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.