I recently received a public school teaching job from the Ministry of Education, in a type of Taiwan / American Teacher Exchange program
The company is paying for all of us to fly to Taipei and wants us all to visit / call our local embassies to work out the work visa.
However, my situation is more troublesome then most because I live in China right now, I have been in Shanghai for the last year teaching English. I plan to work right up until the day that I leave for Taipei. Of course, there is no Taiwan Embassy for China.
I called one of the TECRO offices, the one in Los Angeles where I used to live, and the lady didn’t sound like there were any good options for me. I asked her if I could come on a 30 day visa and then get the work visa worked out in Taipei, but she recommended against that.
I asked about going to Hong Kong to take care of this. She said she emailed someone at the Washington DC office who said I might have to go to somewhere like Japan to sort out the Taiwan working visa…
I can’t talk to my program contact right now, as it is very late at night over there, but I am very distressed as to what I am supposed to do.
My questions, is it true i can’t get this working visa thing taken care of inside Taiwan? The easiest option seems for me to just enter and get this sorted out.
What documents am I supposed to provide to show I have a job? And also, what documents is my school supposed to give an embassy office to show I have a job? (I know my program should have told me this by now, but their organization skills seem a bit off, it is a lot of bureaucracies dealing with each other and a lot of lag time in between communication)
Can any of this be taken care of online or through mail? My parents live in Dallas, TX which is several hours away from the Houston Taiwan Embassy.
Any help or answers you can give would be appreciated