About Me

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Yilan, Taiwan
I just returned back to the States after 11 years in Taiwan with my daughter. Taiwan is an excellent base for us explore Asia, while living in relative (gun free) safety, while benefiting from a cheap and efficient national health care system. The people are amazing too. I have Taiwanese friendships that are 20 years old and I'm always making new ones! My coworker here in CO is from Taiwan.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Congrats to me! I'm Legal!

After 5 years of legitimate, tax paying work, a foreigner can apply for their much coveted APRC (Alien Permanent Resident Card). The benefit being I can work anywhere, like a Taiwanese person without being a slave to a school for their sponsoring my ARC (Alien Resident Card) and reapplying every year. I could of applied in September 2013, but I was saving for our visas and plane ticket to Myanmar the beginning of 2014 for Chinese New Year and simply didn't have the extra 10,000NT ($340 USD) lying around. My Chinese teacher Kevin couldn't stand it anymore and in March lend me the money which I quickly paid back. Then in April I was finally holding my APRC in my hand. I have the option of going home right now and coming back in 183 days without changing my legal, working status. I can also apply for a 2 year leave and return with the same status.

The morning I received my APRC
The story doesn't end there. Immigration didn't tell me, but through friends I learned I still wasn't "legal", I had to apply for a Work Permit, that fortunately only cost me 100NT. It was easy, I could apply from Tainan and send everything to Taipei. My work permit just came in yesterday! It took 2 working weeks to process.

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