Is my birth certificate enough?

Due to abuse, I have not been in contact with my family in years. I do, however, have my US birth certificate which states my parents Taiwan ROC nationality. Will this be enough for me to possibly get a TARC or NWOHR Passport or am I just out of luck? Also, due to the coronavirus and already being in Taiwan is it possible to apply here or do I have to apply through US TECO’s? I also do not mind hiring a lawyer and any recommendations are appreciated.

how old are you? do you have contact with your grandparents (who are hopefully in taiwan)? w/o parental help, your situation isn’t great, and generally you need to do this from the US first if you’ve never even gotten an ROC passport. but it’s possible your parents got one for you or even put you on the household register (more common for girls). in summary, w/o your parents helping out, you probably won’t have much luck.

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it will not hurt to visit boca in person to consult on your case.

does the certificate show their national ID or permanent address in Taiwan? If you have those informatio, you might get the transcript of their household registration, and it might help.

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I’m over 21+ and unfortunately both my maternal and paternal grandparents passed away. I do not know any family in Taiwan (my parents did not bother maintaining relations). But I have travelled to Taiwan a few times when I was younger and may have been added to their family registry. How do I check and is it possible to find out with just my birth certificate?

Thank you, I am planning on making a trip to the BOCA soon. I don’t believe it does, but I’ll double check and update as soon as possible.

Edit: Unfortunately it does not. Just their nationality, date of birth, and name. However, their names are the phonetic English spelling of their native names if that matters. But I don’t know their exact Chinese characters.

hi sunflowerrr, did you make any progress? My situation is somewhat similar to yours.

Us birth certificate . Know their chinese name and their taiwan id card and their last household registration in order to get your taiwan id number then apply in taiwan boca.

Hello, sorry for the late response. Since I was born in NY, I was told to contact the NY Taipei Economic & Cultural office to verify my birth certificate. However, to verify my birth certificate, a photocopy of your parents passports are required. Obviously, it is something that is impossible for me to acquire and I was unfortunately unable to appeal for any other way to verify my identity. This is the response I got after contacting every overseas TW office is the US and going to the National Immigration Agency and different Bureau of Consular Affair (BOCA) offices in Taiwan at different locations multiple times to see if I could get someone else with a different answer that could potentially help my case.

Even then, I am not sure if this is all I need since it was only the starting point. Good luck, but I have given up.

US Birth Certificate needs to be verified by their US office, which, unfortunately, requires a photocopy of both your parents passports.

Thanks for the update. If I find some other way, I will try to remember to post an update here.

I’m interested in your comment that you spoke to every TECO. Your US birth certificate can only be authenticated by the TECO overseeing the state that issued it. Did you contact every TECO with the idea that one TECO staff member may give you an idea for how to go forward? At this point in my process, I am only calling my local TECO, but maybe I should call more TECO offices.

I contacted every TECO before I was made aware or given the birth certificate verification option about my situation for any ideas on how to proceed. Most told me that it was impossible to move forward without contacting my parents for their Taiwanese information. The birth certificate option was only provided by someone at BOCA who said they may be able to help me gather the information I needed (assuming my parents records like ID #?) but I would need to authenticate my birth certificate to be able to request and obtain the information.

Well then get your birth certificate authenticated and when it’s ready get in contact with this person to see what they can do.

I can not get it authenticated without a photocopy of my both of my parents passports. So anyone who is adopted, has a parent who is not in their life, or simply does not want to provide said documents are just shit out of luck from what I was pretty much told.

Hmm. Rock and a hard place.

Thank you. Do you know your parents’ names in Chinese, and when they immigrated to the U.S.? Do you have photos of you with them?

from my experience just the photocopy of the passport was not enough, unless it is a copy that is notarized, or the original. i had to send in both original passports to satisfy them. i don’t think the birth certificate by itself is enough unfortunately, you might be sol there.