Hi all,
How do I check if I am a Taiwanese citizen? I was born in Taiwan but moved to the US when I was 2 1/2 years old. I have been living in the US ever since, and am now a US Citizen. I have visited Taiwan once 10 years ago in 2010, but never visited since. Currently, I am applying for a job in the US that does not permit dual citizenship. Right now I am 23 years old. How can I check if I have a Taiwanese citizenship, and if so, how do I renounce it?
Thanks!
Male citizens can only renounce after they completed conscription.
Ask your parents if you were registered in household registration, had a Taiwanese passport.
When you last visited or how many times you been back is irrelevant. Did you apply for US citizenship? I’m assuming you weren’t just a stateless person for 2.5 years so you probably do have a citizenship in Taiwan.
If your parents have household registration, check it. If you are registered to their HHR at birth by your parents, you have a citizenship, unless they renounced their and your nationality later. BTW, nationality and citizenship are different. You do not get a citizenship automatically. To get it, you should be registered to the HHR by your parents.
If your parents don’t have HHR, you do not have a citizenship.
Nationality Act
Article 12
For a person who applies to lose his/her nationality according to the preceding Paragraph, under any of the following conditions, the MOI shall not permit the loss of nationality:
- A male from January 1 of the next year after he was 15 years old, who is not exempted from military service and has not fulfilled his military service. But nationals, who reside overseas and were born overseas, and have no household registration in the ROC or moved overseas before December 31 of the year they were 15 years old, shall be excluded.
No renouncing required. I’m a dual citizen.
Also lots of contractor jobs that don’t require citizenship.
The job may not last forever, but the renunciation of your citizenship will. Just keep that in mind, OP. You might value the citizenship more later in life, but by then it’ll be too late.
How would your Taiwanese parents not know whether you were a citizen or not?
Or were you adopted?
Maybe OP wants to work in some security job or something, or CIA or some national security stuff.
I mean it’s your choice but it’s better to keep whatever citizenship you have if you can.
If you haven’t served your military, then you can’t renounce until you served it. In fact if you come to Taiwan anytime you may be prevented from leaving until you sort things out (like the 90 day out of 180 day rule)
Think about this carefully. Is the job you’re applying to worth throwing away the multiple advantages of dual citizenship? It can be very difficult to get that secondary citizenship back once it’s gone.
Sounds like he has no connection to Taiwan and it’s not like he can avoid taxes with the IRS always tracking citizens money abroad.
Also Sounds like he is getting a job that needs security clearance, which isn’t something you just stumble on. He has probably worked very hard to pursue it for a while.
Almost impossible. Countries typically don’t look nicely upon former citizens who have renounced. It’s like quitting a job, flipping off the boss on the way out, and then asking for the job back a month later.
Oh wait, renouncing US citizenship? Yeah, don’t do that.
if you moved out before December 31 of the year you were 15 years old, you can.
They probably don’t read Forumosa. 
This thread has been a rollercoaster.
Thanks for the response! I actually talked to some of my other friends who were in similar boat as me, and they still qualified. It seems like as far a dual citizenships go, a Taiwanese citizenship is not compromising for security clearances.
Moved out when I was 2 1/2, so I’m pretty sure I don’t have to serve