You may have to distort the truth in order to get a job teaching ESL in Taiwan, but don’t worry, your employer will most likely return the favor. In order to get a work permit you will need to get an extendable visitor visa outside of Taiwan. Most teachers do a visa run to Hong Kong while others may get one from their home country or elsewhere. Here is a link to the Taiwan consulate in Hong Kong, www.whosetravel.com/Hong_Kong_Embassy.htm, it gives you an idea of what is involved in applying for a visa. The hitch is you can’t tell the authorities that you intend to work in Taiwan, instead you must make up a story about wanting to visit a friend or learn Chinese for two months. This fictionalization of the truth really only becomes a problem if the consulate doesn’t believe your story and issues you a non-extendable visitor visa, which will allow you in the country but prevents you from getting a work permit. One fun way to look at things is that legal teachers in Taiwan began illegally.
Now lets look at just one (and I think one of the more blatant) ways in which some employers can be dishonest. You will hopefully notice that the repercussions can be much more dramatic.
A bill passed for political reasons in 2003 by the Taiwanese government made it illegal for foreigners to teach kindergarten classes (www.tealit.com/news.htm). Not only is it illegal for you to teach kindergarten age students (many jobs on Tealit.com will list “very young age” or “3 to 10 years old” instead of using the word “kindergarten”), but it is also worth noting that it is illegal for foreigners to even teach in a school where there are kindergarten classes being held. It will come as no surprise to teachers who have worked in Taiwan to hear that a number of schools still have foreigners teaching kindergarten classes. These schools will often simply dismiss or play down the legalities of teaching kindergarten if questioned by a possible teaching candidate. It is also not uncommon to hear stories of teachers who were told to practice an escape route in case government officials raided their school. Be assured the raids do happen and the escape routes are used and an unfortunate few do get deported. Why does this practice still continue? The schools with kindergarten offer teachers more hours and sometimes better pay, while the schools themselves generate a wealth of extra income. So maybe you should ask yourself if you would like jumping out windows or hanging off fire escapes before signing that kinder contract.
Both the visitor visa and the kindergarten classes fall into the ESL grey zone. This is not unique to Taiwan, as bending the “rules” for both employee and employer in most Asian countries is nothing new. But never forget that the teacher, and not the school, will pay the higher price...if one should be caught doing something one should not.
By Sean McCall
4 comments:
The practice of using visitor's visas as a guise to teach ESL in Taiwan is not a new one. I taught English in Taiwan from 1998-1999, and the practice was the same. I indeed took an overnight trip into Hong Kong (a weekend alone was at first daunting, but turned out to be incredibly fun) in order to renew my visitor's visa while my employer worked on getting my work visa settled with the government, which came through about a month later.
Don't let stories such as these deter you from teaching English there, however. Taiwan is a wonderful country filled with people who are friendly to Americans. Taiwanese culture respects the power of teachers, particularly foreign teachers of English. Deciding to teach there was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Tiffany
Washington, DC
The author of this article had no intent on deterring teachers from coming to the country. ESL daily has the objective of informing and educating teachers of what is going on in the world of English Education.
I agree that Taiwan is a
beautiful country and the people are very nice. What
I was speaking to were some of the pit falls that some
- not all - teachers may face when finding employment
in the ESL market in Taiwan. Thank you for your
feedback.
I taught in Taiwan in the mid-1990s. The rules for getting a work visa are like going through a maze that makes no sense. I got there on a visitor's visa, then the school applied for a work visa. It was denied. So they got me a part-time job at additional school and that school applied for a work visa. The whole ten months I was in Taiwan, every month my application would come back and they'd want something else: more photographs, more copies of this or that, etc. In the nine months of that application, the visa was never approved nor rejected. Meanwhile, I had to go to Hong Kong every month to renew my 30-day visitor visa.
It was very problematic for me ethically to work under those conditions. I seriously considered all sides of the situation, and talked to the people at the school to get a feel for their angle on it. I finally decided to stay for the entire ten months that I had signed up for, and I think I made the right decision, given the situation, but I was of course aware that if I ever got caught, I'd be kicked out and never be allowed to return.
It's strange working in a place where the laws make it impossible for you to obey them, yet if you get caught not obeying them, you get in trouble.
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