National Tsing Hua University (NTHU)

Work during study

A foreign student may work part-time in Taiwan only after obtaining a separate work permit from the Workforce Development Agency (an agency of the Ministry of Labor); a student who has come to Taiwan purely for a local-language course may only apply for this permit after having studied for a year or more. With the exception of winter and summer vacations, a foreign student's total working hours may not exceed 20 hours a week — a limit the Agency's own page traces directly to Article 50 of the Employment Services Act.

Post-study work visa

Work permit exemption during the extended residence of new graduates . Up to 2 years
A foreign national who obtains an associate degree or higher in Taiwan, and who receives approval from the National Immigration Agency (Ministry of the Interior) to extend their residence as a new graduate, may work in Taiwan during that extended-residence period without needing to apply for a work permit at all. They may take up full-time or part-time work, in any industry or position, for any employer, for up to 2 years. Work that requires a specific professional qualification or licence under other laws (e.g. medicine) still requires that separate qualification. Once this extended-residence period ends, a graduate who wants to keep working needs their employer to apply for an ordinary work permit — commonly via the Ministry of Labor's points-based scoring system for foreign and overseas Chinese student graduates, introduced 3 July 2014, which scores education, salary, work experience, Chinese and other language proficiency, background and other factors, with a permit granted to anyone scoring 70 or more of the available points.

Route to citizenship

Taiwanese nationality by naturalisation is governed by the Nationality Act, administered by the Ministry of the Interior. The general route (Article 3) requires a foreign national or stateless person domiciled in Taiwan to have legally resided in the territory for more than 183 days a year for at least 5 consecutive years, have legal capacity under both R.O.C. and their own country's law, have no bad conduct or criminal record (certified by a Police Clearance Certificate), have enough property or professional skill to support themselves or maintain a stable livelihood, and possess basic Mandarin proficiency plus basic knowledge of the rights and duties of an R.O.C. national. Faster routes exist for a spouse of an R.O.C. national (3 years) and for a recommended 'high-level professional' whose contribution is jointly reviewed and approved (2 years' residence at 183+ days/year, or 5 years otherwise). On dual nationality, the Act states the default plainly: 'a foreign national applying for naturalization shall provide a certificate of loss of original nationality within one year' of naturalisation being approved (or, if their home country's law only allows renunciation at a later age, within one year of reaching that age) — and a foreign national may not even reside in Taiwan as a naturalised citizen before submitting that certificate. Failure to provide it in time means the naturalisation itself is revoked. A narrow exemption from this renunciation requirement exists only for naturalisation granted under a specific subparagraph of Article 5 and under Article 6 — the high-level-professional and special-contribution routes reported elsewhere as Taiwan's recognised dual-citizenship exception — or where the applicant genuinely cannot obtain a loss-of-nationality certificate for reasons outside their control. For the ordinary 5-year route most relevant to a graduate with no such distinguishing recommendation, renunciation of the original nationality is required, not optional.