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Key detail: > Immigration authorities say the move is aimed at preventing cases in which foreign workers obtain visas under one category, but then engage in un
by lamasery 6mo ago
Key detail:
> Immigration authorities say the move is aimed at preventing cases in which foreign workers obtain visas under one category, but then engage in unrelated or lower-skilled work.
The claim appears to be that people were using up visa slots for things like interpreters or other jobs where clearly you'd need good language skills to actually do the job, including in Japanese, with the intent all along of doing some other job instead. An up-front test should let through almost all of the legitimate claimants of these visas, and stop almost all the fraudsters. Probably a lot cheaper than a similarly-effective level of after-the-fact auditing, or more-extensive checks into applicants' work situation.
[EDIT] I mean, in the framing provided by the government, the above appears to be what's going on. Governments may lie, of course.
- Tade0 6mo agoThere's also the issue of people going to Japan to buy out several properties to then rent them out.
- socalgal2 6mo agoIs that a thing? I remember a few years ago when they added a bunch of regulations to rentals that raised the costs.
- dublinstats 6mo agoI'm guessing they get a business visa based on claiming revenue from the rentals, then use that to sponsor more people as employees. As for regulation costs, airbnbs are notorious for not adhering to regulations. Depends on how well Japan is able to police it.
- 0x3f 6mo agoThere are no residence requirements for buying property in Japan. So... what?
- m463 6mo agoFrom what I have heard, japan tacks on lots of extra costs/taxes for this situation.
- pjjpo 6mo agoUnlike banks, many services, some Rakuten subpages, etc requiring full width, I have found real estate sites (purchase, not rent) to be the most likely to accept half-width roman characters for the name input box.
- rtpg 6mo agoI don't believe there are residency requirements to ownership so the people doing that do not need to go through this flow at all. Just an entirely separate issue, though it might be tackled. I do have the impression Tokyo is getting similar dynamics to the rest of the world on this front: builders don't care where the money is coming from and so if money from outside the country can get buildings built they're happy. A friend of mine moved into a sold-out Yokohama tower mansion recently... and despite the bike and car parking being fully booked even more than 6 months in it was _quite_ empty. I have a feeling a lot of people are buying into the market expecting to get easy rental money and not really seeing it.
- soco 6mo agoBut if it's empty then it's not rented out, so why the whole exercise? Park their money?
- pjjpo 6mo agoI don't know how verifiable it is, but the general narrative has been a lot is Chinese parking their money outside the reach of the CCP. I've never quite understood the mechanics of this though.
- rtpg 6mo agoApparently they’re listed but people aren’t biting? Though this was a while back so maybe things have changed
- red-iron-pine 6mo agobasically, yes. the chinese government owns all land and all banks. they snap their fingers and you have nothing. you put it into japanese, usa, canadian housing, etc. etc. under a company flagged in bermuda and you're covered.
- kakacik 6mo agoIts not shocking, I see it implemented ie in Switzerland, where half of the world tries to get in. Since each part has their own language and none of that is english, its pretty important to exist in society for anything but brief visitors. Its not restrictive as this (B2 is pretty high level in any language, here its weak B1) and resefved for 'higher' permits like C, for which you anyway need 10 years of residency in normal circumstances. But japan is japan and one of most closed societies globally, nobody should be surprised by this.
- vr46 6mo agoExcept the Swiss are total arseholes about it, they won't even grant citizenship to people born there or who've lived there for twenty years and speak the language. Many want to cap total population at 10 million, we'll see what happens in June. And twelve years ago, the Swiss voted to restrict EU FoM for itself and the backlash was instant. Can't blame the government, this is the Swiss voting public doing their best to be dickheads. Japan is a bunch of islands, yes it's pretty closed, but Switzerland is a land-locked village with fewer people than London and entirely dependent on trade and the movement of people and money for all they have, and barely a scrap of a language to call its own. English is super common there, probably as a way of democratically inconveniencing everyone.
- Mainan_Tagonist 6mo agoSuch dickheads the Swiss voting public, how dare they exercise a direct democracy?! So inconveniencing!
- kyleee 6mo ago[flagged]
- Mainan_Tagonist 6mo agoDon't muslim citizens and foreign residents in Switzerland enjoy more rights than in pretty much any Muslim country? There is definitely some hostility to some aspects of Islam, aspects which seem to only recently have become central to the exercise of worship for some (the veiling of women for instance), yet this has not translated to some outright discrimination of muslims. Bosnian and Albanian immigrants for instance appear to have been integrated and/or assimilated into society.
- dudeinjapan 6mo agoCompany founder in Japan here. This is largely how I read this specific news--its narrowly scoped to prevent patterns of abuse, which there have indeed been isolated cases tantamount to human trafficking. That being said, there is a broader trend, that Japan's immigration authorities are becoming more foreigner-hostile, reflecting a broader political view shift in Japanese society (see: Sanseito political party) and one could argue in the US and globally. One data point: a few months back we had one of our employees denied a Permanent Resident Visa due to a clerical error where our company forgot to notify the immigration bureau of an address change--we literally moved our office across the street, same city block. Our lawyer said such a case was unheard of a few years ago; these were always handled as simple corrections, instead the poor chap had to go to the back of the 9+ month waiting queue. Our lawyer says the news is too new to know what concrete ramifications it will actually have on us, a tech company which uses English as the main language for engineering roles.
- laurieg 6mo agoRelatively small clerical errors causing people to get permanent residency applications denied is becoming a trope. The ones I have heard: - Client company address changed 4 years ago and the paperwork wasn't filed within 2 weeks. - A late pension payment 2 years ago. - Pension and health insurance were paid on time, but the date stamp on the physical payment slips was smudged and so "did not prove" that it was paid on time. - City hall workers didn't send out health insurance slips in time, applicant (through no fault of their own) couldn't pay by the deadline. This level of strictness is affecting people's lives, ability to make plans, get mortgages etc. To add to this, permanent residency application times are now very long. After you complete your application some people are waiting nearly 2 years to get a response. There is a lot of vagueness about what happens if the rules change during your application period.
- hogehoge51 6mo agoUnfortunately, tbis may be the simplest and most cost effective way to clear the backlog. It's unfortunately for people who in good faith made honest mistakes or were victims of honest mistakes. But it also may be a low cost way to filter out bad faith applicants who were never planning to pay pensions/taxes fully. An assymeytry of information means we never see the balance of honest mistake vs dodgy excuse makers.... Alos, Japan tends to play the grey zone of rule interpretation as a buffer zone for signalling hard feedback. it is generally periodic and ends after a while.