Survey: What are the most illogical/arbitrary Taiwan immigration laws in your opinion?

Legal Human Rights
41

This particular law doesn’t apply to me either because I wasn’t born here. Got rejected this week.

1 Like
42

  1. Citizenship process and standards for dual citizenship.

  2. APRC rules for spouses and children of APRC holders.

Both are tied in their stupidity (but the APRC rules are inhumane).

Both need to change.

2 Likes
43

In what way?

44

I don’t see why a foreigner who is a tea farmer or raised seven kids or started a business or who has worked as a cram school teacher or English language instuctor is in any way not a ‘professional’ . Personally.

3 Likes
45

I assume you are asking how the APRC rules are inhumane?

  1. If a wife and children are on the APRC of husband/dad, there are what I believe are unfair and inhumane rules:
    a. The spouse cannot apply for an
    open work permit for an additional 5 years after the APRC holder. This makes little sense and creates additional financial hardships.
    b. The spouse and child(ren) are on a dependent visa, which has no value of its own. If the original holder dies, even after decades of living in Taiwan, the spouse and child must leave in that their visas are now invalid.
    c. The child visa of APRC holder. After the age of majority, there are issues with the child’s visa. There have been updates to this, which I need to research before commenting.

There are other issues, but these are the major ones. I am short on time right now. Time for work!

2 Likes
46

Agree, another thing that I do not understand is that they want to attract top level foreign professionals, yet make it practically illegal for an existing foreign English teacher to be any more than an English teacher in terms of work, at least until they are qualified for an open work permit.

3 Likes
47

Thanks for your reply, I also think that it is inhumane to set so many conditions for families to stay together. Divorces and deaths are hard enough to deal with on its own, it is f’ed up that they have to fear being deported on top of that. I feel that these laws are originally put in place by people who never thought twice about how it would affect people’s lives, since they never had to deal with it themselves.

1 Like
48

And are Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian Because they are able to renounce their citizenship and then turn right around and reclaim it.

5 Likes
49

Got to be the dual citizen stuff, I know people who have been here for 35+ years, have APRCs but have no chance of getting an ID card. Some of these guys are watching the children of people they taught being able to vote in elections but they themselves can not even thou they have been here 2x longer than than them.

8 Likes
50

ts not just that, I also think it’s a good trade off to be honest.
better to have a TW passport compared to a TH,ID or VN passport. if you come from a country with a " strong" passport there is no incentive to give it up (and that’s why so many TW nationals try to get US or CA passport )

2 Likes
51

I’d say getting an APRC is much easier than 10 years ago. You can get a nationality before you renounce your original one is still an improvement. Now kids of over 20 of ARC/APRC holders can stay with parents, if they are here ling enough.

most of foreigners move here mostly for economic reasons, I guess. Most of them come to work or to marry.

1 Like
52

does your birthplace matter for nationality?

53

It doesn’t, I was born in a country different from my nationality. According to them, this law only applies to people born in Taiwan. I am not eligible for the APRC rule either.
This is the reason why I think the rules are too specific and restrictive. Perhaps they forgot that single parent families exist, and some have a Taiwanese parent but wasn’t born in Taiwan. I couldn’t think of any logical reasons for them to deliberately exclude people like me.

54

OMG not for me! Coming to Taiwan was a HUUUUUUGE step down!

1 Like
55

Same here, my salary now is 1/3 of what I earned in the US, certainly didn’t move here for the money lol.

2 Likes
56

is there any merit you are here on ARC as a foreigner over being here on TARC as a Taiwanese?

57

nothing contradictory, even if all the foreigners on forumosa are not here for economic reasons.

58

what is the petition btw?

I’m not sure if it doesn’t make much sense, but no residency for parents as dependants may be one of unfriendly ones.

59

  1. It’s not exactly an anti-foreign law, but the ban on teaching foreign languages in kindergartens is extremely stupid, and any damn fool can see that it’s very selectively enforced, which doesn’t encourage faith in the rule of law. :money_mouth_face: :roll_eyes:

  2. As noted, the work permit system in general.

Although it’s now possible for a newly arrived foreigner to get an open work permit through the gold card system, it’s very difficult to get a gold card (unless you’re someone who isn’t likely to want one anyway), so most foreigners are severely restricted until they either become permanent residents or marry Taiwanese.

If someone has already been found to be qualified for a type of job, why make the person go through the application process over and over? What harm is there in letting the person work for another employer doing exactly the same thing? Or even another branch of the first employer’s business?

Now they might say it’s not the foreigner but the employer that needs to prove itself worthy, but that argument falls flat when you realize that any foreigner with an open work permit can work for an employer that wouldn’t otherwise be able to get a work permit for a foreign employee, i.e. letting foreigners work more isn’t as dangerous as some politicians would have people believe. On the contrary, it would unlock some of their economic potential in a taxable manner.

Of course, if you let foreigners do all kinds of jobs without restrictions, like 711 etc., then some of them will, and then they would be taking jobs away from locals. However, an open-within-a-certain-category work permit, e.g. a buxiban-teacher-only work permit, would not have that problem, and it would fix the problem of teachers unwittingly becoming illegal foreign workers by presuming that two branches of the same business are allowed to share staff between them (which, generally speaking, they aren’t allowed to do with foreigners).

And so on – the youtube thing, etc. The whole system is based on 20th century thinking and doesn’t hold up well against the reality we have now.

  1. Other issues – not specifically immigration, but equal rights for foreigners in general. When you don’t have confidence that banks will serve you while foreign, why even try?

You may also be interested in these.

And more – you are welcome to search. :mag: :slightly_smiling_face:

5 Likes
60

I suspect no one ever puts huge thoughts into immigration laws unless they desperately needs immigrants. Taiwan, like China likely never had an immigration law in the first place, and immigration was summarily not allowed.

So Taiwan’s law was likely some refugee process that turned into immigration law. But since no one made enough noise about it, it was never fixed. Plus immigration simply isn’t even in the national debate.

So maybe if there’s a lot of mega billionaire laowai out there who can make big lobbies, we will see some change.

I mean in the US immigration is in the national debate and still there are accusations of ICE separating families and forced sterilization.