this route(my taiwanese gf’s mom actually suggested it). My gf and I can have a “real” marriage(back in Canada) after we save up enough cash to have a banquet large enough for our hundreds of aunts/uncles/cousins/2nd cousins etc etc.
-I did not know there was a limitation on which nationals can be hired for non-teaching jobs… that’s the first i’ve heard about it.
-For a reference letter: find yourself a nice related letterhead on the internet, copy, paste, write a little tiddly with a start date, end date, field of work, print it, sign it and tada, legal reference letter for work permit!
Actually we did want to get married anyways, but I don’t think visa problems is a good reason. As you said yourself, we wanted to wait till [quote]after we save up enough cash to have a banquet large enough for our hundreds of aunts/uncles/cousins/2nd cousins etc etc. [/quote]
I’m not from an English speaking country and I don’t have a teachers degree either. I’m sure my English is well enough to teach beginners, but I don’t wanna end up like one of those rip off teachers who don’t really know how to teach, but make a good living out of it.
Isn’t it possible to find some legal and honest work here…aiyooo…somebody offer me a job…
[quote=“Bu Lai En”][quote]I did not know there was a limitation on which nationals can be hired for non-teaching jobs… that’s the first I’ve heard about it.
[/quote]
I don’t think anyone said there was. It’s just English teachign you have to be from a ‘nativ eEnglish speaking country’.
Brian[/quote]
I believe if you have an APRC there isn’t a limit on nationals, but for ARCs there is a limit.
I didn’t really fake the piece of paper I used for applying for a work permit. What I did was that I got one from a place where I worked part-time and got them to write what I wanted - proving “1 year of work experience”.
I would think a bit broader when it comes to jobs here if I were you. I have an arts MA. The first job I landed here was in a financial sweatshop, the second one was in international marketing.
If you really want to do some arts history, then see if you can get fellowships for an arts study PhD at some local institution.
Yeah, that’s what I was told too, but do I really wanna write my PhD now after soooo many years of studying??? But would you happen to know any fellowships for art studies?
