Good luck with this! And do keep us posted.
Guy
Congratulations! If my understanding of the process is correct, that means you got (very swiftly) through the hard part. In theory, by this stage MoL have already done the skills verification and all that’s left is the relatively mundane processing related to the underlying visa and residence permit.
I would recommend calling TECO before going to give them a heads up. It’s highly likely that you’re the first person ever to go through this process in a particular office and giving them a day or two head start to let them call back to Taiwan and work out what to do when you arrive could be useful.
By default this stage of the process is come-back-in-a-week-for-the-passport, but our friend @irish91 lived similarly far away from his TECO and they were able to do look-at-and-copy-the-passport after he made the hardship clear.
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Here’s some clearer and more easily digestable information on the Employment Gold Card and work permits for freelance artists by Taiwan EZ Permit Centre on Crossroads.
https://crossroads.tw/en/stories-and-media/posts/your-guide-to-the-employment-gold-card-and-freelance-artist-work-permit
Thanks for the useful info in this thread! I’m planning to apply.
The website says:
The spouse and minor children of the Employment Gold Card holders are eligible for residence in Taiwan.
but I can’t find any more info than that. Can anyone point me to something more detailed? For example:
Would my wife (also not Taiwanese) receive residency (is this an “ARC”?) as part of the application for my gold card, or is that a separate process done after (or before?) I receive the gold card?
What documents would she be required to present?
How much does it cost? How long does it take? Is it a tricky process?
Would she get a full 3 years residency to accompany my 3 years gold card?
Thanks.
-D
Thanks for the informative thread, everyone. I just came to it and wished that I had discovered it earlier. I just picked up my new Gold Card two days ago. It was quite the laborious process; however to be fair I spent a great amount of time vetting the qualifications before I actually started the formal application process. I, too, noticed early on that the online application fee was non-refundable and did not want to forfeit a 9,000$NT+ just to serve as a guinea pig. Indeed, as it turns out I was mentioned in the Taipei Times article without knowing about it until I found the link on this thread and read the piece: I am the actor who applied through the Ministry of Culture who freaked out when, upon returning to the online application after several months of 30+ email exchanges with the MOC to confirm whether I would qualify or not, found a new addition added to the last page stating that I now had to provide proof of $NT 160,000 income - past and going forward (this turned out to be simply bad web design and poor English translation). Still, I had to take a leap of faith to actually complete and submit the application because the $160,000 monthly provision was STILL THERE and never removed. Anyway, once I did submit I have to admit that the process was very streamlined and the folks at BOCA and NIA were very helpful and transparent. I submitted the formal app on July 16 and in less than 24 hours had received conformation and further instructions. Soup-to-nuts, I picked up my new Gold Card on Tuesday (August 7) and the actual official beginning date is August 2, so the entire process was 17 days. Everything took place in Taipei City.
That being said, there are still on-going questions that remain about the status of the card and its practical applications. I will go into those in a future post.
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First topic that is still confusing is how the Gold Card and NHI work together. I actually visited the NHI office today and was rejected. They told me that since I had no employer (my Gold Card category is a “freelancer”), I have a six month waiting period before I can apply. However, on the NIA link, https://www.immigration.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1346583&ctNode=29991&mp=2 it clearly states that “According to the NIA, the benefits to the cardholder of the Employment Gold Card are… participating in National Health Insurance as insured persons without being subject to the requirement of a full six months of residence in the state”.
Furthermore, the NHI people told me that I am only permitted one trip abroad during that six month waiting period or the ticking clock resets. This provision totally blindsided me, as I had not heard or read anything about it in any of my research.
My initial guess is the NHI people are working from out-dated directives that precede the Gold Card and that it is going to take some liaison with NIA people to make this work out.
The NHI people kept going back to the six-month waiting period provision because I did not have an employer of record yet in Taiwan. The deal is, though, that as a freelancer, I will never have “an employer of record” in the traditional sense of the word - and I could tell that the staff at NHI was not really grasping my attempts to explain the concept.
Additionally, as a freelance performer, I am not very happy about the single entry provision, especially when the Gold Card explicitly guarantees a multi-entry visa. It is not that unusual that an opportunity comes up to be hired onto a job that shoots a few weeks in Taiwan and then proceeds to another few weeks in Thailand, Japan, etc. Why should I be penalized if I need to travel for work - or for that matter, if I want to travel to Hong Kong one weekend a month to shop or to Tokyo to visit a friend?
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TECO NY were very helpful and nice, but had absolutely no idea that a) this Gold Card existed, b) what they had to do to process one (and I had called earlier). Had I not been reading this thread and specifically the experience of @irish91 (which I pulled up and showed to them) I would have followed their “best guess” which was to get my passport copy legalized and take it…somewhere in Taiwan.
They are going to call Taipei for guidance and proceed from there, but indeed they did not hold my passport which is lucky as I’m 3 hours away from New York City. I just hope I can have the card mailed if it’s issued, or pick it up in Taiwan. That was an 11-hour marathon yesterday just to do that, including two hours of back-and-forth in the office. But again, I have to say that every single employee I dealt with was courteous and helpful, and went beyond what one would expect in a bureaucratic situation to try to solve the problem.
I didn’t find any description on NHI for (freelance) gold card holders except for the Immigration News on NIA site, by my quick search. It should be written in some law. Did you already give your feedback to NIA or NDC people?
Not yet - I was just at NHI this afternoon. I plan to contact NIA tomorrow and try to arrange a meeting.
By the way, who is NDC again???
National development council, which is the responsible agency for Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals, and employment gold card.
Building on what Tando said: the NDC function a policy advising body that reports to the upper reaches of Taiwan’s national government. Under the Tsai administration, they seem to be providing directives that are actually being followed–if also unevenly by all the government agencies affected by these changes!
Guy
In my case I contacted the representative office 1 day in advance to ask what all was required as it was a 3 hour drive for me. They had not heard of the Employment Gold Card before so I explained I got an email and a passport submission form stating to take my passport for inspection. I forwarded this email and form to them.
Additionally I rang MOFA (https://foreigntalentact.ndc.gov.tw/en/cp.aspx?n=D927ED39BDAE7478&s=DA2F7BC919B77E24) and asked them what was involved. They said they would contact their colleagues in the representative office with the details.
Before driving down the next day, I rang the representative office again, this time they where knowledgeable and said the process would only take 15 minutes.
Arrived, submitted passport, 15 minutes later got it back, all done.
Quite a simple process and everyone I talked too was helpful to get it all sorted 
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Hello all
I’m kinda envious of you all folks who managed to get the card.
I applied for Culture, Art, Audiovisual and Pop Music and MOL deems that I don’t qualify under the scheme.
Well sad to say that my dream kinda stops here and can’t progress it further.
Did anyone try to appeal?
A few thousand white collar expats in Taiwan jumping for scraps at the immigration table…while millions of Taiwanese and Chinese pour into Western countries as full-fledged citizens of those countries. The hypocrisy continues
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Notice there is a new bill that will get voted in October. Here the direct link to the pdf draft. I didn’t went though it, but here the introduction of the bill that feel like will make future applications smoother:
The impact of Taiwan’s low birth rate and population aging is growing increasingly evident. The country’s working age population began to fall after reaching its peak in 2015. The total population is projected to start exhibiting negative growth in 2025, with the working age population falling below 66.7 percent of the total population in 2027, bringing the period of its demographic dividend to an end.
Taiwan urgently needs to respond to these changes in the demographic structure, as well as to the difficulties caused by the increasingly intense international competition for talent and the marked shortages of the technical talent required by domestic industries, by recruiting and supplementing high-grade foreign manpower and talent to augment the manpower resources needed for national development. As a means to boost industrial upgrading, maintain a reasonable population structure, and raise national competitiveness, this is a vital objective that brooks no delay.
Hence, this proposed legislation will relax and broaden the applicable scope of regulations governing qualification to work and stay in Taiwan, access to permanent residence, rights of dependents, and other aspects of the treatment offered to foreign professionals, foreign mid-level technicians, and overseas compatriots. Also, given that regulation of economic immigration is currently dispersed among various immigration laws and regulations, this new act will serve to enhance administrative efficiency and focus policy implementation by bringing together all pertinent provisions in a single statute, thereby adding greater force to recruitment efforts.
To help attract the foreign professionals needed for the digital economy era and the rapid shift in business models, it is planned to relax their conditions for obtaining work permits and to establish more liberal conditions for their employment and for eligibility to employ them.
What’s also awesome is that they are requesting for “public” comments . Never saw this way to do things anywhere else (even in France, because the only way we do this is by being on strikes…). So pleasantly surprised. if they actually read and change things according the comments.
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Well, now I’m officially listed as “under inspection”, whatever that means. They already knew I have a qualifying degree, and I’m sure the passport can’t have been much of a surprise. Hopefully it’s just the label that shows up on the site prior to them sending a notification of issuance.
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APPROVED!
Thanks for the advice and guidance through the process. Just waiting the “21 working days” for the card to arrive in New York. Hopefully that will be before I leave for Taiwan on September 24…not counting on it…
Of course it should be possible to pick it up in Taiwan, but I have no idea of how to make that happen at this point. It’s hard enough to get the new procedure to work let alone try to change the process in the middle.
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Excellent! Congratulations on this!!!
Guy
Congratulations!