I am currently a NWOHR heading to Taiwan to establish my Household Registration (HHR) and plan to register my marriage at the same time.
I have a specific edge case regarding the “Single Status Certificate” (Certificate of Marriage Eligibility) that the HHRO is requesting, and I’m hoping someone here has gone through something similar.
Here is the timeline of our situation:
* The Wedding: We were married in the United States (we have a TECO-authenticated US marriage certificate).
* Citizenship at the time: At the exact time of our wedding, my wife was solely a Philippine citizen.
* Current Citizenship: She naturalized after we were married and is now a US citizen.
The HHRO requires a Single Status Certificate issued within the last 6 months to prove she was free to marry at the time of our wedding.
My question is about which document Taiwan will accept given her change in citizenship:
* Option A (The easy way): Can she just use her current US citizenship to sign an “Affidavit of Single Status” in front of a US notary and have it authenticated by TECO in the US?
* Option B (The nightmare way): Will the HHRO strictly demand a Philippine CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage) authenticated by TECO Manila because she was a PH citizen on our wedding day?
Getting a Philippine CENOMAR and routing it through Manila TECO while we live in the US would be incredibly difficult and time-consuming.
If anyone has dealt with a similar citizenship-change scenario when registering a foreign spouse at the HHRO, I would greatly appreciate hearing how you handled it or how strict the officers were.
Too many SE Asians marrying and naturalizing in taiwan, so Taiwan had no choice but to streamline the process for SE Asians, else slow down the system.
I see what you are saying but naturalizing in Taiwan wasn’t a goal we were pursuing. I think permanent residency is just fine. We don’t see ourselves living in Taiwan permanently just for awhile.
Goals change. I’m stuck because the government knew about both my countries and now want me to renounce both.
It’s not. Trust me. If goals change and she becomes a citizen, she becomes your permanent key to Taiwan. Constantly running into walls with this godforsaken permanent residency. Well documented on this site.
The bureaucracy isn’t that much different between nationalities. Requirements for certain visas, yea, but not much.
I’m saying this because I know both of you will not want to renounce US citizenship, but PH citizenship is easy to restore. In fact, if goals change, she would be your key to restoring US citizenship after renouncing. Another member is doing this to get his TW.
TRUST me. My goals changed too and I wish I knew what the future had in store.
I don’t understand what you mean “she will be my key to restoring my US citizenship". I’m not renouncing my US citizenship. I am Taiwanese by birth.
Can you provide specific examples of why we’d care if she was a citizen rather than permanent resident? From what I see it means she can’t vote, own land, and convicted of crime or leaves Taiwan for too long she risks losing the permanent residency. What am I missing?
I’ve already provided SF TECO with her US passport so I think the commiting immigration fraud ship has sailed.
You can own land, not all types of land but you can own land, but it’s the daily shit we have to go through…
Our ID is not accepted in numerous NORMAL areas. Constant hassles. SOO many places are only set up for citizens.
Obviously if convicted of a crime, deportation,
no rights.
…
That’s not immigration fraud… and now she’s stuck as second class. You have no idea the amount of shit we go through for having the ‘wrong’ ID number. We’re treated unfairly all the fucking time. And there is no easy nor cheap way to enforce the equality law. The only enforcement mechanism we have is suing them, which is expensive.
You’ll have to be the guarantor for things like cell phone plans, bank loans, mortgages etc… because the bosses up in management decided that they will discriminate against foreigners because one person bailed on their phone plan one time. It’s annoying for you and dehumanising for her. You’ll be on the hook.
Typing this from Taiwan where I have recently got my household registration and have been trying to register my marriage but HHRO keeps making up reasons to deny me.
Here is what happened:
1. When trying to register our marriage using only our US California marriage certificate (from where we married), they insisted we provide a document issued within the last six months confirming we were still married. US/California does not issue any such document or certificate. They suggested we could use an authenticated tax transcript.
2. Then they said that because my wife was Filipino at the time of marriage (she is a dual US/Philippines citizen now), we need to provide marriage documents from the Philippines.
3. When we presented the marriage documents from the Philippines (Report of Marriage, Certificate of Marriage Status), they said TECO Manila’s authentication cover sheet stated the wrong marriage date. They reached out to TECO Manila and confirmed it was an error on their part.
4. Now the HHRO is insisting that the Report of Marriage must say that my nationality is Taiwan, not the USA even though I only had a US passport at that time. The Philippines does not allow the nationality to amended Report of Marriages with the amendment process and only way to change this is hiring a Philippines lawyer and going to court which who knows how will play out because no error was actually made.
so if your nationality was USA when you got married and the wife was PNOY in the marriage certificate, you merely need to show that you have two passports the USA and the taiwan one, then the PNOY wife should only show the PNOY passport. show it to TECO philippines.
otherwise, you need to get the guy or girl to talk to someone higher up in the HHRO.