URGENT: 2nd visa extension for married person?

Legal Visa & Residency
1

I’ve already used my first visa extension for study. It expires on Aug. 29. I have on more extension, and a work visa in the works already (though probably won’t be finished by the 29th).

Anyhow, my girlfriend (who’s Taiwanese) and I got married this past Tuesday. Can I extend my visa the second time by showing the marriage certificate?

I need to know today because I have to pay for the next semester of school by tomorrow, and they won’t give me my money back if I need a student visa. The reason that I might need my money back is that I work in the afternoon, but they can’t guarantee morning classes. Essentially, I have to pay, then wait a week before they tell me when my class is. If it’s in the afternoon, I’ll have to get my money back.

So, can I take my marriage visa to immigrations and get my 2nd extension done while my work visa is being processed?

Thanks in advance!

2

Why wait … just go, today or tomorrow … and yes, with the right documents you should be able to get an extension …

3

You can’t have two visas. If you have a marriage visa you don’t need a “work visa”.
If you take your marriage certificate to immigration you can get a marriage visa, as long as you have the other required documents (such as clean criminal record cert., health cert., etc).
If you take your marriage certificate to immigration and ask for a work visa extension there’s a very good chance they’ll look at you funny. Try it and see, but it all sounds rather dodgy.
And what’s a study visa? i didn’t know there were such things.
I thought there were only tourist visas, business visas, resident visas and joining family resident visas.

4

“study” visa is the tourist visa…

5

So the OP wants to extend his tourist visa for study purposes, using his marriage certificate as his reason for the extension?
Still sounds pretty dodgy to me.

6

That guy is nearly in the same situation as I was one year ago, so I think my information
might help him.

First:
There is no student-visas. It is just an extendable 60 days visitor visa, twice extendable
to up to 180 days, then you have to leave Taiwan or you apply for an ARC.
This ARC is based on studying at a approved school. You stop your studying,
and you must immediate leave Taiwan.
Those kind of things have a nickname: Student-visas and student ARC.

Second:
The OP says he currently organized his working-visa. From my understanding, it
is not possible to change a (student) Visitor-visa into a working-visa.
Both are visitor-Visas, but you see a difference on the bottom of it.
E.g. students got a remark FR, which is a indication of studying in Taiwan.
You can get a working-visa, if you originally applied for a normal 60 days
tourist visa in general (both extendable and not extendable), but if you went
originally for a FR student one, you MUST leave Taiwan and apply for a new one.
A japanese friend is actually doing this RIGHT now, and believe me, if he don’t
have too, he would not do it.
That japanese guy is in the same situation like the OP, now a student, starting
work next week >> little vacation in Japan.

Third (my case)
I had a (student) ARC and I changed it to joining-family resident visa.
I had to go to Hongkong, any discussions worthless. The system is stupid, but
please, you have to accept it !!!

There are however 2 ways you don’t have to go abroad.
First
If you have a current work-related ARC, you can change that one into a
JFRVisa (joining family resident-visa) within Taiwan.
But please refer to my first point, you must get out to get a work-ARC !!
Second
This way maybe works for you :
If your wedding date is before the officials issued your (student) ARC-Card,
yes, then you can apply for a joining-family-resident ARC
The officer was very sure about this, even asked her leader.
I don’t see where is the difference when (before or after wedding), you get
your student-ARC, but that is Taiwan…
However, if you already have your student-ARC Card, and got married then,
well >> you loose.

I think you still don’t have your ARC (as you wrote 2nd extension at the end
of the month), so try this way.
But doing this way requires the change of student-Visa to resident JFR-Visa.
(Yes, in this case you can apply for a visa change without leaving Taiwan)

Again, I dount, with your current Visa (with FR-remark) you are able to get
a work-related ARC - but maybe I am wrong - wish you good luck

My officd is in Kaohsiung, and believe me, I went through this procedure for
many days with endless discussions. Also took a bilingual friend with me, so
there were no communications errors at all.

7

First of all, thanks for clarifying. I know there’s no such thing as a student visa, but that did need to be made clear.

I’m not terribly sure from all this if I can get the extension, but I’m going to try. I’ll get my wife to come with me and help me explain. Maybe we can pull it off. I hope I can do it without having to go to HK.

My visa is indeed a visitor visa, and it has no “F” something on it denoting that I’m studying. The extension, from what I can tell, says nothing of my studies.

Finally, I hope we don’t HAVE to go through the JFR-V process, because we’ll be starting the US I-130 process soon, so I won’t need the JFR-V.

8

What if I got my job to explain that I’ve already started the ARC process? Would they let me extend the visa in that case?

9

Semantics

As far as I understand, there’s no such thing as a work visa OR a student visa. Both scenarios use RESIDENT visas.

If you get a job and a work permit, then you get a resident visa that allows you to work legally. If you study full time in a university, you also get a resident visa, which I think still actually allows you to work up to 14 hours/week.

If you are just taking classes in a language school recognized by the government, you can be on a TOURIST visa, which is extendable for up to 6 months.

You don’t have to leave Taiwan to switch from a visitor visa to a resident visa, at least I didn’t have to 2 years ago, as long as your visitor visa is still valid.

If your visitor visa is multiple entry, and if they won’t extend it because of the marriage, the easiest thing to do would be a day trip to HKG.