I’m looking for a new job,
I end my current one on the 13th, i’m based in Jhubei and if I stay in Taiwan I want to stay here, flat sorted, too much stuff to move, friends ect.
I’ve been offered a job at a kindergarten near my house, good school, good times, $50,000 a month, however they don’t provide an ARC. This worries me a bit, I would like to work there but I’m not so sure about working illegally, I know it could mean no tax and I’d save a lot of money that way, I’m also aware that theres quite a lot of teachers working in this setup but I thought I’d ask the board about any previous experiences of this type?
If I decided to do this whats the chance of getting caught, I have my ARC from a previous job, do they ever check, and are they ever more thorough than just glancing at the card?
Also what is the minimum amount of hours needed for an ARC, I’m wondering if I could work a few hours on a Saturday at a place purely for the ARC?
Working illegally runs the risk of deportation, a small fine and a one-year ban from Taiwan. If that doesn’t bother you, go ahead. It seems to be fairly unlikely that you’ll get caught, but just be prepared for the consequences if you DO get caught.
You need 20 hours a week for an ARC, but some schools will apply for an ARC in exchange for a few hours. I’m not sure how you’d go about getting that.
If you don’t get a new ARC before the time’s up you NEED to do a visa run. Don’t stay on an expired ARC, then you’re stuck here until you want to leave for a few years.
Kindergarten jobs are 100% illegal, so if there is a raid they won’t care if you have an ARC or not. You’ll only not get deported if you have a JFRV or APRC, I believe.
So you can either:
Find a place that will give you a few hours and an ARC.
Do a visa run and keep doing visa runs every month or so.
Sign up for language classes in the afternoons (I think you need 15h a week to qualify as a full-time student) and change your visa and ARC to a student one (or do a visa run and get a visitor visa, you’ll have to ask immigration what you can do going from worker to language student). I would think this works out cheaper than a visa run every few weeks, since you’re looking at $40,000 for three months (I think you can extend to a total of 9 months, so it would be $120,000 for 9 months) rather than $12,000 every month for a visa run. And you get something out of it.
Actually its 14 hours for the first school and a minimum of 6 for any other schools, when you add all the hours together the maximum allowed is 32.
You will get caught. You will get deported.
You almost certainly won’t get caught. You definitely will get deported.