The Employment Gold Card Super-Thread

Legal Visa & Residency
3039

Visitor Visa to Gold Card

A recent client of mine wanted to apply for a Gold Card. He had the following simple questions:

“Can I switch my current Visitor Visa to a Gold Card without leaving Taiwan?”

This question looks like it should be easy to answer, right?

It turned out that after making five phone calls to different government departments today, I got several different answers that contradicted each other.

(If you just want to read the conclusion and skip over all the drama, please scroll down to the end of the post.)

My client’s visa background: He recently entered Taiwan on a Visitor Visa, with a duration of stay of “180 DAYS NO EXTENSION”. This visa actually expired a few months ago, and he has been using 30-day-COVID extensions to legally extend his stay in Taiwan ever since.

Phone call #1: Visa Division, Bureau of Consular Affairs (BOCA), Ministry of Foreign Affairs

As soon as the lady on the phone learned that I had a question about Gold Cards, she immediately interrupted and told me to ask the National Immigration Agency. She said that BOCA doesn’t deal with foreign citizens on 30-day-COVID extensions. She hung up quickly, before I even had the chance to finish my question…

Phone call #2: Gold Card Help Desk

Still reeling from the trauma of my previous call, this time I shortened my question into a very short sentence, without giving too many details in the beginning. The guy on the phone was really friendly and helpful. He asked for more details about this applicant and went to check if the visa type is convertible without flying out of Taiwan for a visa run (I heard him typing something into his computer). A few minutes later, he came back to me with an answer: “If his visa states NO EXTENSION, then he probably needs to fly out to have his passport inspected at an overseas mission.”

In my experience, the Gold Card Help Desk is very good at answering general questions, but when it comes to questions that are not within their narrow domain, it’s better to double-check, especially if you sense that they are not confident about their answer!

So I pushed him a little bit (in a nice way), asking him if he can be certain that my client needs to fly out to get a Gold Card? He said “I’m not 100% sure. If you want a clear answer, you need to ask BOCA.”

Phone call #3: National Immigration Center (NIA)

I started by explaining that I have a question about the Gold Card, and asked if I could speak with someone who is familiar with this. After being transferred between four or five different people, I finally got to talk to someone who was able to answer my question. He told me he is very confident that a Visitor Visa can be switched to a Resident Visa, since the Gold Card is a type of Resident Visa! He advised the applicant to apply for a Gold Card as soon as possible, just in case that his COVID extension expires before his Gold Card approval completes.

This guy seemed very convincing, and seemed to know what he’s talking about.

But I wanted to make one final phone call, just to be sure.

Phone call #4: I called BOCA again, hoping a different person would answer the phone

This time, the lady over the phone was a bit more patient. But after listening to my question, she refused to give me a clear answer. Instead, she asked me to ask my client to write an email to BOCA in person, to explain why he needs to change his Visitor Visa to a Gold Card. (My jaw dropped at this point.)

Phone call #5: Back to the National Immigration Agency (NIA)
At this point I thought it might be good to get another person from the NIA to confirm the previous answer. So I phoned up the Immigration Center in Taipei. The lady on the end of the phone asked for the applicant’s passport number to check his visa status in their system. After a few minutes, she got back to me and told me that his Visitor Visa has already expired and in order to get a Gold Card, he’ll need to leave Taiwan to have his passport inspected.

Same government department, different answers! Now what?

I googled “Taiwan Visitor Visa to Resident Visa” (and several different permutations of this) between calls, but got nothing substantial.

There were some discussions about this question in this forum in 2020, but nobody seemed to be sure about the answer. (See #696 & #784 on this thread.)

My client eventually did send an email to BOCA as they requested. (He’s still waiting for an answer. If the answer turns out to be positive, that would be great. But if the answer comes back as negative, it would still contradict what the first NIA agent told me.)

In the end, I found an announcement on the Bulletin Board on the Gold Card online portal that was released in late March (and this information is not on the Gold Card Official Website). It says:

March 30th, 2021-For Applicants with Visitor Visas:

If you are not able to apply for a further extension to your duration of stay while your application of the Gold Card is processing, please depart from Taiwan by the expiration of stay.

This announcement seems to imply that you CAN switch a Visitor Visa to a Gold Card without leaving Taiwan and re-entering again, so long as you remember to apply for the 30-day-COVID extension on a regular basis. (I don’t foresee the government cancelling this covid extension for foreign citizens anytime soon.)

So even if my client gets a different answer from BOCA via email, it might not matter, as the Gold Card Portal is supposed to be authoritative. (I’m guessing that the people I spoke to in BOCA are not completely familiar with all the rules that relate to the gold card.)

Later on when I logged in to the system to create a new application for my client, I found that the system allows him to have his passport inspected inside Taiwan:

visitor
visitor1785×2232 259 KB

In summary, the truth seems to be:

  1. It’s better to get double (and triple) confirmation from government departments.
  2. Even if you get a clear answer from a government department, it’s better to be skeptical until you talk to the right person. (But who is the right person to talk to?)
  3. Yes. You can switch your Visitor Visa to the Gold Card (a type of Resident Visa).
  4. Yes. You can have your passport verified in Taiwan when you get your Gold Card approval.
  5. No. You don’t need to fly out and back in again for this conversion.

However, if I discover any information from an authoritative official source that contradicts the above, I’ll post back here.

6 Likes
3040

So passport inspections have been updated to reflect level 2 until 6 Sep.
Does anyone know if I may bypass this step since I already received a work visa in May (where the embassy thereby inspected my passport)?

1 Like
3041

I have officially given up on the Gold Card. My field does not fit into any of the pre-set areas they have defined. I make a fair bit over the income threshold, and initially was planning on applying in the Economy field, until that changed.

I could possibly apply in the Education field in relation to the consulting that I have done. However, with the current refusals of, “your employer doesn’t fit the category, even though your job does”, that seems to have happened multiple times to applicants here, I don’t see the point really.

I think we will likely just apply through a business visa for our family business that we set up in Taiwan when we arrive: it allows for a flexibility in your work permit. As long as the areas of your business activities are covered in your business application, you should be fine, and it is nearly as good as an open work permit, imo.

3042

My information is admittedly a bit old (early 2020), but I was told definitively by NIA that I would not be able to switch from a visitor visa to the gold card without leaving Taiwan. (Additional background: I was here on a 90-day visa exemption but my gold card application was taking ages, so I was considering applying for an extension with BOCA, i.e., getting a visitor visa, which I could have done because I’m from the UK. However, if I’d done that, I wouldn’t then have been able to switch to a gold card without leaving the country.)

That seems to match what you were told on phone calls #2 and #5. In the end I left and came back before the pandemic really hit and applied during a second visa exemption.

I think you might be reading too much into the application portal allowing you to select this as an option. I don’t know whether the system has been improved in the last 18 months, but I remember it was quite buggy when I applied, so it seems possible that it’s just been incorrectly coded. (If government departments dealing with the gold card can’t even give a consistent answer for outlier cases like this, how much do you think the people designing the website will know?)

Might be worth contacting BOCA as the other government employees told you…

3043

I went for the passport inspection on July 22 at the TECO in NYC. The person working there told me I had to wait for an email so I could pick up the actual card.

3 days later I got this email:

“Congratulations! You are applying for 『Employment Gold Card』 on 2021/06/23. The receipt number of your application is 110551053010, which has been officially approved, and is now entering the certificate stage. And hereby notice!
After the completion of the certification, the system will also send the certification notice in the form of E-mail. Please pay attention to your email message.
In addition, you can also use the system’s function of < progress query > to query the case and accreditation schedule.
Remind you that if you apply for choosing < outside receive > employment the gold card in this system, it needs at least 21 working days or more to be delivered to your choice of roc overseas missions. And then you will be informed. Therefore, please reserve the required time”

My belief until now is that the email above was just notifying that I would eventually get another email to pick up , Is that the case? because I still haven’t received anything and after I received that email I haven’t done anything or submitted anything to the system , so I just want to make sure if I should keep waiting as opposed to actually having to do something.

3044

Any one who applied under Economy field recently, how long does it stay in the status of “Consulting with Ministry of Economic Affairs”? Have been in this status for almost 2 months and wondering how much longer to wait for?

3045

I know two people in Taichung who went from 90 days except runs (visitor visa on arrival) to gold card. So it was definitely possible. They were tired of being in the 30 days longer, 30 days longer period…

3046

You probably need to clarify that. From what you wrote, it sounds like they were on visa exemptions not a visitor visa (visa exemptions and visas on arrival aren’t the same thing).

And yeah, you can definitely go from an exemption to the gold card - that’s what I (and I guess many others) did.

3047

Yep Visa exemption…

3048

@Andrew

The client has submitted his application. Let’s see if he succeeds.

I actually called up the Gold Card help desk for another client’s matter few days ago, and asked them about the visitor visa again to see if they’ve changed the answer to this. The answer is still no. He said my client cannot switch from Visitor Visa to Gold Card without leaving Taiwan.

However, while my client went to NIA in Taipei to renew his 30-day-COVID extension (while he’s waiting for his gold card approval), he asked the staff there about his status, and the staff working there told him that he can do that without any problems.

If he succeeds, I’ll make a complaint to the gold card office about the inconsistency among different government departments.

2 Likes
3049

Things are moving quickly so far:

Aug 18 – Applied under Science & Technology salary sub-category
Aug 25 – Review by Workforce Development Authority
Aug 27 – Consulting with Ministry of Science & Technology

Let’s go!

3050

Any indication when Gold Card extensions will become available?

3051

I managed to get my application approved, now waiting for passport inspection to go ahead. How long does the passport inspection stage take and do I need to leave my passport at the representive/embassy office ? If so for how long ?

3052

Probably end of the year when the Act is implemented, based on the Gold Card Facebook group. However, the 6+6 extension is only of the residence status and not of the Work Permit, so it’s kind of no longer a Gold Card, which is why most of us are waiting to know if we can apply for APRC or not while on this extension. The new (1-, 2- or 3-year) renewal procedure should also be rolled out by the end of the year, although again the rules (and requirements) are still unclear.

3053

Is there an email or any instant messenger I can reach you at regarding your services?

3054

AFAIK the option to collect outside Taiwan is no longer done, so all new recipients will traveling in by means of the downloadable residence authorization pdf. You could check regularly on your portal to discover when it’s available to you.

3055

This is a YMMV type of situation based on your particular TEC(R)O branch, as some have reported some wildly inconsistent experiences. But it should only take a matter of minutes if being done in-person, so they’ll hand it back to you and then your status will update in the next day or two. Mailing in the passport due to Covid-restrictions can take a bit longer, definitely just check with the branch that will be doing the inspection.

3056

A post was split to a new topic: From gold card super-thread

3057

Beginning from July 28, the Gold Card Pick Up Location will be Restricted to Taiwan

Beginning from noon July 28, the pick up location for the Employment Gold Card will be set in Taiwan, and there will no longer be an option for picking up the card at an overseas mission. Overseas and domestic applicants can download the Resident Authorization Certificate on the Application Portal to enter Taiwan. The Gold Card must be collected within 30 days of entering Taiwan at one of the National Immigration Agency’s Service Centers.

For applicants who have applied before July 28, your Gold Card pick up location will remain the same (the location that you have already chosen). However, if you are asked to provide supplementary documents, even if your initial application date was before July 28, your pick up location for the Gold Card will be changed to Taiwan.

1 Like
3058

Since we are nearing 3000 posts and I can’t edit the original post, let me put this here as “solution”:

There is a very extensive FAQ for the gold card available at taiwangoldcard.com

I strongly suggest checking there first before asking here (or trying to dig out answers from the 3K posts above).

This is an unofficial, volunteer-run FAQ site for those applying for the Gold Card & holders of the card. Our very own @fifieldt and several others keep that FAQ up to date. If you have any suggestion for improvement, please head over to the dedicated thread: Gold Card FAQ

4 Likes