Narrow deadline to renew ARC, is it possible?

Legal Visa & Residency
1

Kind of a big story but i’m going to try to make it short.
Me and my girlfriend are both taiwan scholarship awardees, she arrived here August 24th and got the new blue ARC. Her ARC was issued on August 30th and the date of expiry is August 24th this year. I arrived later on September 3rd, the ARC was issued on September 6th and the expiry date is September 3rd.
We moved to a new apartment 3 weeks ago and we haven’t done the address change official at the immigration office yet, should we do it ASAP or just wait a couple of months till our ARCs expire?
Now the big problem: We bought tickets to go to Thailand for August 23rd, given that we asked some friends and they told us we can renew the ARCs one month before, but now we found out that it’s really 15 days before!!! So for me is going to be a very VERY narrow deadline. 15 days before September 3rd is August 19-20 and I don’t know how long is the whole renew process going to take.
Regarding the required papers to renew the ARC we shouldn’t have any problem, she just finished studying the 1st year of Chinese and got accepted into a master program. For me I just finished my first year of master, so I guess I should just get some sort of certificate of that at NTU.

What would you recommend us to do?
Thanks for your time and concern.

2

Go in to Immigration to notify them of your address change, and in the process discuss your concerns about the renewal timeframe with them. I’m sure they’ll know what to do.

3

thanks, your idea seems very reasonable
but anybody has any idea on how long it takes to renew the “new” ARC?

4

sorry to bother again, but i just checked the multi purpose application form
and it says im supposed to notify the change of address before 15 days…
and… its been almost a months since we moved
on this form says that we can be penalized for NT1.000 to 5.000
are we gonna get penalized for sure?

5

If you piss them off you will.

It can be done, but not likely.

6

You don’t have to tell them the date you moved, and if they ask, lie.

7

My ARC was about to expire on June 18.
I went on May 8 to the Banciao office and extended for another year without problems.
Except waiting until my number was called, the whole process of extending my ARC and get a multiple re-entry permit took about 15 minutes.

Greetings
Tom

8

Don’t worry about the moving date. They really don’t care about that. Just tell them you’ve moved recently.

If you plan to leave, though, you need to make very very sure that they give you whatever temporary papers you need to get back into the country, because if you have a new-style plastic ARC, it has all your re-entry documentation embedded and you need to show it when you go through immigration.
However, I have heard that there’s a long backlog for issuing these ARCs, so you might find that they’ll tell you to come back in two months to pick up your new ARC.
If they do this, you MUST tell them that you’re going overseas on vacation and will need a re-entry sticker in your passport. DON’T FORGET!

9

I was told that they would only take my old APRC once the new one was ready. With an APRC you don’t get any stickers in your passport.

10

thanks for your help
we went to the immigration office and did the address change thing without any problem
and also the lady told us we can go renew the ARC 1 month before it expires (not 15 days)
so i guess we will have no problem XD