Hello:
I am interested in a graduate program at a university in Japan. However, the eligibility guidelines states that one cannot be a Japanese citizen in order to apply for the international (English) program. I am a dual citizen (USA/Japan), and was wondering if I could get a student visa as an American, while retaining my Japanese citizenship.
I assume the answer is no, but I was just wondering.
The other option I was given was to enter the university as a normal Japanese student, but I don’t see that happening as my Japanese definitely isn’t good enough to get into a graduate engineering program, and I would probably struggle to finish the entrance examination. In addition, I heard that competition is intense for top Japanese universities.
5 comments
Getting a visa for country you have citizenship in is almost certainly illegal.
> However, the eligibility guidelines states that one cannot be a Japanese citizen in order to apply for the international (English) program.
You should really be asking the university to clarify what this means for your specific situation. Maybe it means exactly what you’re thinking, maybe it doesn’t. *We* (the people on this subreddit) don’t know.
> I am a dual citizen (USA/Japan), and was wondering if I could get a student visa as an American, while retaining my Japanese citizenship.
You’re a Japanese citizen, *you don’t need a visa*. You can book a plane ticket right now and just move to Japan if that’s what you want. Visas are for people who lack the required citizenship to do so. Note that being a dual citizen means you don’t need a visa for either country for which you hold citizenship.
It would be immigration fraud for a Japanese citizen to attempt to acquire a visa.
Doubly so, as your intent would be to defraud this university too.
Immigration aren’t idiots. It wouldn’t take much digging for them to figure out who you are.
Speak to the university, and ask their advice on how to proceed, before attempting to do naughty things 😉
As others have mentioned, you probably *could* get a visa to enter this school.
It *would* be immigration fraud, and you would absolutely be defrauding the school.
If you ever got caught, you’d be in pretty deep shit both with the school and the Japanese government.
In reality, your odds of being caught are probably relatively low if you do everything correctly, 100% of the time.
Are you okay with committing crimes to get into grad school? Do you think you can maintain the facade 100% of the time? If yes to both, then that’s a decision for you to make. Nobody reputable or even semi-intelligent here will recommend that you go through with this though.
Being on a student visa introduces some pretty large roadblocks to you that you wouldn’t have when simply using your citizenship.
In case you’re wondering, the reason they do this (don’t allow those with possession of Japanese nationality) is because if they did, they’d have to allow Japanese from Japan to apply for the same program as well. If they didn’t, they’d run afoul of [Japan’s Constitution (Article 14)](https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html), which forbids discrimination based on your race or your origin (not to be confused with nationality) — ironically for discriminating against the *race* known as Japanese or the *origin* known as being born and raised in Japan:
>All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of **race, creed, sex, social status or family origin**.
Note that *nationality/citizenship* is not a protected attribute in the Constitution.
This is the same reason why the JET Programme does not permit Japanese nationality: otherwise Japanese teachers of English that were born, entirely raised, and live in Japan would be legally eligible to apply for the program.