I am a French 4th year student and I have been accepted for a paid internship (3-4 months) in a company in Taiwan. It is a new company so they don’t have experience in hiring interns.
For French people there is a visa internship. To obtain this visa the company has to apply for a permit to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The company asked the moea and told me the permit would take at least 2 months to be issued.
This would take too long, as I was planned to start the internship at the beginning of May and have to come back to France before September to pursue my studies.
Does anybody know of a workaround so that I can still go to Taiwan for my internship?
you are allowed to work by the whv, so you could ask the compant to change the internship to an employment contract with the same conditions, if the conditions dont violate labor laws.
This is a great suggestion by Tando!
But I first came to Taiwan on a working holiday so I would just add that you will need to educate your potential employer that you have the right to work with a working holiday visa. I never had success with this but I was dealing with cram schools and settled for working off the books. Hopefully your potential employer is smarter than buxiban owners
Your boss will use a copy of your WHV and your Uniform ID number to sign you up to labour insurance. You will also lose NHI eligibility, so buy health insurance.
Also check your right to study with a working holiday visa in Taiwan for French citizens. I remember mine had a study limit but I’m not French so it could be different.
There is also a limit on how long you can work for a single employer and this varies based on nationality as well.
Long story short, it’s a great option but do your homework
Not sure if this will be very helpful, but just for reference. For the ‘intern permit’, the application is to the Investment Commission of the MOEA, I’ve filed many of these over the years and it normally takes about two weeks to come through; the last one I did a few months ago took an extra week or two because we had to add an ‘epidemic prevention plan’ to it, but that requirement is probably gone now, not sure. I work for a large well-established company so it may be different for the new company you are hoping to intern at, but two months sounds like a long time.
Search for “Guidelines Governing the Application of Foreign Students to the ROC in the Capacity of Interns in Enterprises and Organizations” to read the actual regulations. It mentions a capital requirement of NT$5 million for new enterprises. Not clear why it would take two months though, could be some requirement I’m not aware of, could also be that the company is just saying that as a polite way of saying, ‘We decided this is too much hassle and we’d like to back out without saying so directly.’
