I currently spend 6 months in Japan and 6 months in the US for my job every year. My contract renews annually, and my first visa was a 1 year professor visa. However, I can provide documents showing I score above 80 points for the highly skilled professional visa. Before my first visa I asked my company about the highly skilled professional visa, and they told me it seems more geared for a longer term stay. I’m about to go renew, and they provided me documents to extend the same visa one year.
Putting aside the question of whether I need the extra benefits of the highly skilled professional visa, is there anything that should prevent me from qualifying for it in my situation? How would you approach pushing your company to allow you to change your status to highly skilled professional?
And if it is possible to get this visa with 80 points, would it be feasible with this half time split situation to apply for permanent residency on the highly skilled foreign professional fast timeline?
3 comments
You don’t need to be on the HSFP visa to qualify for the fast track PR. All you need is to prove you had the points in the year prior.
The only question is do you qualify with 80 points based on your Japanese income or are you including other income from outside Japan.
> and they provided me documents to extend the same visa one year.
It been a while, but in the documents the applicant fills out, isn’t there a selection box for how long you want your new period of stay to be plus a space to write your reason? Select 3 or 5 and say you want it so you can apply for PR.
I thought one of the criteria was one complete year living in Japan for the >80 point PR, i.e, if they spend six months overseas they won’t qualify.