I became a Taiwanese citizen in April 2022, which was one of the biggest achievements of my life. I obtained citizenship after five years of work in Taiwan, which is comparatively a less common way of becoming Taiwanese.
Before becoming a citizen, I was a Taiwan Gold Card holder for three years. Though, that didn’t have any bearing on the citizenship process, as it’s the same for regular work-based ARC or APRC holders. In fact, I had a regular work ARC for two and half years before I converted to a Gold Card.
There aren’t many detailed accounts of someone going through the Taiwanese citizenship process, especially someone with a foreign spouse and child. That’s why I decided to write this and share my experience with others. This isn’t a how-to guide necessarily, but it does provide very good insight into the overall process.
But before I talk about my personal experiences, I want to share some thoughts and ideas I have about the Taiwan Gold Card program.
Use the links below if you want to skip to my story directly :
- Part 1 : What is a Taiwan Gold Card ARC ?
- Part 2 : My journey towards Taiwanese citizenship
- Before coming to Taiwan
- Getting married to a Filipina in Taiwan
- Getting my wife’s residence visa
- Applying for Taiwanese nationality for me and my daughter
- Renouncing our original citizenship
- Getting a Taiwan ID and adding my wife to the household register - Part 3 : Parent visas in Taiwan
- Part 4 : Some recommendations for Taiwan
Part 1: What is a Taiwan Gold Card ARC ?
For those who don’t know, Taiwan Gold Card is Taiwan’s version of a “foreign talent acquisition” program, which is similar to programs offered by other countries. Such programs generally exist independent of a country’s standard work visa system and provide preferential treatment to foreign professionals (and their families), which often include fast-track options to permanent settlement, a common goal for many of these programs.
Taiwan’s Gold Card program is the brainchild of Taiwan’s NDC (National Development Council) and has been one of the most highlighted policies of the current administration. The Gold Card program was launched in 2018 to make it easier to bring foreign talent into Taiwan by simplifying residency procedures, keeping families together, and providing incentives to encourage long-term stay and permanent settlement.
Successful applicants receive a Taiwan Gold Card in the form of a special gold-colored ARC (Alien Residence Permit). Over 6000 Gold Cards have been issued to date. I was among the earliest recipients of a Taiwan Gold Card in mid-2018.
Here are a couple of definitions you should know before reading ahead :
- Naturalization: The process of acquiring a country’s citizenship via work or marriage.
- Renunciation: The process of canceling a citizenship you already hold.
The goal of any good talent program is talent retention; the best way to do that is through naturalization. So how has Taiwan Gold Card done in that regard?
Out of 6000+ Gold Card holders, an estimated 200 have opted for an APRC (Alien Permanent Resident Certificate), and only two — that I know of — have naturalized as Taiwanese Citizens. This is a low number for citizenships, all things considered. But why are the numbers so low?
Specifically, it’s because of Taiwan’s renunciation law, which requires foreigners to give up their original citizenship to become Taiwanese. There is no exception for Gold Card holders either, which is why we will not see any uptick in the number of professionals naturalizing as Taiwanese anytime soon.
This isn’t a Taiwan Gold Card issue per se but rather a Taiwan immigration issue. Even outside the Gold Card program, the number of professionals naturalizing as Taiwanese is incredibly low. An analysis of the official naturalization data shows that out of roughly 140,000 naturalizations that have taken place in the last 40 years, 98% of them were marriage-based, and 96% of those were women from Southeast Asia. It’s evident that there is a lack of diversity, especially in terms of origin, gender, and purpose of naturalization.
Note: This does not imply that those becoming citizens through marriage can’t also be professionals. I am simply stating the manner of naturalization listed in the official data.
Regardless of the type of naturalization, any permanent migration to Taiwan is a net positive. Unfortunately, even marriage-based naturalizations have been on the decline. Annual naturalizations have dropped by over 60% from their peak over a decade ago, partly due to increased restrictions and red tape.
But why should Taiwan even care about getting more naturalized citizens?
This goes back to some of the core problems Taiwan is facing today, which include brain drain, negative migration, low birth rates, and an aging population.
Taiwan’s Gold Card program is a good solution for this, but it isn’t the only one. There are at least two other avenues to source naturalized citizens. And these candidates are already in Taiwan.
A) Many long-term foreign residents live in Taiwan on ARCs and APRCs. These amount to about 50,000 foreigners. Some of them own properties or even run local businesses. Most of them have Taiwanese spouses and children. They want to become Taiwanese but can not because they are unwilling to sacrifice their original citizenship. This is a failed opportunity for Taiwan to grandfather existing permanent residents who are already invested in Taiwan and productive members of the society.
DEFINITION: Migrant worker: This is a term used in Taiwan officially to refer to blue-collar workers, all of whom are from southeast Asia.
B) There are roughly 600,000+ foreign migrant workers, some of whom have worked here for many years but don’t have any path to citizenship. In fact, there’s a hard limit on the number of years a migrant worker is allowed to stay in Taiwan. It wasn’t until recently that Taiwan softened its stance on “migrant immigration.” This was done in response to losing migrant workers to Japan and Korea, not just new ones but even the ones Taiwan had trained for years and then let go.
So far, Taiwan hasn’t shown an interest in enticing these existing foreigners to naturalize. Instead, they have put all their attention on the Taiwan Gold Card program.
To its credit, the Gold Card program has successfully brought a record number of professionals into Taiwan, over 6000 in just five years. They aim to get an additional 400,000 professionals in the next ten years. This isn’t going to be easy because Taiwan isn’t the only country vying for top professionals. There is a global war for talent, and governments are aggressively competing for human capital. In 2021, there were just seventy countries with talent-acquisition programs; now, there are over a hundred. And the competition is only heating up as countries continually try to outpace one another by offering better deals to attract foreign professionals.
Note: While I was writing this piece, the Taiwan Gold Card office revised their ten-year goal to 60,000.
Whether it’s 400,000 or 60,000, I don’t believe these numbers can be achieved unless the Taiwan Gold Card program starts tapping into the developing world, which they have ignored until recently.
A quick analysis of the Taiwan Gold Card statistics shows that at least 70% of Taiwan’s Gold Holders come from highly developed countries.
I believe this is due to Taiwan Gold Card’s requirements that disproportionately affect talents from developing nations. For example :
- Most paths leading to a Taiwan Gold Card require a monthly salary of 160,000NT$ (approx. 5000 USD). This is not an uncommon salary in some of the countries listed above, but in most developing nations, you’d need to be in the top 1% (if not 0.1%) of wage earners to qualify. This severely restricts the pool of qualified candidates.
- Until recently, many pathways (especially in education and research) required a degree or experience from one of the top 200 universities in the world, which again affected developing nations the most. Thankfully this was recently revised to the top 500 universities instead.
- NIA (National Immigration Agency) controls several aspects of the Taiwan Gold Card approval process. As a result, extra scrutiny is applied to applicants from developing nations, similar to what they’d face in dealing with Taiwanese visas and immigration.
For what it’s worth, I believe Taiwan’s Gold Card program is among the best foreign talent acquisition programs in Asia. With the right improvements, it’s possible to foresee Taiwan becoming Asia’s biggest foreign talent hub. But for that to happen, a host of Taiwanese government institutions must work together and implement reforms to retain many of these professionals permanently. The most critical areas that require attention are immigration, citizenship laws, and family reunification.
Lack of job opportunities (for foreigners) and problems with long-term social integration are two other vital areas, but that’s a discussion for another time and beyond the scope of this article.
Taiwan Gold Card program isn’t the problem. It’s part of the solution. The core problem lies with Taiwan’s overall immigration system, which is restrictive, plagued with red tape, and often subjects applicants to contradictory and redundant processes. There are also some discriminatory laws baked into the system that affect blue-collar workers and those from Southeast Asia in general.
Taiwan’s immigration system is one of the most essential tools available to Taiwan to deal with the impending population crisis in the near future. Meanwhile, Taiwan Gold Card is an excellent tool that can ensure Taiwan gets a good share of future immigrants from the professional sphere. It only makes sense for the two to work in sync. But that’s not how it appears at the moment. While one is improving at lightspeed, the other, it seems, is still stuck in the 1980s.
Renunciation law isn’t the only obstacle to Taiwanese citizenship. It’s also the overall naturalization process and the issues you and your family may face post-citizenship. Even for someone willing to renounce their citizenship, what awaits them is a process that is so complex and cumbersome that it feels as if it were designed to discourage applicants, not welcome them. Making it through the process requires incredible patience and determination.
As the first Taiwan Gold Card holder with a foreign family to go through the naturalization process, I think it’s important for me to share my experience with future professionals and their families who may be thinking of doing the same. My intention is not to discourage them but to give them an idea of the kind of challenges they will need to overcome to succeed.
Warning: This next part will be a long read, but I promise you will leave having learned something valuable about Taiwan’s laws. At the very least, you will find my story entertaining.
Part 2: My journey towards Taiwanese Citizenship
Before coming to Taiwan:
In 2014, I was living in Germany on another foreign talent program called the EU Blue Card.
While in Germany, I got a job offer from a Taiwanese company based in one of Taiwan’s science and technology parks. I decided to visit Taiwan for a week; that was enough time for me to fall in love with the beautiful island. I was 27 and single, so my priorities were mainly “fun” and “adventure,” which Taiwan does very well. A well-paying job beforehand only made my decision to move to Taiwan that much easier.
At the time, Taiwan’s Gold Card program didn’t exist, and the only way to work in Taiwan was through a residence (work) visa. As someone who’d already been to over thirty countries, I had plenty of experience dealing with embassies, visas, and immigration, especially with a passport like mine. However, getting a residence visa at a TECO (a de facto Taiwanese embassy) was uniquely challenging. Initially, TECO in Germany refused to take my case and directed me towards their office in Saudi Arabia, which they said was the “designated” one for Pakistani nationals. Thankfully, I was able to convince them otherwise, especially after a few calls were made to them by my Taiwanese employer.
Immigration and visas tend to be bothersome no matter where you go, but Taiwan is in a category of its own. The unusual amount of paperwork and bureaucracy in dealing with TECO Germany was an immediate turn-off, and at one point, I considered canceling my plans for Taiwan. If it hadn’t been for the help and persistence of my Taiwanese employer, I might not have made it into Taiwan. In the end, getting a residence visa took three months and quite a bit of trouble.
Interestingly, I was told by TECO that I was the first Pakistani national to ever apply for a work visa from Germany. At the time, I considered that as a justification for the difficult process. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized this was a systemic issue with TECOs and not necessarily about my nationality.
I finally moved to Taiwan in Nov 2014. For the next three years, I lived a happy and worry-free life. Apart from a few common inconveniences that most foreigners encounter (e.g., bank issues, rental contracts, etc.) I didn’t run into any significant problems. Things only started to go wrong for me once I decided to start a family and settle permanently in Taiwan.
Getting married to a Filipina in Taiwan
It was 2017, and I was in a relationship with a Filipina I had known for two years. We worked in the same science & technology park.
Later that year, we decided we were going to get married. But acting on this decision was going to take a lot of work. Needless to say, in some Asian cultures, when it comes to marriage, it can take a bit of effort to convince the parents (and the extended families) on either side. Anyone familiar with Bollywood dramas, or Filipino dramas for that matter, will understand.
Let me share a funny bit about our relationship. We weren’t Facebook friends for the two years we were together. I always feared the day that she would ask me to add her, but surprisingly she never did. Turned out she was keeping me a secret from her family, just like I was. It finally made sense to me why every scenic place we visited, we had to take at least three photos, one together and one each individually, for our Facebook posts. Interestingly, no one questioned who was taking the other’s photo in the middle of nowhere.
I was able to locate a traditional-looking scarf which I helped her wear for the video interview with my parents. I also helped her memorize some Arabic verses for the call to make a good impression. On the other hand, I flew to the Philippines to ask her parents for her hand in marriage. Also, while I was there somehow I found myself baptized by a pastor from their local baptist church. As far as each side knew, their side won. As for us, all we cared about was getting married, no matter what it took.
We worked together to quell any fears either family had about the other. It took months, but eventually, we got the blessing from both sides. The most challenging part was over, or so we thought.
We were both residents of Taiwan, so it made sense to marry locally. I mapped out several different household registration offices in the city and prepared to visit as many of them as possible.
Definition: A Household Registration Office (abbrev. HRO) falls under the Ministry of Interior of Taiwan. It’s where people register marriages and process other civil matters. There is at least one office in every district of every city.
I planned to visit several HROs because of what I had learned from my experience with banks and telecom offices in Taiwan. You’ll often get rejected by one branch office only to get accepted by another around the corner.
The first two household registration offices (HROs) turned us away, saying that two foreigners couldn’t marry in Taiwan. Luckily the third one we visited gave us the green light. They said we’d only need to provide single certificates authenticated by the TECOs representing our countries. It seemed simple enough and was more convenient than traveling overseas to get married. We also believed that getting married in Taiwan would make things easier at the immigration office later.
Sadly, what should’ve been a quick and straightforward process became a bit of a nightmare. Both TECOs ( the one in the Philippines and the one in Saudi Arabia) refused to authenticate our single certificates. Both TECOs, wanted us to visit them in-person for a marriage interview.
It didn’t make sense why a Taiwanese embassy would need to interview two foreigners who wanted to marry one another. Clearly, this policy was designed for a foreigner marrying a Taiwanese, but somehow it was being applied to us as well.
After weeks of back and forth with TECO and BOCA (Bureau of Counselor Affairs), I slowly began to understand the reason for their demand. It appeared all this was being done to prevent a scenario where my partner or I would nefariously use our TECO-authenticated single certificates to marry a local Taiwanese, instead of one another.
Fortunately, I was able to convince someone in BOCA that it was unreasonable to ask two foreigners, who were residents of Taiwan, to spend over 100,000 NTD to attend interviews at two TECO offices in different parts of the world, just to get the necessary paperwork to marry in Taiwan. The whole idea of marrying in Taiwan was to avoid expensive travel.
At one point, I offered to give affidavits guaranteeing that we wouldn’t use those single certificates to marry a Taiwanese. Thankfully those weren’t needed in the end.
Three months of persistence finally paid off, and in January 2018, we were officially married in Taiwan. We were happy, and it felt terrific to hold that beautiful and embossed Taiwanese marriage certificate.
Interestingly the household registration office told us that we were the first foreign couple to marry there since their inception.
One lesson that I learned from this experience was that legalizing paperwork for Taiwan was expensive, especially if you had multiple documents.
Now that our data was in the local marriage registry, the only thing left to do was to convert my wife’s work ARC to a dependent (spouse) ARC. I thought this would be easy since it was just a status change for an existing resident.
It was very disappointing when the Taiwanese immigration (NIA) refused. The reason for the rejection was that she was a blue-collar worker and a change of status wasn’t allowed for migrant workers. The only way to fix this was a visa run. My wife would have to return to the Philippines, get a residence visa then return to Taiwan to change the status on her ARC.
It’s interesting to note that I knew international students who married locals and were able to change their ARC status without leaving Taiwan. This meant even international students had more rights than migrant workers. It’s a pity that migrant workers, who work grueling hours, often standing in production lines ten to twelve hours a day, are treated like 2nd class residents.
It could be argued that this rule is not discriminatory as it only restricts foreign residents based on work status. But it is hard to ignore the fact that it affects only Southeast Asians 100% of the time. I believe these restrictions are purposefully made to discourage the hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers (predominantly women) from gaining a path to citizenship through marriage to a local Taiwanese. By refusing a change of status for their ARCs, Taiwan effectively forces would-be foreign spouses out of Taiwan to undergo a strict reassessment by a TECO. It has been an effective strategy, as evidenced by the drop in marriage-based naturalizations I explained earlier.
Just because a law exists doesn’t mean it should be applied blindly. Common sense dictated that this law shouldn’t have been applied to us. One legal foreign resident married another legal foreign resident, in Taiwan, under Taiwanese law. It made no sense to ask a foreigner’s spouse to leave Taiwan and then return. It would achieve nothing.
My wife had already canceled her work contract, so we didn’t have time to fight this in Taiwan anymore. She was forced to leave just as we were about to start our married life. In a way, this had already defeated the purpose of marrying locally in Taiwan.
It was a minor setback because we had high hopes of reuniting quickly. After all, how hard could it be to get a spouse visa when you have a Taiwan-issued marriage certificate?
Getting my wife’s residence visa
I meticulously prepared everything beforehand. As soon as my wife arrived in Manila, she visited TECO Philippines.
Once again, a process that we expected to be straightforward turned out to be a lot more complicated. TECO Philippines refused to acknowledge our Taiwanese marriage certificate, saying that Taiwan doesn’t accept a Taiwanese marriage certificate for two foreigners. Because my wife was a Filipino, she needed to provide a Filipino marriage certificate. All attempts to convince them failed. I talked to BOCA and MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and they sided with TECO as well.
It would take months to get a Filipino marriage certificate. This was a major setback. It was my naivety of Taiwanese laws that had caused this. I had wrongly assumed that a Taiwanese embassy would accept a valid Taiwanese marriage certificate issued by the Taiwanese Ministry of Interior.
Thankfully, before my wife left Taiwan, we had already reported our Taiwanese marriage to MECO (the Philippines embassy in Taiwan). But it was going to take four months for our data to show up in the marriage registry in the Philippines. I wasn’t able to convince TECO to accept our Taiwanese marriage, or pursuade MECO to speed up the process. There was nothing we could do now but wait.
Four months later, my wife successfully got the Filipino marriage certificate. Once again, we were excited, but this soon turned to frustration when TECO Philippines refused to issue her a spouse visa again. Now TECO demanded that she provide a similar certificate from Pakistan for the husband. This wouldn’t have been so upsetting if they’d only mentioned this four months earlier. We’d just wasted four months waiting for one marriage certificate when we could have done two at the same time. In hindsight, we should have seen this coming.
Eventually, it turned out that this new requirement was a more serious problem as we were dealing with more than one bureaucracy. Unlike in the Philippines, it was impossible to register a Taiwanese marriage in Pakistan. We were stuck without options at that point. Meanwhile, every Taiwanese office I pleaded to offered no help. Most of them knew that we were a legitimate couple, but their hands were tied by the rules.
It was June 2018 now, six months since our marriage. There is societal pressure in Filipino culture, especially when a woman is left at her parent’s house, for months, almost immediately after marriage. This put pressure on me, causing me to get desperate. I figured that I had to do something.
With some effort, I successfully secured admission for my wife in a twelve-month language program at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU).
This was a genuine admission, and I planned to pay the fees for the whole year. It would also buy me some time to figure out a way to register our marriage in Pakistan.
Unfortunately for us, TECO Philippines refused to accept her student visa application. They knew her well by then and told her that the only way she was going to get into Taiwan was via a spouse visa. Admittedly, this was understandable. But it didn’t change the fact that they were still refusing to issue her a spouse visa, based on a technicality.
It was around this time that I learned about the Taiwan Gold Card program, which had only been launched a few months earlier. I applied for it immediately, especially after reading the part about the ease of family reunification. I was approved and got my Gold Card within a week. I was proud to be the first Pakistani to get a Gold Card. I was also impressed with the efficiency of the Gold Card process. It gave me hope.
Unfortunately, my special professional status did nothing to fix our visa troubles. MOFA and TECO had their hands tied because they had to follow the SOP (“Standard Operating Procedure”).
For those unfamiliar with Taiwan’s SOP culture, SOP is the soul of Taiwanese bureaucracy. While SOPs in government offices can be a source of headache for foreigners and Taiwanese alike, there are some positives to this. Taiwan is known for following procedures to the tee. That is one of the reasons why Taiwan is one of the few places on earth where some of the most sophisticated and highest-quality manufacturing takes place. And they do all this with absolute perfection thanks to SOPs that have been honed for decades. It’s just that this rigid culture of SOPs doesn’t translate very well when it comes to dealing with humans and human problems. With SOPs, you can either make a hundred sub-clauses under every law to account for every possible scenario or force non-conforming cases into limited preset categories even when it isn’t logical or reasonable to do so.
In our case, TECO Philippines SOP meant that we had to produce three marriage certificates for my wife to get a spouse visa, even though it was clearly a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process.
For a brief moment, I considered giving up and leaving Taiwan. But in the end, I decided to be patient and just give them what they wanted. As recommended by TECO, I ended up remarrying my wife in Pakistan. Getting the third certificate took another two months because TECO Saudi suddenly refused to authenticate my marriage certificate. That’s whole another saga. But by the end, I was able to successfully satisfy all the requirements of the SOP.
In August 2018, eight months after our marriage, my wife finally got her spouse visa, which we converted into a spouse (dependent) ARC.
There’s no way I could have predicted it would take eight months, three marriage certificates, and over a hundred thousand NTD in expenses just to get a spouse ARC. It’s my fault. My biggest mistake was getting married in Taiwan first.
The new ARC was similar to her old one. It even retained the same ARC ID number. So much suffering could’ve been avoided if Taiwan had changed her ARC status without requiring this “impossible” visa run.
I know this experience doesn’t apply to majority of the foreigners in Taiwan, but it still serves to highlight the rigidity of Taiwanese immigration and visa policies.
These eight months were particularly stressful for me. It affected my work productivity to the point that I had to quit my job to focus on getting my wife into Taiwan. Having a Taiwan Gold Card did help in this case because it’s an open work permit, and I didn’t need to be employed to remain in Taiwan.
It’s interesting that despite holding a Taiwan Gold Card and having access to ample resources in Taiwan, I still struggled so much. I can only imagine how difficult this would’ve been for someone in less fortunate circumstances than me.
The only positive thing to come out of this entire ordeal was that we got to celebrate our marriage three times.
Now that we were finally united in Taiwan, things slowly returned to normal. The only issue that wasn’t apparent to me before was that my wife, who had seven years of prior work experience, couldn’t work anymore.
That’s because a dependent ARC given to the spouse of a foreigner isn’t the same as a dependent ARC given to the spouse of a Taiwanese citizen. Only the latter offers automatic right to work.
This is another lost opportunity for Taiwan to not utilize working-age adults because of their identity. By excluding the automatic right to work, Taiwan exacerbates foreign spouses' ability to earn and be productive members of society.
It’s not impossible to get a work permit, but the spouse needs to find a local employer to sponsor them, which is not easy. Most foreign spouses in this situation are at the mercy of cram schools since they are often the only employers willing to sponsor a work permit. As I have said earlier, there are limited job opportunities for foreigners in Taiwan.
Applying for Taiwanese nationality for me and my daughter
Fast-forward 1 year later, in late 2019, we just hit another milestone. Our daughter was born.
Her birth was a bittersweet moment. We were delighted to become parents but also stressed because she’d had a difficult birth and suffered a broken clavicle and a dislocated hip.
It was a relief that my daughter was born in a Taiwanese hospital and had a Taiwanese birth certificate. That meant at least one less document for me to authenticate from a TECO in the future.
Coincidently in the same week my daughter was born, I also qualified for Taiwanese naturalization, having completed five years of work in Taiwan.
After some research, I discovered I could include my daughter in my naturalization application as a dependent minor. That was exciting because it meant both father and daughter could become Taiwanese citizens at the same time.
I visited the household registration office (HRO) in my district to get an official list of requirements. The most difficult documents to arrange are those that need to be retrieved from your country of origin as they need to be translated, notarized, and excessively authenticated. I was told that I needed to get a police clearance certificate from back home. Meanwhile, to my surprise, they said my daughter would need a police clearance certificate and a single certificate from the Philippines. This was shocking because she was less than a month old at the time.
It didn’t take long for the HRO to reach out to me again a few days later to say they’d made a mistake. My daughter was exempted from providing a police clearance certificate due to her age and the fact that she had never left Taiwan. But a single certificate was still required.
Following that exchange, I didn’t proceed further with my naturalization application for several months, as I was momentarily distracted by my daughter’s medical issues.
It wasn’t until a few months into 2020 that I returned to my naturalization process. My daughter was six months old then. After all the medical issues she had just endured, I took a personal issue with the absurd idea of having to provide a single certificate for her. So, I reached out to Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior directly. They justified the requirement by saying that many countries didn’t have an age limit for marriage and therefore, it was necessary. The only way to get an exemption was to prove that her country of origin (in this case, the Philippines) didn’t allow underage marriage.
I was quickly able to find proof that the legal age of marriage in the Philippines was in fact eighteen. They responded by saying they had contacted an official in the Philippines and could confirm that there was no age limit for issuing a CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage). Hence, my request for an exemption was denied.
Their response was upsetting because the issue wasn’t about whether a single certificate for an infant could be obtained or not. It was about whether it was appropriate to demand such a certificate in the first place, especially from a country that didn’t even allow underage marriage.
In the end, my mother-in-law suffered bulk of the embarrassment and ridicule in the Philippines as she applied for a single certificate for her infant granddaughter.
This was one of the most pointless exercises I ever had to do in Taiwan. Everyone in Taiwan knew that a 6-month child who’d never left Taiwan was unmarried, yet I was forced to obtain proof of single status for her, for no purpose other than the satisfaction of a government SOP.
Office closures and travel restrictions due to COVID caused months of delays in arranging all the authenticated paperwork. It wasn’t until late December 2020 that I was finally ready to file our applications.
In April 2021, four months later, we successfully received two beautiful gold-embossed Taiwanese nationality certificates.
It’s important to understand that in Taiwan “nationality” doesn’t equate “citizenship”. Naturalized nationality is temporary and can be revoked if you don’t renounce your original citizenship (ideally) within 12 months.
Though we were Taiwanese nationals, we still had a version of an ARC known as TARC (Taiwan Area Resident Certificate). TARC looks and operates exactly like a regular ARC.
One of the benefits of becoming a Taiwanese national is that you can now apply for a NWOHR (national without household registration) Taiwanese Passport.
It looks exactly like a regular Taiwanese passport, except most of the 145 countries that offer visa-on-arrival for Taiwanese don’t accept it for visa-free entry. It’s essentially a temporary/emergency travel document that you can hold onto until you gain full citizenship and get a proper Taiwanese passport.
Regardless, a Taiwanese passport is a Taiwanese passport. It is just a lovely document to behold, and it conveys something special about all who have the privilege to carry one.
The only thing left to do now was to renounce my original citizenship, finish the 12-month waiting period and then apply for Taiwanese citizenship.
Renouncing our original citizenship
Unlike most countries, Taiwan doesn’t give automatic citizenship rights to minor children of naturalized foreigners. This meant that my infant daughter and I both had to give up our original citizenship.
This quickly became an issue as I discovered that my daughter wasn’t allowed to renounce hers until she was eighteen. All attempts to convince the Philippines embassy ended in failure.
At one point I thought I might succeed. During my research, I discovered that minor children of Filipinos in Germany were allowed to renounce before they were eighteen. I shared this with the Philippines Embassy, where the legal attaché made us write a letter that he claimed he would send to MOFA in the Philippines and that we’d get an official clarification from the Philippines govt. We never got any answer, and they refused to speak to us on this subject again. Either way, this was a dead-end.
I informed the household registration office about my daughter’s inability to renounce her citizenship and asked for the possibility of an exemption. The only exemption they could offer was to give an extension for my daughter to remain on a TARC until 2036, i.e., essentially until she became eighteen and eligible to renounce her original citizenship.
My daughter is a bit unlucky in the sense that she was born shortly before I became a citizen. Had she been born afterward, she would’ve automatically become a Taiwanese citizen without requiring any renunciation whatsoever.
When it comes to dual citizenship, Taiwan has a double standard, and this extends all the way down to minors and infants as well.
Without any further recourse, I gave up on her application and put all focus on my own.
By the end of September 2021, I’d successfully renounced my citizenship through our embassy in Hong Kong, but the process took six months. This brought me close to the submission deadline, which in my case was March 2022. I wanted to quickly get my certificate authenticated by TECO, and then send it to Taiwan. I needed at least several weeks in Taiwan to get it authenticated by MOFA, before getting it translated and notarized.
Citing COVID measures, TECO HK wasn’t allowing any walk-ins. You could only set up an appointment on their website but the calendar showed every single date as unavailable for the entirety of 2021, while the calendar for 2022 was disabled. I kept trying every single day, most hours of the day, but strangely, not a single slot ever became available.
It was also around this time that I received a notice in my mail reminding me that my naturalization could be revoked unless I provided a renunciation certificate or proof of my inability to get one.
Normally the deadline can be extended if you provide a valid reason/proof for your inability to renounce on time due to administrative issues from your country of origin. In my case, though, I couldn’t apply for an extension because I had successfully renounced my citizenship already, and my delay was due to TECO HK and not my country of origin.
Ultimately, I was forced to pull out the “VIP” card, which I didn’t like doing, but often had to, just to be taken seriously. I told TECO HK that I was a Gold Card holder and possibly one of the first ones going through the renunciation process. I told them I didn’t have four months to wait and that I could lose my Taiwanese nationality if I couldn’t get my certificate back to Taiwan on time. They immediately agreed to give me an urgent appointment.
I thought things were finally going to go well for me, but my bad luck with TECOs followed me to Hong Kong as well. On the day of the appointment, my agent informed me that TECO had rejected my certificate. They reasoned that the certificate lacked authentication from my country’s MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). I explained to them that it wasn’t required because the certificate was issued to me directly by our embassy in Hong Kong, and they had already authenticated it. TECO wouldn’t accept this.
Typically, a document authenticated by one embassy will always be accepted by another embassy operating within the same jurisdiction. That’s how it usually works.
To explain this with an example, imagine if a certificate was issued and authenticated by AIT (American Institute in Taiwan). You could easily take that to any MOFA office in Taiwan to get it authenticated. Imagine if MOFA asked you to return that AIT-authenticated document back to the US to obtain another authentication from the state department. This is essentially what I was dealing with.
This additional process was challenging because I was no longer a citizen of my ex-country. It wasn’t impossible, but I knew it would be time-consuming and expensive. And I was especially short on time. Despite several attempts, I was unable to convince TECO HK.
For the next several weeks, I raced against time to get this done. This involved sending an embassy-certified document from Hong Kong to my country, authenticating it there, and then returning it to Hong Kong.
Back home, I also spent precious weeks trying to convince our MOFA because they didn’t understand why a Hong Kong-authenticated document would need MOFA authentication from Pakistan, especially if the document was going to be used in Hong Kong and not in Pakistan.
By Feb 2022 (just a month before the deadline), I successfully completed authentication from TECO HK and submitted everything to the household registration office. All I had to do now was to wait until April 2022 to apply for Taiwanese citizenship.
During this process, I genuinely feared that I could become stateless. My fear was rooted in the fact that Taiwan had many stateless foreigners, and in many cases, Taiwan was directly responsible for causing their statelessness. I am glad nothing bad happened. But it would have been interesting to see how it would have looked for the Taiwan Gold Card office if the first Gold Card holder to attempt renunciation was left stateless.
Getting a Taiwan ID and adding my wife to the household register
The transition from foreigner to citizen begins at the immigration (NIA) office, where you must turn in your final ARC and submit some paperwork. Typically, within seven days, you’ll get a document from immigration (that has all your data) which you will then take to the household registration office to get your initial Taiwan ID and household registration certificate.
It was April 2022, and my 12 months of wait were over. I submitted my application at NIA for the final step. I was hoping to get my Taiwan ID in 7 days, but that didn’t happen. I waited for nearly 30 days without any response from NIA. I had no ARC or Taiwan ID. I feared something was wrong again, and I was right.
After reaching out to the immigration office, they mailed me a letter saying my application would be canceled if I didn’t provide proof of marriage. Alternatively, I could proceed with my application if my wife’s data was excluded from my application.
I found this request a little strange, considering that my wife had a valid spouse ARC, that they had issued.
The interesting bit to note here is that my TARC , also issued by NIA, had my wife’s name printed on the front.
I didn’t understand why they needed proof of marriage. My wife had already been in Taiwan for 4 years on a hard-won spouse ARC. We had already been through all the proof and validation processes once. Regardless, to comply with their demand, I offered them the three marriage certificates I had. They rejected all three of them. The Taiwanese marriage certificate couldn’t be accepted because we were foreigners. As for the other two, they said that TECOs hadn’t done the authentication correctly, so we needed to get fresh ones.
I was becoming very anxious at the thought of having to go through the painful process of marriage authentication again. That’s when the immigration officer suggested I take the alternative route. If I agreed to exclude my wife from the application, I could finish the process at NIA quickly and later deal with this issue at the household registration office once I had my Taiwan ID. All I had to do was sign a letter allowing them to do that. Having spent four weeks without any form of ID, I had little choice and agreed to sign the paper.
After getting the final document from immigration, I went to the HRO and was successfully able to get my first Taiwan ID and household registration. It was a bit upsetting that the space for a spouse was left blank on my ID, but regardless, this was a happy moment.
After securing my Taiwan ID card, I tried to deal with the problem of marriage proof with the HRO. I prepared a lot of evidence to give to the HRO, but they wouldn’t accept any of it. For reference, here’s a list of everything I showed them :
- My wife’s valid dependent (spouse) ARC, issued by Taiwan Immigration
- Copy of my TARC where her name was printed on the front
- Proof that we had been living together at the same address for four years
- Taiwanese Marriage Certificate, issued by the Taiwan household registration office itself
- Marriage certificate from the Philippines, authenticated by TECO, and MOFA of Taiwan
- Marriage certificate from Pakistan, also authenticated by TECO and MOFA of Taiwan
- Our daughter’s Taiwanese birth certificate, which listed us as parents
The biggest surprise was the rejection of our valid Taiwanese marriage certificate, which was ironically issued by a household registration office and bore the stamp of Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior.
It’s not that unusual for one governmental office to reject a document issued by a completely different one, but it is strange for a government office to reject a valid document that they themselves issued.
To be sure, I even had them check it in their system, and interestingly our data was still in their marriage registry, but they said it couldn’t be accepted as proof of marriage because we were foreigners.
After a lot of back and forth (admittedly due to my naivety about Taiwanese laws), I finally found the root cause of the problem. It was the SOP again. Their internal SOP stipulated that they couldn’t accept any preexisting proof of marriage. This is what had nullified all our proofs. What they needed was new proof that we were “still” married. The only way to fix this was to obtain new marriage certificates. My biggest worry was that they also wanted me to get a new marriage certificate from my ex-country. I decided to discuss this with MOI.
In my final email to the Ministry of Interior, I told them that a naturalized citizen’s fundamental rights in Taiwan, such as the ability to live with their spouse, shouldn’t depend on a document from a country they are no longer a citizen of. It would’ve been better if Taiwan asked for “fresh proof of marriage” before a person renounced their citizenship and not after. Regardless, they still insisted that I provide a new marriage certificate as well. As things go in Taiwan, luckily, I was able to convince the HRO officer, who gave me an exemption. But I still had to get a new marriage certificate for my wife from the Philippines.
Many of these issues stem from naturalization laws and policies primarily designed for naturalization through marriage to a Taiwanese. The laws haven’t been adapted sufficiently for foreign professionals with “non-Taiwanese” families. The strange requirement of “fresh” marriage proof (as explained to me by an official) was designed to root out fake marriages by asking couples to reverify their marriage status. It’s funny that Taiwan never suspected our marriage was fake for the four years we lived together as foreigners. Clearly, this is another policy that shouldn’t be applicable in the case of a foreign couple. If my wife wanted to marry someone just to gain Taiwanese citizenship, she wouldn’t have started by marrying a Pakistani.
We hired an agent in the Philippines and got a new marriage certificate from PSA (Philippines Statistics Authority). After authenticating it by the Philippines foreign affairs, the final step was to get an appointment from TECO for the authentication. This was mid-2022, and for some reason, TECOs everywhere were will operating in restricted mode due to COVID, even though most of the world had returned to normal. This meant that an average appointment from TECO was going to be 90 days away. I emailed TECO to ask for a special appointment, knowing they offered these to Taiwanese citizens.
To my surprise, in their initial response, they said that to authenticate a marriage certificate, my wife and I would both need to attend an interview (by phone, I suppose) and that she would have to apply for a spouse visa from the Philippines. It was starting to look like another visa run.
I carefully explained to TECO that it was redundant for someone on a “spouse” ARC to return to the Philippines to apply for a “spouse visa” and then return to Taiwan again to reapply for another “spouse” ARC. How could this be a requirement for the authentication of a marriage certificate?
TECO Philippines realized that this SOP had already been completed once. They were stumped and didn’t know what to do. They said they needed to reach out to MOFA. Meanwhile, the household office insisted on a new marriage certificate because their SOP required it. In a way, we were stuck between two Taiwan government SOPs that contradicted one another.
With help from the Taiwan Gold Card office, I pushed MOFA and MOI to sort this mess out among themselves. In the end, I believe the Ministry of Interior won because TECO Philippines was forced to comply. Eventually, we got a new authenticated proof of marriage from the Philippines. This whole process took three months overall, and it was stressful as usual.
By August 2022, I was able to successfully add my wife’s name to both my Taiwan ID and as well as my household registration certificate.
There is a good reason why I fought so hard to get my wife listed on my Taiwanese ID and household registration certificate. Without these changes, I would not have been able to change my wife’s ARC from that of a dependent spouse of a foreigner to that of a dependent spouse of a Taiwanese citizen. There is a clear difference between the two, with only the latter offering automatic right to work and access to certain subsidies.
Sadly, in Taiwan, when it comes to laws involving foreigners, you solve one problem only to encounter another. Now that my wife’s issue was finally fixed, the household office refused to put my daughter’s name on the household registration certificate (something they had previously agreed to). They said that Taiwan didn’t allow foreign children of Taiwanese citizens to be mentioned in the household register.
It makes no sense that a foreign spouse could be added to a Taiwanese citizen’s household register but not foreign children.
My daughter not being listed in my household registration means she is ineligible for certain subsidies. As of today, my daughter’s issue remains unresolved.
Part 3: Parent Visas in Taiwan
This topic is not related to my Taiwanese citizenship journey, but it deserves mention because it’s related to the retention of foreign professionals.
Parents are direct relatives, which is why most talent acquisition programs offer preferential treatment for parents. In many countries, when a foreign professional naturalizes, their parents typically qualify for long-term visas or residence permits ranging from 2 to 10 years. Some countries even offer paths to permanent residence for parents of naturalized citizens. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for Taiwan which means it’s not the best choice for permanent settlement if you plan to immigrate with your parents.
Taiwan offers two types of visas for foreign parents of adult residents:
- A three-month visit visa with a max stay of 6 months. (This is for parents of any foreigner, regardless of whether they have an ARC, APRC, or citizenship)
- A six-month visit visa with a max stay of 12 months (This is exclusively for parents of Gold Card holders, and these benefits are carried over when a Gold Card holder gets an APRC or becomes a citizen)
The setup above effectively creates two types of naturalized Taiwanese citizens, each with different rights to parental reunification.
In researching this subject, I was surprised to learn that there’s even a third tier. Naturalized citizens from the Chinese Mainland can apply for long-term residence permits (like an ARC) for their parents aged seventy and above. This allows their parents to stay in Taiwan indefinitely and presumably obtain NHI access. This is not available to anyone else, not even naturalized Taiwan Gold Card holders.
As a Gold Card holder, my parents qualified for the 6-month visa (with one 6-month extension). I first made use of this special privilege in December 2019. As far as I know, I was the first Gold Cardholder to do that.
Nationals of some countries (like mine) need to travel internationally to visit a TECO or hire expensive agents to apply on their behalf. To avoid any hassle for my father, I took his passport to apply for his visa from TECO Dubai. I was on annual leave then, and Dubai was a short flight from Pakistan.
Being the first to do something in Taiwan has its drawbacks. TECO Dubai only gave my father a 3-month visa even though I had made them aware that I was a Taiwan Gold Holder. This was in early Jan 2020, before any COVID measures existed in Taiwan, so it wasn’t related to COVID visa restrictions. Presumably, they treated my case as a regular work ARC holder.
Regardless, I used that visa to bring my father over to Taiwan. Once he was there, I told Taiwan Gold Card office about my failure to get a six-month visa. To their credit, they immediately informed MOFA, who in turn canceled his old visa and replaced it with a new 6-month visa, free of charge. I subsequently extended my father’s visa for another six months successfully. But my father only spent seven months in total before returning home.
Fast-forward to August 2022, as a naturalized Taiwanese citizen, I still qualified for the preferential 6-month visa for my parents as an ex-Gold Card holder.
My father’s health had deteriorated a lot since his last visit to Taiwan. My father, who was now seventy, was wheelchair-bound and suffered from Alzheimer’s. My goal as a Taiwanese citizen now was to bring my father over to Taiwan on a semi-permanent basis so I could care for him long-term, even if it meant doing a visa run with him in a wheelchair every twelve months.
Caring for elderly parents is something that many Taiwanese can relate to. Filial obligation is one of the cornerstones of Taiwanese culture and society.
Due to expensive flights and quarantine rules that were still in place in Taiwan, I couldn’t go to Dubai to apply for my father’s visa. So instead, I had him send his passport to me in Taiwan, so I could apply for his visa from one of the TECOs closest to me, either HK or the Philippines. I chose to go with TECO Philippines because it was easier and cheaper to get an agent to help with this.
Before sending all the paperwork to the Philippines, I corresponded with TECO via email to make sure I was allowed to apply for my father’s visa via an agent. I sent them all the documents in PDF beforehand, as they requested. Eventually, they agreed and gave me an appointment to submit my father’s visa application.
The agent called me on the day of the appointment to say that my father’s application had been rejected and it wasn’t due to any problem with the paperwork. The reason for rejection was that the passport holder wasn’t in the Philippines. Essentially, a visa application via an agent was acceptable but not if the passport holder wasn’t in the country at the time. I reached out to BOCA, and they sided with TECO as well. I must say that this was somewhat understandable. My only disappointment was that TECO didn’t mention any of this to me weeks earlier. They only sprung it up on me at the last minute in typical TECO fashion.
I was still a bit confused because I remembered that I had gotten my father’s visa from TECO Dubai, and my father was back home at the time of the application. I reached out to the Taiwan Gold Card office, and they offered me a contact from MOFA. For some reason, the lady I spoke to was upset when I mentioned my prior experience with TECO Dubai. Her response was that they had made a mistake and that it was impossible to get a visa without the applicant physically going to TECO himself. She added that I would never be able to get a visa for my father this way (remotely) from any TECO, no matter if I applied at Manila, Hong Kong, or Seoul. I asked if they could reconsider due to my father’s health condition and inability to visit a TECO, to which she responded, “How can your father come to Taiwan if he can’t even get himself to a TECO?”
Putting my father on an 8-hour flight to get him into Taiwan is one thing, but it’s not the same as sending a sick old man to the Philippines alone just to have him sit in a hotel doing nothing while an agent applies for his visa. It makes no sense.
It’s sad to see that even being a Taiwanese citizen doesn’t buy your parents any concession or relief if they are too sick to get themselves to a TECO for a visa application.
By October 2022, Taiwan had finally removed Quarantine rules which meant, I could fly to Dubai again once the ticket prices normalized. Despite being discouraged by the woman from MOFA, knowing how Taiwan works, I decided to double-check with TECO Dubai directly. Interestingly, it seemed TECO Dubai was prepared to make another mistake because they gave me a positive response. They told me that I could just come over with my father’s passport and apply for a visa for him on his behalf.
Feeling lucky, I thought I would try this out with TECO HK to see if they’d agree since HK is easier and cheaper for me to travel to. I emailed them, and they promptly rejected. At least I appreciate being rejected upfront rather than at the last minute.
This means as of now, TECO Dubai is my only option. I’ll just wait for the right time to go there so I can do a “visa run” for the sake of my father. Until I am able to do that, technically this issue remains unresolved.
I wish Taiwan were a bit more understanding about this. I think that a parent of a Taiwanese citizen should be able to get a visa from anywhere, and the parent’s age and health should be taken into consideration before demanding that they make an in-person visit. Enforcing these arbitrary rules only serves to inconvenience immigrant families.
I also think Taiwan should offer longer visas for parents of naturalized citizens, especially since it’s hard for some of us to get a Taiwanese visa. I don’t mind spending 50,000 TWD to get a visa for my father, but at least it should last a couple of years.
I have reviewed multiple foreign talent programs and many of them offer either longer visas for parents of professionals or multiple extensions.
At the very least, Taiwan should offer better options for parents of naturalized citizens. If all Taiwanese citizens are equal, then shouldn’t all Taiwanese citizens have equal rights to parental unification?
Part 4: Some recommendations for Taiwan
A) Reform Immigration and Naturalization laws
Ease of nationality and family unification are among the most crucial factors that drive global high-skilled migration. In my humble opinion, Taiwan should :
- Adjust laws and policies that discriminate against Southeast Asians, especially in terms of limiting their ability to immigrate.
- Marriage should only be verified once when a foreign spouse gets their dependent visa and ARC for the first time. It’s redundant to ask for marriage verification after naturalization, especially for foreign professionals who qualify for citizenship through work.
- Remove absurd rules like the single certificate requirement for infants.
- Minor children of naturalized citizens should get citizenship automatically and unconditionally.
- Make it easier for professionals with non-Taiwanese families to settle in Taiwan. With tens of thousands of foreign professionals potentially coming to Taiwan, surely some will want to go for citizenship, and they can’t all be expected to have a Taiwanese spouse.
- Improve family reunification, especially for parents of APRC holders and naturalized citizens. Parents’ visit visas should be easier to get, preferably online, and the duration should be increased to a minimum of 2 years. Ideally, long-term stay such as an ARC should be given as an option to parents of all naturalized citizens.
B) Rethink the renunciation requirement
Taiwanese APRC isn’t the same as permanent residence offered by some other countries, where most permanent residents eventually become citizens once they qualify. Most APRC holders in Taiwan will never apply for citizenship as long as the renunciation law stays in place.
- Renunciation is not unique to Taiwan, but it is pretty uncommon. Very few highly developed economies require renunciation. A few examples that come to mind are Austria, Germany, Singapore, and Japan, but their overall circumstances differ from Taiwan. I believe it’s more counterproductive in the case of Taiwan. It’s also a completely pointless exercise because once you become a Taiwanese, there are zero objections to regaining your old citizenship or adding a few new ones. Other countries that require renunciation don’t allow this.
- Because of the renunciation requirement, most naturalizations in Taiwan are currently from Southeast Asia. Abolishing the renunciation law will allow Taiwan to have more diversity among naturalized foreigners, which ultimately works in favor of Taiwan in more ways than one.
While those from developing countries may be more willing to renounce their citizenship, they’ll do so reluctantly. My parents still don’t know about my renunciation. Out of respect for my parents and their struggles, I would’ve kept my citizenship had it been an option. I hope they’ll forgive me; I only did what I had to do for my children. Taiwanese citizenship is my gift to my daughter, so she can have a better start in life than I did.
C) Make Taiwan Gold Card Program more accessible
Earlier in this article, I made a good case for the Taiwan Gold Card’s lack of accessibility for people from certain countries. Fixing this may involve some modifications to the requirements, specifically the salary barrier.
Taiwan Gold Card office has recently started a push towards south and southeast Asia, which is a step in the right direction.
Also, reforming naturalization and immigration policies will directly affect the retention of Taiwan Gold Card professionals, especially from developing countries.
Final Words
For those of you who made it to the end, thank you for giving me an hour of your life. I have never written an article like this before, so my apologies for turning this into a novel. I couldn’t find a better way to convey my message without sharing my experience in some detail.
Also, I wasn’t comfortable sharing pictures of my family online like this, but I thought it was essential to see the human element behind these experiences.
I do realize that many aspects of my case make it rare, perhaps the only one of its kind in Taiwan. But this is true only if you look at the sum of everything. I am sure that many foreigners, especially those who have lived here for many years, will read this and find at least some elements of my experiences relatable to them.
Also, I want to point out that I have nothing to gain from sharing all this. I have already overcome all these problems. They are in my past. I am living happily with my family now. I just want there to be a serious discussion about Taiwan’s renunciation law. This issue continues to affect my daughter. My daughter was born here and has spent all her life here. She is Taiwanese in a truer sense than I will ever be. She deserves to get her citizenship now and not 15 years later. We are planning for a second child, who will surely be given Taiwanese citizenship at birth. Having this kind of multiple statuses within a family is not good. Two siblings, both born of the same parents, both born in Taiwan, but only one will grow up having Taiwanese citizenship.
My other goal with this article was to make a case for reforming laws and policies relating to foreigners. I especially wanted to highlight some of the harsher policies that foreigners from southeast Asia are subjected to. That being said, a foreigner doesn’t need to be from Southeast Asia to encounter unreasonable policies. Any foreigner can find themselves in a situation like mine.
Last but not least, I do want to say that I love Taiwan and I am grateful for everything Taiwan has given me. I consider my Taiwanese citizenship a privilege. Once you get past all the TECOs and immigration, you’ll find that most people in Taiwan are kind and friendly. It’s a vibrant economy that affords many freedoms, a high standard of living, low crime rates, and excellent national health care. It’s a tiny but beautiful island that offers endless adventures. Just because I am pointing out a few issues with the laws here doesn’t mean Taiwan is bad. For every bad thing, Taiwan has a hundred good things going for it. That’s why I chose to settle in Taiwan, even though I could have moved elsewhere. I am invested in Taiwan like many other long-term foreigners here. I have built a life here which is hard to give up on.
I have always considered Taiwan a hidden gem. It is undoubtedly a fantastic place, but some fair criticism is still warranted. As a Taiwanese citizen, I think I have finally earned some right to say these things. But it’s all with good intentions. I don’t want to see other foreign families suffer as I did. I also want Taiwan to be better because I know it can. If there’s one thing that’s certain about Taiwan is that they have never gone backward. They have always moved forward and always gotten better.
[Chinese version of this article] Special thanks to Chihwei Hubert Yeh for undertaking the enormous time and effort needed to translate this article into Chinese.
