Will my COE / student visa get rejected?

3 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Will my COE / student visa get rejected?**

   Hi reddit. I am a 24-year old girl from Scandinavia. I have applied for a student visa for language school in Japan, and am currently waiting for my COE to be issued. I am suddenly getting super paranoid that it might get denied. I have stayed in Japan before for a year on a “working holiday” visa working as an au pair during my gap year. I back then completely forgot to pay the last round of health insurance and have not thought about it at all until this very day. Could my COE or visa get denied because of this?? Everything else on my application should be in check. I also do not have a criminal record or broken any laws during my stay in Japan.

   Thanks for reading.

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2. >I also do not have a criminal record or broken any laws during my stay in Japan.

   You may not have a criminal record (at least that you’re aware of anyway). But you did break laws, such as the ‘National Health Insurance Act’ (https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=333AC0000000192). Also not noted in your OP but potentially the ‘income tax act’ if you didn’t pay the 20.42% non-resident tax on your Au pair earnings. And maybe the ‘national pension act’ if you didn’t apply for pension exemption, or if you don’t want to exemption, then pay the pension.

   However, these entities (national health insurance, national pension, income tax) are all overseen by separate government agencies. I.e for your missing national health insurance bills, unless your municipality have taken legal action and/or told immigration, or unless immigration actively contact that municipality to check if you paid all your health insurance bills during your previous stay, then immigration would be non-the wiser.

   Now, do immigration do such a deep audit during the CoE process? 🤔 well I mean it’s certainly very possible. But I’d say they probably focus more on criminal record checks for both Japan and your other countries of residency. And the chances your municipality you missed health insurance bills taking legal action, resulting in you technically having a criminal record you may not be aware of is slim…. Again, not impossible though. The important thing to note is, always lay your legally required bills.

3. So basically you owe the Japanese government (potentially more than one agency) money. They’re never going to collect on that money if they don’t let you back into the country.

   So I wouldn’t worry about having your application rejected. I’d imagine worst case they’d have a few bills ready to mail to you after you register your new address.