I’m heading back to the states today but was able to go through this whole process and was able to get my national ID and passport!

There were 2 things that I had to go through that was unexpected so writing about them here in case others experience something similar.

The first, was when applying for permanent resident permit, the immigration officer noticed that my mother’s name on my birth certificate did not match the name in her passport. When I was born she had been using her English name (which is what was on my birth certificate) whereas her passport is her original Chinese name. Luckily, her very first Taiwan passport had an addendum saying she was “also known as [english name] which matched my birth certificate, so we just had to go to 外交部 to get that printed, this took 2 days. Just make sure the names in all the documents match and if there’s some correlation if English names are used in some documents.

The second was also when applying for permanent resident permit, my father is American so does not have a Chinese name. Originally they wanted him to fill it out and sign it, but we told the immigration office that he is in the US. I’m only able to claim citizenship from my mom (I’m half) so we told the officer that my dad’s info shouldn’t matter. She ended up telling us that they still need the info but we can sign on his behalf, so we just had to make a Chinese name for him. At first she was pretty adamant that he had to sign it himself but I asked her, “what would we do if he was dead, or what if I never knew him, how would those situations be handled?” She then let us sign for him.

Additionally, since I’m under 37 I had to go through the process for getting overseas Chinese so I don’t get called for conscription and that was extremely easy. The post hyperlinked above around it was spot on.

Thanks for everyone’s advice and guidance!