For all the ‘Japan is anti-immigrant’ rhetoric out there, Japan is actually reasonable and lenient on a lot of immigration related policies.
– Work visas are granted as long as you have a job beforehand , skilled and unskilled (through the technical intern program). Employers don’t need to check if a Japanese citizen is available for the job.
– Citizenship after 5 years, no PR needed or citizenship test. Not having dual citizenship is a minus, but that is in line most non-western countries. PR pathway exists for most people.
The reason there aren’t many foreigners in Japan is because most jobs and schools here require fluency in what is probably the hardest language in the world. Again, in most countries jobs and schools require the local language, it just so happens that English, Spanish and French are more widespread and easier to get a basic grasp of than Japanese.
The only thing Japan is strict on is not giving PR status without a job, or refugee status to economic migrants en masse, but we all know the issues Sweden, Germany, and France face with their migrants after being overly lax and not considering integration.
Now I have a lot of complaints about Japan, it has serious flaws, but one good thing is most visitors and migrants here actually have a deep interest in and respect for the culture.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/110v6br/japan_is_nowhere_near_as_antiimmigrant_as_people/
9 comments
Yeah most people I’ve seen online equate japan to racist, xenophobic, etc because it’s so ‘anti-immigrant’, that japan only gives citizenship to ‘native blood’ and all that rubbish. The truth could not be further than that. Getting citizenship in japan is piss easy where you just need to work there for 5 years, easier than even the ‘immigrant friendly US’ (where getting just a work visa is a literal lottery). Sure, Japan doesn’t have large immigrant or foreign populations because it’s still 97%+ ethnically Japanese. But it’s still legally easy to move there.
What is even funnier is that except for foreigners who actually have lived there, most people who have opinions about japan fall in two camps: Japan is utopia, clean, rich, flawless just like in anime and manga, essentially perfection, OR, japan is overworked, depressed, fake, racist, xenophobic, etc. People can’t make any nuanced or balanced opinions about this country, and prefer to take all their sources from that one article or video.
Anyone who has taken the time to compare immigration policy would have come to this conclusion. For a skilled professional, Japan is one of the easiest developed countries to get a work visa for, and since the introduction of the HSP program even PR isn’t too much of a hassle. People who say Japan is hard to move to either don’t have a degree or skilled work experience, and probably haven’t looked at their own country’s requirements too.
The other way to look at it is that BECAUSE of the Japanese requirement Japan doesn’t NEED to have restrictive policies like other first world countries.
1) to get PR you need to be in possession of a 3/5 year visa. There is no contesting immigration about them giving one a 1 year visa. Essentially, this means someone could meet all the requirements for PR but be unable to apply for PR at the whim of immigration. It essentially enables immigration to arbitrarily soft block PR applications. This is not a common trait for the path to PR for other G7 countries.
2) the “normal” path to PR is 10 years consecutive residency. That is a lot longer than other G7 countries. (Of course there are faster routes such as HSP and spousal routes for example)
3) let’s not forget the closed borders April 2020! What happened there was that table 1 visa holders (student/work/dependent) who happened to be outside Japan before the border closed ~April 3rd 2020 were NOT allowed back in. This last until around October 2020 and even then it was difficult to come back. Many lost their jobs, and livelihoods due to this shit show of xenophobia because table 2 visa holders (spouse/Long term resident/PR) out the country before closed borders were allowed back in. But ANY foreigner (apart from SPRs) who left after closed bordered were also not allowed back in, until around October 2020. However, Japanese citizens were allows to come and go as they pleased. I get that Covid was a shit show, especially when it first started but the way the borders were handled blocking tax paying (foreign) residents from returning truly showed some true colors on how Japan regards its immigrants.
4) you then also have the non-related government/immigration law everyday local related stuff. A good example is things Such as open discrimination regarding landlords having the carte blanche to outright refuse rental to foreigners. If the government truly cares about immigration, they would make that level of discrimination illegal.
I will give it to Japan that the administrative process of obtaining (edit: and maintaining. I.e renewing or changing) a visa is fairly straightforward though. And they did give us the ¥100,000 stimulus at least…. Well those who were locked outside the country may not have got it.
Japan is far from perfect in this regard and of course it’s not like there’s no xenophobia at all, but immigration is very reasonable and lenient for the most part.
Adding to that list, Japan is probably the only country I know of where you can work freelance or multiple jobs on a standard work visa, which is a *very* large reason why I continue to stay.
What? Who told you citizenship after 5 yrs?
When i went there 12 years ago, it was quite hard to get room, job. You would need someone who was working there to introduce it to you. It was basically like a guarantee. And for room you would need a Japanese or foreigner with pr for guarantee. And getting a carrier iPhone was also hard. Something to do with needing 3 years visa. And literally no English support at almost all places. It has changed a lot. But it has more to do with japan needing workers and making it easier for tourist than they being open to foreigners.
Sure, it’s relatively easy to get here/stay here, but it’s not as if living here as a foreigner is a walk in the park.
There’s a difference between immigration policy and cultural treatment.
I say this every time people try to throw out “making immigration easier” as a solution to the birthrate and population crisis. It’s already an absurdly low bar to cross. The difficulties arise more from cultural differences and long term assimilation. Most of the people bitching online about it happen to be westerners who also happen to be the group which has the highest hurdles in terms of acclimatization, in my opinion. They also tend to be relatively young, uneducated or unskilled, and have little to no transferrable employment experience.
It’s not the easiest nor best (in terms of immigrant support) country out there, but acting like it is difficult or the worst is just ignorant at best.