To register or not with your Consulate

It would seem like a non-brainer but as with everything, it is not as simple as it looks. While everyone says it is a good idea “in case of emergency”, I’m really pondering on the advantages and disadvantages. It goes like this:

For starters, the closest embassy is in Beijing. They were quite annoying before in terms of having to register with them and having to do all paperwork through them, even though Singapur and Japan are closer -and cheaper to go to.

Moreover, if there is a true “emergency” if they are so far away, what can they do for me? True, it is better if they are aware of my presence on This Island, but it is not as if they can do much.

It is also personally annoying having to fill all those forms with questions like: where do you live in China? how long are you going to stay in China? but those silly questions aside, the problem is all that personal data in their hands. Last time I gave the past representatives copies of my national ID, passport… Heaven knows where they are now. Now they even want a photo. Complaining is no use.

I am thinking just in case my passport gets stolen/thrown in the wash or something.

Does your country not have a trade/representative office in Taiwan that handles registry of it’s citizens? You are right: It seems a little difficult to go through an office in another country to do so. Canada’s is now online, takes about a minute to do. Really easy and a smart thing to do for anyone who is going to be here for a period of time or even just travelling through. Funnily enough, very few people do.

I’ve been thinking about registering, but then I thought I really don’t want to.

I’d rather my governments don’t know where I am, thanks. Maybe I’m paranoid, but… yeah.

really, your consulate can’t(won’t) help you…all that you are doing if you register is helping them complete a census form…if you are in trouble, then contact them, it doesn’t matter if you are registered…you are a citizen of a certain country, their consulate is obliged to listen to you, but in reality, all that you will get in return is a 'you are in a foreign country and you have to abide by its laws"…lost your passport? fine, give them a call, they will replace it. visa trouble??please abide by the country’s regulations…how many foreigners do you know that have been helped by their respective consulate/trade office? outside of passport inquiries, not many…consulate/trade office is there to give visas and ink business deals, help nationals??that’s another story…

Nope, no office, and there will never be, due to political considerations… I was thinking also of the passport problem: due to my work, going to Pekin is iffy. Thinking about it, giving them all my info in the Dark Side is also iffy. am not paranoid about teh G’ment knowing where I am, as much of certain supposedly public employees having all my personal info in a bag. We are talking about places where they have lost big archeological pieces in the past and other national security issues, let alone a single, lost atoga’s data.

The trade offices are not completely useless, mine helped me renew my drives license from back home, and they used to have pizza/beer night before, to bad they stopped doing that…

The Australian governments pretty good at evacuating its citizens when **** goes down. But I don’t think there’s going to be a war anytime soon.

Americans have a great program they can get involved with - there are offices here in Taiwan obviously and online you can register with the STEP program - they do evacuations and everything - will help you via email and twitter with warnings, even contact someone back home if you wish to provide the info. Definitely something that should be consider - they were getting buses in and out of the hard hit towns in Japan.

Because when I go back I don’t want some gov’t hack calculating ‘approximately’ how much I owe in back taxes.

Stay off the grid.

Well, there was a plane load of Americans that stopped over in TW a couple weeks ago after being evacuated from Japan; that’s more than a few.

You are correct, though: Most representative offices only have the mandate to offer advice which usually amounts to pointing you in the direction of getting help locally. But heck, the rep(s) who might be expected to be doing the helping are generally only posted here for two or three years…I wouldn’t expect them to help me with much locally after having been here for much longer, myself. :laughing:

I’ve lived in Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and Shanghai (back in HK now). I never register with the British Embassy/Consulate because I do not see the benefit of doing so - this is not necessarily a negative. I imagine if they wanted us to know the upside they would do a better job of marketing it, but in reality I think the trade offices, consulates, embassies are handy places to run espionage from and not much else. Now we have the interweb I wonder whether they will shut more ofthe smaller offices and just google stuff instead?