I will travel with my son <2y to Germany next year to visit my aging grandparents. My wife and daughter will stay in Taiwan.
My son will leave Taiwan with Taiwanese passport.
What kind of document is sufficient for the Taiwanese immigration to let us through?
Is a written consent letter from the mother sufficient? Needs to be notarized?
Do I need a copy of household registration to prove I am the father?
Any insights will be helpful.
Edit: I am not worried about German immigration. This will be fine.
I am trying to avoid getting 5 different opinions from MOFA or other officials if I would call them. They also given out advice that was wrong.
Someone who went through this has more weight in my book.
Do you and your child have the same country passport? Or does the kid only have a Taiwanese passport?
I have no problem leaving Taiwan with my child only with a Taiwanese passport and no letter of consent from the other parent, or any other document, both in and out of Taiwan. When I get into other countries I just use the other passport, so me and my kid have the same passport entering any other country. When coming back to Taiwan I just present my child’s Taiwanese passport as well. We travel many times a year and have never being asked any question. What I do is the same since my baby was a baby and until now, still a teen.
I take my daughter home every summer. The first time I took a letter from my wife but wasn’t asked for it. However, the passport control officer at Heathrow airport asked me a few questions about why the mother wasn’t there. Since then I’ve been back to the UK 7 times and have never been asked any questions.
That’s very good. Use his German passport when going to Germany of course, or any other 3rd country. One time I had mixed up and gave my child Taiwanese passport to the immigration office in the UK and he started asking a bunch of questions, then I looked over and saw I had given him the wrong passport. Then I handed him the other passport my child has. He saw we had both same family names. He didn’t ask anything else and just stamped our passports and welcomed us. I have since travelled many times to may countries alone with only her and nothing else happened.
First time I took my child abroad with me alone she was just a little older than 2.
We travelled dozen of times to many different countries each time and no one ever asked anything expect the situation above in the UK. I always used her non Taiwanese passport though, out of Taiwan. I am a holder of APRC so don’t know if that helps when I leave and come back to taiwan because no officer has ever asked about any approval document from the other parent.
Just for fun fact, I always used the ‘Permanent Residents Only’ line at Taiwan immigration. Even though she is Taiwanese I always took her to APRC,ARC holders line and the officers seem faster with their time checking stuff. Remember if you have the e-gate you won’t be able to use it because you are will be with your child.
I might be bluffing but I always though the reason for not being asked a single time in over dozens of trips alone with a little kid is that the officers in the Permanent Residents only line are checking so many foreigners that day that is not an uncommon thing. I imagined if you are checkin thousands of Taiwanese people on that day and then suddenly see a foreigner with a little one trying to leave thy would be asking more questions and causing problems.
If you want peace of mind you can have a letter of consent (try to see if there is any standard format online) and then have is signed/stamped by the other parent with a pubic notary stamp. That would be the maximum already. If you want you can take the Household membership but that wouldn’t need to be notarized since you are presenting it to a Taiwanese government personal. I really don’t think they will ask anything. But better safe than sorry.
Does the German passport have the parents name in a secondary page? Not the page with the picture.
I saw this asked in a Facebook group a few weeks back and people were convinced leaving in this situation was virtually impossible without a team of attorneys so perhaps some people have had some bad experiences.
I took a letter from my wife on my initial trip out of the country with our offspring but wasn’t asked for it and haven’t had an immigration officer ever do as much as ask a question in perhaps nearly a dozen trips.
Earlier this year in the Netherlands at immigration I was taken into a room ‘interrogated’ why I was visiting alone with my daughter. Didn’t prepare anything, it didn’t even cross my mind, silly me. They tried to reach my wife by phone - wasn’t answered. In the end they trusted it because my story was honest, there was nothing to hide, and they let us through.
It’s good that they check, but obviously highly irritating if you are the one getting checked.
I’m actually surprised that I never get questions when going through passport control. I wonder if their computers flag up that I’ve gone through several times before and therefore aren’t a risk?
I heard similar from a friend going back to Germany.
@slawa Bring a letter from your wife and ask her to turn on her phone/disable mute around the times you will be at both airports. I don’t think there is a standardized protocol and they might as well try to call.
At the risk of sounding sexist (or incorrectly presuming that you are male), I think a man traveling alone with a young child or children is more likely to arouse suspicion. Particularly if the children do not immediately bear a resemblance to him.
When I am out with my dad, I subconsciously try to make the nature of our relationship clear to onlookers. It discomforts me to think that people might assume he’s a different kind of “daddy…”
