I have to exit Taiwan on the 31st of July.
I’ve been here 7 years and feel like I’m going to loose everything! My whole life is here…
This has hit me all of a sudden. I cant eat or sleep I want to stay in Taiwan!
If I want to get married I don’t know if I have enough time. What can I do? Whats my best option to tackle the situation?
Fly to hong kong and come back on a landing visa!!!
I thought I couldn’t extend a landing visa or do I have to fly out again after the 30 days is up and get a visitor visa that I can extend?
You can’t extend a landing visa. So try and get a vistor’s visa when you’re there and then get it extended after 30 days.
How did you manage to stay here for 7 years and not know this? Just curious…
You’ll need to write more clearly if you want people to understand your situation and offer advice.
So you want to get married by July 30th, I take it? Have you found a willing girl, or do you need recommendations?
If the former, please have a read here for instructions on what is needed for marriage:
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=26604&start=0
As the slayer of pumpkins put it, the requirements for a marriage are not all that strict, so if you hustle, you can probably get it done by then:
[quote=“pumpkinslayer”]You need to prepare the following:
In that thread are also listed the requirements for then turning around and getting a marriage based visa, called a JFRV. Read the whole thread. Three times. Take notes (seriously). Then ask us if you have any remaining questions. A JFRV, if you hustle and are very lucky, will take at least one month, but for most people it takes MUCH longer. In the meantime you can come back on a visitor visa (applied for in, say, Hong Kong), at least temporarily. Once back here, consider getting a student or work visa so you can stay a bit longer while working out the JFRV paperwork – and when you finally get the JFRV you can switch over to that from whatever visa you’re on.
Suerte!
Thanks for the info, it can be quite hard to be clear when your not thinking clear. I apologize, I just gotta get my shit together and all will be well. Yes, I’ve been here 7 years and never entered on a landing visa, I think Ive only done 2 visa runs my entire time here. My application for a work permit was denied without reason. I do have my gf who is willing to do this but we must go under the radar or if her parents find out there will be hell to pay. Can this be done? Does she need anything from her parents in order to get married and gain a JFRV?
you may need to be included on her parents’ hukou (household registration).
Don’t get married!
If this is the girl of your dreams, then why would you want it to be a secret? Why would you be ashamed of your marriage? If she isn’t the girl of your dreams, well, when one day you meet that girl, what will you say? “I’m married, but don’t worry- it doesn’t mean anything…”
Visas are easy. Go to any language school! The big ones will able able to help you get a visa! This is (imho) your best, quickest and easiest answer. You could alternatively take a short vacation somewhere and get a tourist visa. This is one month only. You are very unlikely to get anything else except a one month non-extendable visa if you go this road. Your last option is with a new job (try somewhere like David’s- you will only need to work a little but you’ll get your visa. Or a ‘real’ new job. Or better yet, a friend who has a school might be able to help).
Go see a language school first!
Good luck!
Even if you get married outside Taiwan (like I did), you need bits of paper called (roughly) hu4 ji2 teng2 ben3 to apply for your visa (and again for the ARC). These state that you are on your wife’s household registration. To get THOSE, you need to first, uh, be on her household registration. That means taking the original (roughly hu4 kou3 zhen1 ben3) to the registration office with stuff like your notarized marriage certificate.
The parents are presumably in possession of the household registration, which would make it difficult to do secretly.
Don’t give up just because your application for a work permit was refused. Find out the reasons why it was refused. Maybe you just need to apply again with some additional documentation. Even if you can’t get a work permit there might be other ways to stay here apart from getting married.
Find out the reason the work permit was refused (e.g., busted for previous year’s illegal 2nd job, which showed up on taxes). And tell us. The more info we have, the better we can help. Some of us may have been through the same situation. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you, not judge you. But I get the feeling you haven’t yet laid out the whole story for us, which makes it hard for us to understand the true situation and offer advice.
Don’t get married JUST to stay here; as posters above have noted, it’s not your only option. I recommend the language school or part-time work options.
If you really WANT to get married under the radar as you say, your only option (that I know of) is to have her take her parents’ household registration without them knowing, and have herself removed from it and established as her own independent head of household, thus setting up her own household registration. To do that she will have to show a lease with her name on it to prove she lives separately. If she rents her own apt., then she’ll have such. If she lives with you, talk to your landlord about changing the lease to her name for this purpose. Once she has secured her OWN registration, and secretly returned her parents’ then you can be added to hers and they won’t know (as Brendon says, the hu4ji2 teng2ben3 is based on this household registration, and you need that to get married). They might discover she had had herself removed from theirs, if and when they ever look at it, but at least your name wouldn’t be on it so she would have less explaining to do.
Speaking of household registration, since I’m getting married soon (Dec 2008), my fiancee is going to add me to her household registration (with her family of 4 people)… are there any repercussions with being on a household registration versus being on a separate household registration? Or let’s say if we were to go our separate ways and whatnot?
I’m a Taiwanese Cdn currently working in US. (See my other post about me getting married in Dec 2008 for a background/insight)
Sorry, but I just don’t buy that the work permit was denied without reason. They must have some reason.
Reasons I’ve heard of frequently were having been busted working illegally before, overstays and not meeting the requirements. The requirement that I’ve seen cited most often as reason for disqualification is the university one attended not being recognized.
The reason may also lie in how you’ve managed to stay here 7 years already without ever coming in on a landing visa or making only 2 visa runs. The only way I’ve heard of to do that is with a work permit, pursuing a degree program at a local University or being married. Even getting extensions on tourist visa’s requires you exit every 6 months.
Clear your head and come clean. You might get better advice if you can tell the whole story.
It makes no difference whether you are on the HR with her parents as heads of household or an HR that he/she established as a separate split-off version. It won’t affect your visa and ARC applications, no, AFAIK.
The chief difference is that if she has already split hers off, you can be added to it without certain family members knowing.
Come clean? Mmm I’m already squeaky clean. After all of these great posts I decided to investigate the situation. After all I’ve never over stayed, never worked illegally, all my papers were in order and I payed taxes. Who could of guessed that my name and birthday matched another guy in Taiwan who had committed crimes in Taiwan!! Also you would think they would correct it and sort everything out for me, Right? Well for legal reasons they were unable to disclose WHY they couldn’t help me. Seems very strange to me indeed after all I don’t have the most common name in the world.
Well, the answer to such thing is not usually, “Let’s get hitched”.
Venture with caution with regards to hard to reverse options.