Yes 60k NTD then taxes and other costs of foreigners living in Taiwan, it’s peanuts really.
Even I was a teacher it wouldn’t change any of these facts. Most people in Taiwan get paid badly.
Also, it is language schools that pay teachers, not students. In many cases its estimated the teacher only gets 1/4 of the tuition fee.
Finally teaching English isn’t as easy a job as people make out. You can’t veg out in front of a computer everyday.
Taiwanese people are not even interested in foreigners on working holiday visas coming. Australia and Taiwan are roughly the same in population size. Imagine 35,000 Australians coming to Taiwan and working for 115 NT$ per hour at 7-11, McDonalds or any of the many bubble tea shops. Taiwanese would march on the streets and in a twisted xenophobic twist demand all working holiday agreements to be cancelled.
For decades Taiwanese have been moving to foreign countries for work and study - often long term and leading to acquiring citizenship in the new home. Yet in Taiwan they do not understand and/or accept this concept.
Get over it, big nose adoga!
[quote=“hsinhai78”]Taiwanese people are not even interested in foreigners on working holiday visas coming. Australia and Taiwan are roughly the same in population size. Imagine 35,000 Australians coming to Taiwan and working for 115 NT$ per hour at 7-11, McDonalds or any of the many bubble tea shops. Taiwanese would march on the streets and in a twisted xenophobic twist demand all working holiday agreements to be cancelled.
For decades Taiwanese have been moving to foreign countries for work and study - often long term and leading to acquiring citizenship in the new home. Yet in Taiwan they do not understand and/or accept this concept.
Get over it, big nose adoga![/quote]
Chip on your shoulder?
This makes no sense. Why would you go to Australia to learn Chinese? Why would a Taiwanese company there want to hire you? Where on earth did you get the figure of 35K (assuming NTD) a week? Around half of Taiwanese people don’t make that much in a month.
And if you were on a student visa rather than a working-holiday visa, you wouldn’t be allowed to have an income at all, thus making it illegal.[/quote]
Sorry. Should rephrase. If I was Australian and had just completed a degree in Chinese it would be a good idea for me to work in Taiwan for a year. The pay would not be much (I meant 35K a month) but just for the experience of working for an Asian company, it would stand me in good stead for finding work in Australia.
Just a hypothetical situation.
[quote=“Hokwongwei”]Taiwanese youth love to flock abroad for working holidays, and Taiwan is party to many reciprocal agreements. But I’ve never actually heard of a young Australian or German or South Korean coming to Taiwan to take advantage of the working holiday program here. Does anybody have any experience, first-hand or otherwise, in this regard?
Mostly, I’m really curious about just what short-term job opportunities are open to non-English speakers on a short-term basis like that. 
[/quote]
Hi there, is glad that you have interest in such short term job opportunities in Taiwan. I’m glad to share with you that there is a working holiday program in a dive center in Kending, namely Taiwan Dive Center. 
We encourage young people like you to come and join us and to know more about dive sports and underwater world. You may look for our Facebook for more details (facebook.com/photo.php?v=75 … _video_set)
Or you may PM me if interested. 
[quote=“tdc7n”][quote=“Hokwongwei”]Taiwanese youth love to flock abroad for working holidays, and Taiwan is party to many reciprocal agreements. But I’ve never actually heard of a young Australian or German or South Korean coming to Taiwan to take advantage of the working holiday program here. Does anybody have any experience, first-hand or otherwise, in this regard?
Mostly, I’m really curious about just what short-term job opportunities are open to non-English speakers on a short-term basis like that. [/quote]
Hi there, is glad that you have interest in such short term job opportunities in Taiwan. I’m glad to share with you that there is a working holiday program in a dive center in Kending, namely Taiwan Dive Center. We encourage young people like you to come and join us and to know more about dive sports and underwater world. You may look for our Facebook for more details (facebook.com/photo.php?v=75 … _video_set)
Or you may PM me if interested. [/quote]
Nice plug for your dive centre- can’t see anything about your working holiday program on your website though- can you tell us more ?
[quote=“hsinhai78”]Taiwanese people are not even interested in foreigners on working holiday visas coming. Australia and Taiwan are roughly the same in population size. Imagine 35,000 Australians coming to Taiwan and working for 115 NT$ per hour at 7-11, McDonalds or any of the many bubble tea shops. Taiwanese would march on the streets and in a twisted xenophobic twist demand all working holiday agreements to be cancelled.
For decades Taiwanese have been moving to foreign countries for work and study - often long term and leading to acquiring citizenship in the new home. Yet in Taiwan they do not understand and/or accept this concept.
Get over it, big nose adoga![/quote]
This is complete nonsense as usual from Hsinhai. The Taiwanese would love to have more Australians here. It’s the only Chinese the Taiwanese don’t want here.
[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“hsinhai78”]Taiwanese people are not even interested in foreigners on working holiday visas coming. Australia and Taiwan are roughly the same in population size. Imagine 35,000 Australians coming to Taiwan and working for 115 NT$ per hour at 7-11, McDonalds or any of the many bubble tea shops. Taiwanese would march on the streets and in a twisted xenophobic twist demand all working holiday agreements to be cancelled.
For decades Taiwanese have been moving to foreign countries for work and study - often long term and leading to acquiring citizenship in the new home. Yet in Taiwan they do not understand and/or accept this concept.
Get over it, big nose adoga![/quote]
This is complete nonsense as usual from Xinhai. The Taiwanese would love to have more Australians here. It’s the only Chinese the Taiwanese don’t want here.[/quote]
Nonsense? Good luck coming here on a working holiday visa and apply for a job at McDonalds or 7-11 or some restaurant as a waiter
The Taiwanese service industry is not eager to hire whitey and Taiwanese students will complain about work opportunities taken from them.
Back in the ol country, which has very open immigration and tourist policies, this kind of thing is encouraged as well as many other cultural exchange, student exchange and whatever thing brings people from abroad. Even though we are a tourist trap with very good reputation, it is important to bring people from far away places in the world, like Japan and Norway and many others, who come on these programs to have a look and may stay or may go, but with a better understanding of the country, good memories and hopefully the desire to return or tell others to come.
Obviously, these people do not work at McDs but most take to tourist related industries where their language skills will be better utilized -tourism being the big thing in the ol country. Actually, the pilot program of this WH was a coffee shop in Taichung or Nantou or somewhere in Central Taiwan if memory serves me right. In Taiwan, I could see them developing social platforms for enterprises, office communication mater if their Chinese is good enough. Plenty of other opportunities to help market Taiwan products. Service industry wise an extra hand at overcrowded hotels and hostels or even transportation hubs and exhibition centers comes to mind. Most people would have some interest in culture and arts, why not have them working in the culture parks? There is already a very interesting foreign resident artist program in place.
Opportunities are not the issue, me thinks. The program has its rules regarding work permits. The issue is, as said, the focus being less on money making, in spite of whatever it is said. For people in the ol country, going to Europe as an au pair is an opportunity to learn a language with lesser costs for a longer time. It is not working simply as a maid and certainly not affordable to people working as maids in the ol country -and may I point out, no visa is required for us in the Schegen area. You could say “oh, working in child care is demeaning, blablabla”, like picking apples in NZ or Auz could be constructed. It is an opportunity. You want to make lots of dough, find a full time job.
Many Taiwanese students are flocking to WH abroad because of the dough, because here you get offered 20K with a masters degree, while picking apples you get 40K if you are frugal. There have been many news reports on TV regarding Taiwanese students living conditions in Auz nd NZ, very, very frugal, and yes, the occasional victims of cheating bosses and stuff. But that happens everywhere, even in one’s own country. The money factor is stressed in every news report I see, so I believe this is more important for Taiwanese students than for students from abroad in Taiwan, who must already know they cannot make a fortune here unless working full time as foreigners. And if they wanted to work in service industry in Taiwan, they would. But you can ask any laoban here how hard it is to find and hire and keep help these days. Kids cannot be bothered. OTOH, you have the guys with PhDs opening donut and chicken pie shops, because having a food stand pays better.
For one of my ex Taiwanese roomies, going to NZ was a way to hide her pregnancy from her family and keep the kid -she was trying to loop in the guy, -Taiwanese BTW- but working with farm animals 4 months pregnant must not have been pleasant.
There are businesses such as hostels, restaurants, and bars that would hire foreigners on working holidays if there was more awareness of the program. McDonalds or 7-11 are probably not going to hire foreigners because they do not have the language skills for these positions. It has nothing to do with any supposed dislike of “whitey.”
First arrived in Taiwan in 2007 on a Working Holiday visa… had a few issues with people (including BOCA / NIA officials) not knowing exactly what it was… Managed to stay for 2 years on the same visa, and then transferred it to an ARC.
[quote=“WaltzingMatilda”]Managed to stay for 2 years on the same visa, and then transferred it to an ARC.[/quote]Dunno how you did it, but that is certainly not possible anymore.
Can I ask what kind of work you found?
Was pretty easy, the visa was a 180 visitor visa, which stated I must enter before a certain date to validate the visa. I did that, and every 180 days (sometimes less depending on my travel schedule) I re-entered on the same visa, and got another 180 days. Never had any questions about it when entering the country, and was never pulled up when leaving for overstaying. Only reason I stopped was because I wanted to stay in Taiwan with an eye to an APRC, and needed an ARC for that.
Can I ask what kind of work you found?[/quote]
I did a lot of subbing work, which I then parlayed into regular teaching gigs at various buxibans. I didn’t see any enforcement of the “no more than 3 months at any one employer” enforced, and I always thought the wording “should not work” is more of a guide than a direction. Employers liked having the freedom of having a casual employee not needing an ARC.
Was pretty easy, the visa was a 180 visitor visa, which stated I must enter before a certain date to validate the visa. I did that, and every 180 days (sometimes less depending on my travel schedule) I re-entered on the same visa, and got another 180 days. Never had any questions about it when entering the country, and was never pulled up when leaving for overstaying. Only reason I stopped was because I wanted to stay in Taiwan with an eye to an APRC, and needed an ARC for that.[/quote]The W.H visa only lets you stay for one year these days. And you can only work for any given employer for a max of 3 months. So basically it’s 4 employers and then you’ll have to exit and re-enter on a different visa or visa-exempt.
A sad excuse for an article in the China Post: Very few foreigners visiting Taiwan on working holidays.
[quote]Asked by several lawmakers to explain the situation, Foreign Minister Lin said at a legislative hearing yesterday that Taiwan needs to do a better job attracting young foreigners to take advantage of the working holiday agreements.
Lin, however, noted that the main problem of very few foreigners visiting Taiwan under working holiday visas is based on whether Taiwan’s working environment can offer suitable jobs to serve as an incentive.
Taiwan will also continue to promote the country as a good place to learn Mandarin to attract foreigners, Lin added.[/quote]