NWOHR passport, but entry permit expired. Can I apply for a new entry permit?

Legal Dual Nationality
1

Hi,

I have a question about holding Taiwanese nationality and the significance of the NWOHR passport and the entry permit inside.

I live in Germany, but already applied and successfully acquired a Taiwanese passport (without an ID). This passport has an entry permit inside that allowed me to stay for 3 months in Taiwan when using this passport. I’m male, and my mother insisted that I shouldn’t use that passport for now, since she fears I might get conscripted to the military.

So in the past, whenever I went to Taiwan to visit my family or spend the holidays, I always used my German passport since that one also allows me to stay 3 months. Because of that, I didn’t pay much attention and let the entry permit on my Taiwanese passport expire.

My question is the following: Does this entry permit have any significant value over being an overseas Taiwanese national? My worry is that since I let it expire, I won’t be able to ever use my Taiwanese passport (whenever that might be). Is it possible to re-acquire such entry permit?

I’ve read some more topics about this subject, and found the following for instance: Overseas TW passport Multiple Entry Permit(臨人字入出國許可) questio

Which shows an entry permit that is bound to the passport’s validity. However, another thread contains the following passage:

“To get full nationality rights, he must “reclaim nationality” or get an ID number.
To get that ID number, he must first enter Taiwan on his overseas Taiwanese passport WITH an entry/exit permit (usually valid for 90 days) AND THEN make an application for a TARC.”

Which would mean I can’t enter Taiwan with my Taiwanese passport anymore, since my entry permit expired.

It’s not really important for me to have a household in Taiwan, but I definitely want to keep my Taiwanese nationality. Can I ever lose this nationality by not fulfilling some requirements (like showing up at a bureau and doing some paperwork, etc.)?

2

Your mother is silly for urging you not to use the passport for fears of conscription into the military because as a national without household registration conscription will not apply to you under any circumstances even if you were to become eligible for household registration within conscription age as you actually have to have household registration to be conscripted and they can’t make you to obtain household registration no matter how long you stay in Taiwan on that passport, you have to apply yourself.

The easiest way to resolve the issue is to simply go to the same TECO where you filed the paperwork for obtaining the NWOHR passport and ask them what should be done. They will most likely simply put a new entry permit in the passport. Or they may get you to file an application for a new passport. Either way it should be a very easy matter to resolve.

To answer your other question, no you won’t lose your ROC nationality, but make sure you keep your passport and make sure your mother keeps her passport and ID card for redundancy. If you’re concerned about keeping your nationality it’s important to keep these documents as they are the most definitive proof of ROC nationality and at least one of them needs to be presented to apply for a new NWOHR passport.

(TECO - Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office
ROC - Republic of China ie Taiwan
NWOHR - National Without Household Registration ie someone who is eligible for the overseas passport but does not have household registration in Taiwan and thus no Taiwanese ID number)

3

Thank you for your reply! This answered both of my questions. I guess I’ll contact the local TECO first like you suggested, and ask them what to do about the entry permit.

Glad to hear that I won’t lose citizenship over such a small oversight of mine that would be heart-breaking for me. I’ll be more thorough with this kind of paperwork in the future!

4

Do me a favour and keep us updated. It’s always interesting to hear of marginal cases like yours.

5

This was one of my earlier posts on Forumosa, but I wanted to share some updates for other visitors who might be in a similar situation, i.e. looking into renewing their Entry Permit. Specifically, NWOHRs with an expired Entry Permit looking into renewing it.

The current application form can be found here (called 中華民國臺灣地區入出境申請書 in case the link won’t work in the future):

The requirements are:

  1. Application form
  2. A recent passport photo
  3. ROC passport or any kind of document proving ROC citizenship
  4. Something that shows that you are living abroad, e.g. your “foreign” passport
  5. A pre-paid envelope for return mail (if you do everything by mail)

If you are an NWOHR, you probably want to have an Entry Permit so that you can enter Taiwan with your NWOHR passport. This kind of Entry Permit goes into the passport directly, so for 3. you actually have to send the whole passport to the TECO; make sure to use registered mail.

For the application form, here are some hints on what data to fill in (not 100% legal advice, but this comes after a brief discussion with a TECO employee):

入出國許可證件種類如下：
一、臨人字號入出國許可：發給無戶籍國民，附於護照上。

  • 外來人口統一證號: Not sure what this is, and I could simply leave this empty.
  • 港澳或僑居地身分證號碼: If you are reading this you are probably not a citizen of Hong Kong or Macao, so just leave this empty.
  • 橋居地: Your current country of residence
  • 何時由何地到僑居地: This is a little bit confusing because if you were born overseas, you didn’t arrive in your home country. But you simply write your birthplace and date of birth there.

You then have to enter some details about a “contact person” in Taiwan, and some personal information about your parents.

The application for 臨人字號入出國許可 is free (explained on the website: “臨人字號入出國許可免費(限在國外申請)”), so simply send the application to the TECO and wait for some days, it shouldn’t take long.

I don’t remember where it was written, but somewhere in the immgration law there is also a paragraph that states that this kind of Entry Permit [for NWOHRs] will be valid until the passport expires.

Hope this is helpful!

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6

I got a question:

As a NWOHR passport holder and my 6 months is close to be expired.
If I leave Taiwan, can I enter the next day?