Hi everyone,
I’ve found myself in a very difficult situation, and any advice would be welcome.
I overstayed in Taiwan after I was divorced and my spouse visa cancelled (explanation of circumstances below). I am citizen of a Western country. Other than the overstay I don’t have any criminal record or other issues in or outside of Taiwan. I recently left Taiwan voluntarily during the Department of Immigration’s amnesty period: a publicly stated condition of this amnesty, confirmed many times with Immigration Department officials, was that there would be no ban on overstayers returning to Taiwan on valid visas. I am however banned on entering Taiwan visa-free for one year, and there’s a stamp in my passport saying: “Visa required: bearer is not eligible for visa-free before X date.”
I left Taiwan for a nearby country where I applied for the Gold Card. I was required to tick “yes” to a question about overstay history, I passed through the initial immigration department verification stage and the qualifications verification stage, and received an email telling me to print out the passport submission notice and take it to the local Taiwan Office for verification. Within hours, however, before I could submit the passport, I received an email stating that my Gold Card application had been rejected.
In spite of multiple emails and phone calls to the Immigration Department and the local Taiwan office, the only advice I have received is general advice to make sure all my documents are complete and then apply again. All the documents were complete the first time, however (I’m applying on the basis of a top 50 PhD, and this was already signed off on by the Labor Department). It is clear that the problem with application is not a lack of documents, but the overstay record. I repeatedly hit a wall where I’m fobbed off with general advice that is clearly not applicable to my situation.
All the immigration officials I have spoken to have confirmed that overstay records would not count against applicants for visas who turned themselves in during the amnesty period. I do not believe the immigration department’s amnesty was in bad faith with no intention to honor the promise of no re-entry bans; I suspect, however, that the amnesty policy has not been communicated to staff processing gold card and other visa applications and that someone at the immigration “automatically” rejected my gold card application without checking my records and without being aware of the amnesty policy.
Any help or advice in this difficult and stressful situation would be much appreciated!
Thank you!
Oh yes, and although it’s probably no longer relevant, these were the circumstances of me becoming an overstayer. I came to Taiwan on a spouse visa, and my partner later left me. We lived apart for a year and a half but I had not signed the divorce papers. My partner was in contact with me from time to time during this period. When I was ready to sign the divorce papers and apply for the Gold Card or another visa (months before my spouse visa was set to expire), I was shocked to discover that almost a year before a divorce had been granted without my knowledge and my spouse visa had been cancelled. No steps were taken to attempt to inform me that there was a divorce case and giving me a chance to appear in court (because of this, I believe the Taiwanese divorce could be contested in my home country, where we were married). A post factum notification of the divorce was sent out, but my official address was still my partner’s address and I never received it. I had therefore unwittingly become an overstayer in Taiwan for almost a year, and was told I would face a three year ban on re-entry. This was at the height of Covid, when returning to my home country was difficult. Also, I had by this time met my current partner, who has an elderly parent to care for and cannot easily immigrate outside of the Taiwan with me. In these circumstances I stayed on in Taiwan illegally, resigning my job immediately so as not to work illegally and living off my savings. When the amnesty was announced this year, I wanted to seize this chance to come back to Taiwan and stay and work legally.
so I’m thinking about giving up and just sending everything in English unless it will substantially help my application.