Work to Student Visa after living here for 6+ years?

Hello everyone! I know it’s a long post but I’d be so grateful if anyone could help answer or at least guide me on where to get a precise answer to this question.

Just like many people out there who have to postpone their plans due to the pandemic, I had to postpone my master’s degree study from last year to beginning of 2021.

For a background info,

  1. I studied chinese for 2 years 3 months at a chinese language center in Taichung. My visa at that time was a chinese language learning visa (student visa maybe). After that, I went back home for about 5 months to process my work visa.
  2. Then I started to work from October 2017, I plan to go back home to my country on December 2021 to process my student visa (I knew I’d have to go back to change from work visa to student visa, that was why I had to postpone in the first place, at least until it gets better).
    So in total I will be staying in Taiwan for 6 years 5 months.

When I checked to see the Taiwan embassy’s website for my country, I came across this posting from the Ministry of Education’s website about who qualifies as an International student.

https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=H0110001

To my understanding, Article 2 states that foreigners who have lived here for 6 years or more can still apply and qualify as international students. However, the notes under it also say they can’t be here for more than 120 days each year. I only went out of this country for maybe less than 2 months all combined together, so even if I deduct 2 months, I still have 6 years 3 months… Am I crazy to interpret the article this way? I was a full time language student and now I am a full time employee. How tf someone can stay less than 120 days a year and travel for the rest of the year?! Unless their career involves a lot of travelling, sure, maybe. But I’m sure most people don’t do that…

Since english isn’t my first language, can someone help me read and explain to me if my understanding was correct? I hope that I’m wrong.

I currently live in Taichung and I’m from SE Asia if that helps.

Thanks befofe.

Are you on a work ARC? If so DO NOT get a student visa.

May I know why?

Just get your aprc first

Student visa does not count towards getting APRC, if you remain on the work-based ARC you can get your APRC on October 2022 and then you can basically do whatever the hell you want.

As @Marco said, you can study on a work-based ARC, a lot of people do. Even Taiwanese people go to their master’s classes after work and work during the day.

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You can study on a work ARC and an APRC. If you change to a student visa, you lose your work rights and other freedoms as well as your time towards an APRC.

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