i have heard through the grapevine that when renewing your arc, photocopies of your degree are no longer valid… is this true? my 4th renewal is coming up, do i really need to send home for my original? let me know, thanks :help:
If this is true, it’s yet another way that life has become incrementally more difficult for foreigners living in Taiwan.
You should just have your original with you, in any case. Why not? It’s not as if your parchment cannot be replaced. I replaced mine recently and it took five working days and about 20 bucks. For that price, why not simply order another just for work permit purposes while keeping the other one in a frame on a wall somewhere? I’ve always been asked for the original here. My understanding is that copies are made for processing, but those doing so have to declare that they’ve seen the original.
do you need your degree to renew your arc?
No, but you do need it to get a new work permit. Illogical when you think about it. Logically, the fact that you had a work permit before should be proof that you have a degree, since you couldn’t have got the previous work permit without one.
The normal way it should be done is that a notarized copy of the original should be accepted, authenticated by the TECO back home … they want to prevent bogus copies from being used. That’s what I had to do with every document I ever needed for my ARC and JFRV, drivers license etc.
Your eligibility for a Taiwan visa is based directly on your OLSPSI rating (Official Looking Stamps Per Square Inch). When applying for my investor ARC I didn’t have my original company registration certificate available so I printed out a sheet of paper with my company name + number then had a notary stamp it with about 200 different markings, one of those toy wax seals and loads of red ribbon. The TRO had a bureaucratic orgasm and cleared that part of the application within half a day.
Tel 02-8590-2866 Fax 02-8590-2960
Could always ask^^^…
cla@mail.cla.gov.tw
laws.cla.gov.tw/Eng/Default.asp
…but I’d get them to Fax the info. It tends to change depending on WHO is processing your application.