Well, I’d been diligently renewing my marriage-based ARC (JFRV) every three years for a decade or so, but now accidentally let it expire while my wife and I did a few years of long-term international traveling. We’re still married.
It’s been expired for several months now. My understanding is that I’ll have to apply for it all over again, but most of the advice here is pretty old. Can anyone confirm this?
I could also use a recent link to information on how to get the marriage ARC, and/or any tips about whether anything about the process has changed since 2012. My citizenship is from the US, and we got married in Taiwan.
Also, help me brainstorm what knock-on effects the expiry will have when I go back to Taiwan? Here’s what I have so far:
I’ll have to enter on a visa-free exemption which will limit me to 90 days in Taiwan at a time (still no limit on visa runs, right?)
I won’t have NHI health insurance anymore, until six months after I get the replacement ARC. I think my NHI number will change, but will be connected to the old one for medical history purposes?
My metro cards might stop working at least for public bicycles, since that was attached to my ARC number?
At least one of the libraries where I have a library card has already notified me that it expired - I guess this might happen at others too.
Please let me know if you can think of any other issues I might have, especially more important ones.
Conveniently (for this scenario), I have no financial accounts in Taiwan (I’ve always worked online for customers abroad, and withdrawn money with my US debit card).
Fair question! I ended up spending that decade living in Taiwan part of the time, in the US part of the time, and traveling in third countries an ever larger part of the time, with Taiwan being the closest thing I had to a base. I don’t think I was ever eligible for the APRC, because of the requirement to be present for most of the year five years in a row.
I thought it’s also possible 183 days, 5 years over a 10 year period you maybe can still try aprc?
3 Methods for Foreigners to Apply for APRC
APRC
Foreigners who meet any of the residency requirements in Taiwan may apply for APRC, provided that other relevant requirements are met:
Legally and continuously residing in Taiwan for 5 years, with at least 183 days per year.
Foreign spouse or children of R.O.C. national with registered permanent residence in Taiwan and have legally resided in Taiwan for 10 years, during which period they have actually resided in Taiwan for at least 183 days for 5 years.
Both of you are right. I wasn’t aware of the ten year thing, but I’m pretty sure I still didn’t qualify for it (though that probably wasn’t super clear from what I said). So, thanks again!
Update: Back in Taiwan now (on visa-free entry), and just visited the NIA and MOFA BOCA to ask in person about the task ahead of me. They both confirmed that I have to apply all over again for the JFRV/ARC, though I’ll keep the same ARC number once I get it again. As far as NIA knows, I still will have to wait six months to get my NHI health insurance back after receiving the new ARC (though she was being funny about it, like maybe there’s a rumor/hope that could change soon?), and should keep the same card number for that too.
Main hangup (which I knew about already) is that I can’t switch from visa-free to a marriage JFRV while in Taiwan (apparently for a work ARC you can). Which means I have to leave Taiwan once I have all the documents ready, and apply at one of Taiwan’s foreign missions. The employees at both agencies were well aware of this and pro-active about warning me. They assured me that any Taiwan representative office or embassy will do, just that I might want to contact the one I choose ahead of time to ask about their processing time for visas.
One weird thing: BOCA said that because the requirements for the JFRV list both proof of your marriage being registered in Taiwan (household registration documents) and proof of marriage registration in your home country (which I don’t have - we got married in Taiwan, and the US doesn’t keep a marriage registry database), the foreign mission may or may not choose to instead issue me an extendible (multiple-entry?) visitor visa instead of the JFRV. However, this is apparently fine as long as it’s not the non-extendable (single-entry?) visitor visa and “doesn’t have any weird letters on it”. In that case, according to the BOCA, I can come back to Taiwan on my visitor visa and take that directly to the NIA to trade in for an ARC. Doesn’t quite make sense to me, but the point seemed to be that I’m fine either way, and I think even if they’re wrong about that last part, I would still at least be in the right position to switch from the visitor visa to the JFRV within Taiwan without having to leave again.
Now just have to pick up my household registration documents (BOCA said huji tengben or huji mingbu are both fine) and do my health check before the visa run. Also need the FBI background check authenticated by TECRO, but I got that taken care of while visiting the US before coming back to Taiwan (very easy to get the FBI check done from within the US, with the application all online and the fingerprints done subsequently with an electronic machine at selected post offices; TECRO has pretty good instructions online for the authentication too). According to the BOCA website and the employee I talked to, it is NOT required to get the FBI check translated to Chinese. I think it used to be, and the person at the NIA desk thought it still was, but they’re not the ones dealing with that part of the process, so I assume they just didn’t realize the rule had changed. (Also required: passport photos and visa application form, which needs to be filled out online but then printed out onto physical paper.)
P.S. My father-in-law thinks I can still get the NT$10,000 if I get my new ARC before the end of April. He’s probably just guessing/assuming. Any idea if he’s right?
Had the exact same thing happen when going to Macau 6 years ago now. You basically have two options:
Go to AIT and get an Affidavit saying that your marriage is legally recognized in the US (I don’t know the exact wording needed, may be able to find something online about it)
Get a regular Tourist Visiting Relatives visa (has to have your wife’s name on it). When you enter Taiwan, make sure you tell them to use that one (they by default tried to give me the visa free entry). You can then use this to transition to the JFRV – doing it this way I think costed an extra $XXX due to technically needing “two” visas, but I was already in Macau and couldn’t get the affidavit.
So in this case you did have to then separately apply for a JFRV at BOCA once you returned, before converting it to an ARC at the NIA? The person I talked to at BOCA seemed to think I literally take a regular visitor visa to the NIA and trade it in directly for an ARC without having to get the intermediate JFRV.
I believe I was able to just do it all in one trip at NIA (so didn’t explicitly need to apply for for a separate JFRV at BOCA), just you have to pay an extra $220US for the visiting relatives visa (and there is something about the JFRV either not costing or rolling into the cost of an ARC if you apply for it directly).
I wrote about everything I needed to bring to NIA here
They need an address to put on the ARC (and so need proof that you’re living there). If you guys are staying with your wife’s family (or just plan to use that as your legal address), you can bring the 戶口名簿 along with a copy (assuming it has your wife’s name in it).