I’ve been in Japan for 8 years. Came as a MEXT graduate student with a 2-year visa. Then started my PhD so I got a 3 year visa. Been working at the same university since I was a student, granted, part-time, but I’ve literally been connected to the university one way or another for 6 years now! 7th incoming. I’ve been living at the same location for 3.5 years, I pay my taxes and bills on time, nenkin is paid by uni, and I’ve paid 4 years worth at this point. I also make like 7mil a year (idk if this is relevant at all, but there’s that). I’ve had no issues with the authorities and am pretty much a model citizen.
But the moment I changed from student to work visa, it’s been 1-year visas every time. Got my 4th consecutive 1-year residence card and tbh I’m fuming at this point. And then there’s my friend who’s working at an eikaiawa and randomly got a 3 year visa.
I don’t know if it’ll matter, but next year I’m going to get all available nozei kazei shomeisho for the past years, then I’m going to copy all of my previous residence cards, and I’ll also ask my academic advisor and maybe one of the deans (whom I know and am close with) to write letters of character recommendation or something. Hopefully, by then I will also have finished my degree, so I’ll attach a copy of my degree to the application. Dunno if they’ll even except all the extra stuff, but I’m at a loss..
Has anyone cracked this mystery? I know lots of people tend to post about this, but I’m just so done with immigration in this country and needed to vent. At this point it feels like they do this only to take more 4000yen stamps from you every year.
by Any-Literature-3184