Hello. I am making this post with hopes that someone on this subreddit may have personal experience/advice on this topic. I did search the subreddit and have been doing google searches on this topic but would be grateful for insights from this community.
My wife would like to obtain the “Japanese descent” visa. She is the child of a former Japanese national but is an American citizen (she doesn’t hold Japanese citizenship).
My review of this particular visa process is that it seems possible but there are many hoops to jump through. And we face some unique challenges. My wife’s mother was born in Tokyo in the 1940s but left to come to America when she was 7. She doesn’t know where her koseki (the family registry) is located, and what family information is recorded (e.g. the birth of my wife). I am researching Japanese immigration attorneys that may be able to help with these items and the overall process.
It would be great to hear if anyone here has gone through this particular visa process before, and their experiences, or has any recommendations for Japanese immigration attorneys.
I hope I’m not breaking any rules with this post…just trying to be helpful to my wife!
4 comments
My mother holds that child of Japanese visa, and I hold the long-term visa as 3rd gen japanese.
You will need family register (koseki tohon) and it has to be translated.
You can get this koseki tohon document from the city hall of where her parents were born. You have to write a letter and include a stamp fee of like 400y and a prepaid return letter too.
There are few other documents you will need too which I don’t remember the name since they no longer asking for it to renew the visa.
Once you get the visa, it’s pretty easy to renew. You just have to be making some kind of income and they will renew the visa for you. This visa is pretty good since you can do anything in Japan. It’s like permanent visa but without being permanent.
I remembered another document.
Your wife will need the certificate of her parents birth and marriage certificate too.
Both have to be translated too.
Depending on which embassy she immigrated through, you can contact them. Japanese consulate of Hawaii can help if you provide them birth certificates and as much other information you can (such as the area the family would have been from, year immigrated, other family members, etc) they can check their records.
The problem with pre-shin (immigrated decades after the war) era nikkei immigrants is a lot of paperwork wasn’t officially registered with the proper receiving offices, was often intentionally destroyed or “hidden” to sever connections to the Japanese empire or just got lost over time. Many came over basically undocumented in ways unimaginable to us now.
If you are able to get birth/death/other certificates or official documentation, make sure your wife has the “correct” name that matches her mother’s and doesn’t have, for example, an assumed American name instead (which many took). You have to show clear lineage that way or else the paperwork is basically useless.
Do as much paperwork footwork as you can then contact the consulate is where I would begin. Once you know more, then you can start looking into immigration lawyers. Hawaii has a lot of resources bc of the demographics there. Good luck!
When did your wife’s mother give up her Japanese citizenship? If it was after your wife was born, it’s possible your wife is actually a Japanese national. In that case she can probably simply claim a Japanese passport. If not though, I would follow the advice of the others in the thread.