Speaking of that, if your mother never cancelled her household registration, it’s completely crazy why you have been told that you couldn’t apply at all.
Yea, that particular TECO staff person was wrong in her answers to me at first, and the phone and email people at NIA were not very useful. That said, this isn’t unique to the government. When I called the hospital system in the U.S. to ask about how I should schedule a physical for applying for a foreign visa, they seemed to think I was an illegal immigrant asking about a U.S. visa and they where really not helpful. Unfortunately I think with large organizations and complicated processes, the further away you get from the decision makers, the less accurate the advice is.
Thanks for providing details about your case, it’s very interesting. Do you mind if I ask if you have an ROC passport already? If you do have an ROC passport, you might ask them why you were able to acquire that via your relationship with your mom (assuming it happened after she renounced citizenship), but you can’t establish a household registration via that same relationship. It would be interesting to see what they say.
I was thinking about whether or not parents must apply on behalf of the child if the parents are still alive, and so I looked at the passport application instructions from TECO in San Francico again: https://www.roc-taiwan.org/ussfo/post/170.html
You can see they have phrasing like:
申請人須於民國69年(西元1980年)2月9日以後出生,才可依據新國籍法,因母親具有我國國籍而取得我國國籍,並申請我國護照。
This part is interesting, in my opinion. The way I’ve heard about this discussed in the past, I believe that is applied when you are born, not when you apply for the passport. So basically your mom had Taiwanese nationality, then gave birth to you and you therefore had Taiwanese nationality, then she cancelled hers, but you never cancelled yours. I know this is separate from household registration, but I’m just trying to think through the various angles. I’m not sure this would actually help, but it’s another thing to keep in mind during the discussions.
The main similarity in both cases is that the ROC parent can only provide a 除戶謄本. A deceased person’s HHR gets “deactivated” for the lack of a better term, while the term for my mother’s HHR now seems to be “註銷”.
First of all, the formulation “居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民在國外出生之子女” does not include a time component. One could argue that “現在” is implied, but why does condition (1) explicitly include this while (2) doesn’t? The question would then be: Do I have to fulfil (2) at the time of birth or at the time of application?
Yea, I think that’s correct. I should mention that when I went to NIA last year to ask them directly with my cousin with me, NIA told us we needed to update my mom’s 戶籍謄本 to indicate she passed away. That would be consistent with what they’re telling you, because it seems that they wanted me to do that before applying, otherwise I think they would have given me the answer you’re getting (if my mom’s death was not registered with the government in Taiwan, they would assume she was still alive). During that process they gave me the updated document titled 戶籍謄本 (除戶全部)which I used while applying. I checked my documents over again and this shows 遷出登記 showing she just moved away, which as you mentioned would produce a different case from 註銷.
Reading your post again, I guess another possibility could be that I was possibly wrong in my understanding and what I wrote, which I would feel really bad about. Maybe it’s possible I was wrong in understanding that it’s about the parent having a household registration at the time of the child’s birth (although that’s how it seems to be written in my opinion), but rather it’s about the parent having an existing household registration even if it’s inactive (with the implication of not cancelling it). That said, however, I thought checking to make sure my mom had a household registration when I was born was an important part of the process. However, maybe that could have been my cousin’s interpretation. At this point I can’t remember word-for-word which things NIA said in our conversation exactly since it was many months ago. Basically now I’m thoroughly confused.
If the NIA argues that at the time of application, the applicant’s parent must be a “居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民”, then the NIA breaks their own rules.
This is because the NIA accepts application’s of applicants with deceased parents. However, a deceased ROC national does not have a HHR; he is not a “(現在)設有戶籍國民”. A deceased national cannot have a HHR; it gets “deactivated.” This is also the reason that one can only get a 除戶謄本 for those nationals—their 戶籍 has already been 除’d, so to say.
In an essence, you cannot be dead and fulfill “設有戶籍” at the sime time. Unless the 設有戶籍 would imply “曾經設有戶籍”, and in this case, it should equally be handled for my mother’s HHR.
Of course I cannot be 100% sure about this part, but I asked the guy from the NIA today, and he agreed, a dead person actually does not have a HHR.
I think the distinction of whether an inactive household registration still counts as some kind of valid household registration might be an important aspect here. It sounds like that guy said deceased people don’t have a HHR, but maybe he was just thinking of ‘active’ and not thinking of ‘inactive’ as still being an HHR?
c.f. https://lis.ly.gov.tw/lgcgi/lgmeetimage?cfc9cfcacec7cfccc5cdd2cdcaca
When the immigration law for NWOHRs initially got created, there is this explanation (on page 42, counted from the PDF): …然十八歲以上者,倘在臺已無直系血親等親屬,將無法申請在臺居留及定居。為使居住臺灣地區設有戶籍國民在國外出生隻子女有返臺居留之管道,爰增訂修正條文…
Now this is really interesting and a really good find. I don’t have time to read the whole thing at this moment, but I’ll try to read the summary details when I have time. At first glance it looks like very useful information. It’s interesting you can see 蕭美琴 participated in the discussion – I guess if worst comes to worst you could try writing to her office as a fellow person with parents from different nationalities to see if she can help draw attention to this situation.
At this point, I think you found a lot of good info. I hope you will continue challenge them to explain exactly why your case can’t be accepted based on the way the law is written and based on the purpose of the legal updates. I hope you are successful. If you still run into trouble, I think it’s worth getting a lawyer to take a look. In any case, you seem more than capable of handling this process, so let us know how it goes and if you need any other info.