Serse’s Bureaucracy In Taiwan

UPDATE 2023-10-03: Regrettably, there were some inaccuracies in the post below, but only related to future planning. In the best interest of documenting the correct procedure, I have now edited this post with the correct information.

OK, this is probably going to be a long post.

As I previously wrote, we decided to overcomplicate our life, basically in order to get some extra cash. We need to do three things for Serse in Taiwan, in this order:

• Obtain permanent residence status rights for him from the Immigration Office.
• Register him in the Household Registry (Taiwanese residence).
• Obtain Taiwanese passport.

On a side note, remember we also need to do the following while we’ll be in Taiwan in a couple of weeks:

• Renew my Gold Card.
• Acquire documentation for Mei-Lin’s Italian citizenship application.
• Acquire documentation for the silly Swiss Family Book.

But these 3 last points are out of scope here, in this post I will just focus on the bureaucracy for Serse, also because I have already discussed the rest. Let’s start with…

Serse’s Taiwanese Passport

I start with this, but it’s actually the very last step. The main entity responsible for issuing Serse’s Taiwanese passport, since we are residents of Switzerland, is Taiwan’s Swiss Consulate Cultural and Economic Delegation Office in Bern, which from now on I will affectionately call The Gingerbread House.

In normal circumstances, the Gingerbread House is responsible for seeing the applicant in person, acquiring the necessary documentation, legalizing it, issuing the passport, and shipping it home. But there is a caveat.

See, unlike most other passport types I’m aware of, Taiwanese passports usually also report the Taiwanese national ID number. And of course Serse does not have a Taiwanese ID yet, which can only be issued in Taiwan for resident citizens. So we have two choices here: either getting the passport from the Gingerbread House without the national ID number printed on it (and therefore risking looming, ominous, horrible consequences in the future), OR we do it after having obtained Serse’s Taiwanese ID card. We opted for the safe option: obtain the passport in Taiwan at a MOFA office, which will be the last step of a painful quest chain. But first, we still need to go to Bern in person once, to double-legalize the necessary documents. Yes, it’s a shame we didn’t consider this before, as we just went to Bern a few days ago, but life is pain, we know.

The procedure is super easy. We need to:

1. Request Serse’s birth certificate from the city of Zerneve (the one we got for his Italian passport is by now too old to be used. AYFKM.)
2. Have it legalized at the Kanzlei (basically, a Prefecture office).
3. Make a copy of it.
4. Translate it to Chinese (Mei-Lin can do it).
5. Bring original and copies of both parents’ passports.
6. Bring Serse’s Swiss residence permit (original + 1 copy).
7. Prepare a return envelope with a 5.30 CHF postage stamp for receiving back the legalized documents.
8. Bring all these documents at the Gingerbread House in Bern. The non-official translator (Mei-Lin) has to be present to authenticate the signature.

After this, we should get back per post the double-legalized (and translated) birth certificate. With this super precious document, plus the Taiwanese ID card (which we don’t have yet), and a shitload of other documents, we should be finally able to obtain Serse’s passport from a MOFA office in Taiwan. Since time is running short, I requested Serse’s birth certificate with an outrageous reasonable “express fee” of 15 CHF. It arrived today, tomorrow I will go to the Kanzlei for the legalization, and beginning next week Mei-Lin has the appointment at the Gingerbread House in Bern.

Serse’s Permanent Residence Permit

The very first thing to do with Serse when we are in Taiwan is to go to the Immigration office and request a permanent residence permit. This is a document stating that Serse is eligible for permanent residence in Taiwan due to… reasons. In our case, the reason is his nationality, so we need to bring with us all the documents which prove that Serse has right to Taiwanese citizenship. This includes:

• Serse’s Swiss birth certificate double-legalized by Kanzlei and Gingerbread House, as explained above.
• Filled application form.
• Serse’s Italian passport (original and copy). This is because Immigration wants to know how Serse entered Taiwan, in our case it’s because Italian nationals do not need a visa to enter Taiwan.
• Both parents’ passports (original and copy), because Immigration needs to identify us as well.
• Wedding certificate from Taileng’s Household Registration Office.
• Serse’s vaccination records, legalized by the Gingebread House.

To be 100% honest, I’m not sure why they request our wedding certificate: Serse gets Taiwanese citizenship from Mei-Lin’s side, and the fact that she’s his mother is reported in the birth certificate already, so in theory it shouldn’t matter whether Mei-Lin is in a blessed-by-God union or she’s a trailer park meth-addict single mom. But who knows.

Also, we need to make sure that, after they are done with it, they return to us the super-precious double-legalized birth certificate, because we will need it for the next step.

The funny part is Serse’s vaccination records. I assume this is due to the need of keeping track of mandatory vaccinations, because if Serse is registered as a resident,  then he’s also allowed to enroll for public schooling, so vaccinations matter. This makes sense to me. EXCEPT, unlike many countries like for example Italy, Switzerland does not have a national register of vaccinations. Which means that there is no single authority which can issue automatically a document certifying the vaccination status of a resident. All we have in Switzerland for Serse is the “yellow booklet”, AKA “International WHO vaccination records”, which is a very… informal document, basically a piece of paper filled in by the pediatrician.

We called the Gingerbread House for clarification. They said that the “vaccination record”, whatever it is, must also be legalized by the Kanzlei before being double-legalized by them, but every Kanzlei has different requirements for the procedure, so the first step is to clarify with them.

This is what happened.

I called the Stadtkanzlei of Zerneve and asked for info.

“Oh no sorry, we don’t do that, it’s the Kantonal Kanzlei, not us… Staatskanzlei, with two aa…”

Then I called the Staatskanzlei.

“Yes, but this is not the right office, wait, I connect you with the legalization office.”

Busy. Call dropped. I called again and ask for the direct number of the office, so I can call them directly. After a couple of trials I managed to talk with them. Note: these are the same people who have to legalize Serse’s birth certificate as explained above.

“Yes, in theory we can do this, but not on the yellow vaccination booklet directly. You need first to have an official vaccination certification from the Health Department of the City of Zerneve. Here is the number.”

I called the number.

“Sorry, this is not the right office, you have to call the General Direction of the Health Department of the City of Zerneve. Here is the number.”

I called the number.

“Yes, we can do that, but your time requirements are quite tight. Please send us an email to this address summarizing what you just told me and we will have someone reply you with next steps. If nobody answers the email in a couple of days, then call this other number.”

AYFKMAYFKMAYFKM.

I sent the email, and luckily the answer is swift.

“Since all these vaccinations have been done and stamped by a pediatrician in the city of Zerneve that should be easily doable. Just come to our office with the yellow booklet.”

So today I went to the Health Department of the City of Zerneve. They were already waiting for me, I assume this must have been a quite non-standard request for them. A friendly guy took Serse’s vaccination booklet, and after a few minutes returned it to me with an official stamp on it. He told me to go to the Staatskanzlei with that, and added “they know me”. No costs for that. It really must have been a non-standard request.

Tomorrow I will go to the Kanzlei to have both Serse’s birth certificate and stamped yellow booklet legalized. After that, Mei-Lin will have to translate ALSO the yellow booklet to Chinese. Then, when we go to Bern, we have to ask the Gingerbread House to also double-legalize the yellow booklet and its translation.

Bonus question: What would have happened if Serse’s vaccination status were not so well documented? For example, in the case of Penelope the yellow booklet is a BIG MESS: some vaccinations have been done in Taiwan, others in Italy, others in Switzerland, some of them do not even have the official vaccination label or stamp of the clinic where they have been administered… We were spared all of this mess for Penelope only because we obtained her Taiwan resident status as soon as she was born in Taiwan, before accumulating all these vaccines. But, OH LOOMING DOOM, if we ever decide to move to Italy or Taiwan that might become… an issue.

Serse’s Household Registration

Once obtained from Immigration a Permanent Resident Certificate, when can go to a Household Registration Office in Taileng and register Serse as resident (in Mei-Lin’s parents household). We will need:

• Serse’s Permanent Resident Certificate.
• Filled form “Agreement on Child’s Surname”.
• Serse’s double-legalized Swiss birth certificate that we need to threaten ask Immigration to return us.
• Mei-Lin’s Household Registration Transcript (yes, ANOTHER one).
• Our wedding certficate (yes, ANOTHER one).

After this, we should receive Serse’s Taiwanese ID card, and with that we can go to a MOFA office and request the passport. And then hopefully the bureaucracy for Serse will be over for a while.