For context, I am Taiwanese and can speak mandarin fluently.
I came to Taiwan as a digital nomad as a US citizen, and found an amazing community of both local Taiwanese and internationals trying to study mandarin. Long story short, I grew up Taiwanese but I gradually lost my language and culture overtime especially when I moved away from home in college. I’ve been in a mental health crisis for a while, and coming back home I feel like I found a piece of myself I haven’t had in a while. I wanted to stay here for a little bit longer to discover my culture and practice speaking mandarin so I can speak to my family better back home.
I’m currently approaching my 3rd month in Taiwan, so coming up to the 90 days. I’m interested in considering applying for the gold visa (which I do qualify for) or even quitting my job and teaching English (which has been something in the back of my mind for a few years now).
I was wondering what repercussions (if any) are there if immigration saw I’ve been here for 90 or more days. I have already gone to Japan to “break up” my 90 day consecutive stay. I am aware and willing to accept if I have to fly back to the United States to get this taken care of first.
Any and all advice is helpful! Recommendation on immigration law offices that accepts walk-ins are also helpful!
It’s called a gold card not a gold visa, but I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be able to apply from here while on a visa exemption (I did, and so have many others).
You shouldn’t need to fly to the U.S., and I’m not sure why you went to Japan either. It wasn’t necessary to “break up” the 90-day stay as you put it, and you could just have left and come back in at the end of the first 90 days to get another 90-day exemption.
You apply online — no need to go to immigration at this point, and no need to go to an immigration lawyer (if that’s what you meant with “immigration law office”) at all.
If you qualify for a gold card, there’s no reason for you to bother with a work-based ARC, IMO. I don’t see any advantages to the latter, but there are some disadvantages like being tied to a particular employer and all the BS that can entail.
If you’re a Taiwanese citizen as well as a U.S. citizen, no idea if there are any issues relating to that. Someone else might be able to clarify.
I’m only a US-Canadian dual citizen. As for my employer, I’m not entirely sure if I want to stay with this company or try teaching English which was something I’d always wanted to do at some point. I’m not sure if me staying in Taiwan for an extended duration would mean I would be scrutinized or probed by immigration a little more since technically I’m working on a visitor visa at the moment.
Japan was just a fun little mini trip. I wasn’t intending to use it to reset my 90 day visa, but it was an added bonus.
It’s extremely unlikely that immigration are going to care about this. I know one or two people who’d been in Taiwan on exemptions for over a decade before getting a gold card, and I’d been here… a while. One or two exemptions is nothing.
If you’re asked, and you almost certainly won’t be, you just say you decided to come for a short trip and realized you’d like to stay longer, which seems to be essentially the truth judging from what you’ve written.
I wouldn’t mention this to immigration, and if I were you I wouldn’t mention it here either. There should still be time to edit your post if you like (if you do, I’ll edit this out from mine too).
Fair enough — from what you wrote, it sounded like a deliberate thing.
if they r taiwanese, you are technically tw too. TW nationality law follows the blood, you can apply for nationality with different methods based on your situation. That would simplify your life a lot since staying here as a foreigner vs as a citizen changes a lot.
Most Asian countries don’t seem to care if you use visa exclusion policy to stay an extended time in the country. The US and Canada seem to care about this and often deny re-entry. I’ve heard of it happening to someone doing visa runs to Malaysia for many years, but only if there’s a human agent processing the re entry, and if you use e gate there’s almost zero chance of getting re entry denied since it’s automatic without a human making the decision.