Hey lads,made the foolish mistake of staying in Japan long-term via the German Working Holiday (Designated Activities) visa. Of course, I settled in and eventually managed to land a job as a software engineer in a Japanese management company managing multiple hotel companies.
Slowly my 12-month visa came to an end and I had to apply for a visa. Luckily my company really wants to keep me employed as I run all the IT, website, system admin, and booking software (the old guy is quitting, I was supposed to take over). They offered to sponsor my work visa, I was very thrilled. Their office person finished all the documents necessary for me to apply for the Specified Skill Visa (software engineer).
For whatever reason they apparently misunderstood that I had a community college degree. I do not, I only have a general vocational school degree. I only found out after one and a half months of waiting for immigration to invite me to an interview. In that interview, Immigartion told me: “Yeah not gonna happen, 10 years experience or university degree”. Multiple times I have asked the immigration officer if there are any other options (had an interpreter with me to help me as I only have N5) only for him to look at me and tell me that I should rather just marry someone in Japan.
Defeated and heartbroken I left the interview room, getting my residence card with a hole punched into it handed to me after they made me sign a document stating that I will leave Japan within 31 days.
Not only have I lost my job indirectly due to my visa status being revoked, health insurance revoked, and having to mentally prepare to leave my friends and surroundings when an hour before I thought of how lucky I am that I finally have a stable job.
I do not want to whine too much about it as I can’t change it, I just need to find solutions, help, or advice right now. What should I do? How should I proceed? Here is how things are right now:
* (ex) job really wants to keep me, is ready to supply whatever document required to get me to get my visa.
* the company really **really** needs me as I am the only one who is taught in their custom OTA and worked on huge projects like their website (80% of the website is made and maintained by me when I was on a working holiday visa). A big chunk of the hotel companies’ revenue stems from self-booking through websites. We are currently making a switch from traditional OTAs like booking.com and Airbnb to own HP. I was also managing their SNS, texting, and connecting with people for the company in English and German.
* I only have 5 years of actual work experience in the software engineer / IT sector in Germany from my old job. Besides that I only freelanced for around 3 additional years (Im only in my early 20s)
* No university degree, only vocational degree, some certifications of what I can do, and a letter from my old job stating what I have done at the company, etc.
From my research, I have a couple of options now:
**(1) Specified skilled worker 1**: This would mean I have to go back to Germany as the tests I have to take requires N4 (I need to study more, which will take a couple of months) and the test to actually be able to apply to the visa is only held a couple of times a year. After a successful application, I can work in the hotel industry.
**(2) Student Visa**: Enroll in a language school, and get a student visa. Will take at least 8 months from now too so I would also have to go back to Germany and if I get it, I can only work part-time in that company which is not really what I would want to do. (Plus a grand a month for language school).
**(3) Highly skilled work vis**a: Re-apply for the same visa category. This sounds like the only and best solution if I want to keep my life and job in Japan. I would somehow have to strengthen my application as much as possible to even have a slim chance of being considered. Contact lawyers etc too.
Of all those options, **Option (3)** is the one I’m striving for right now. I know it might sound unrealistic but there have been special cases of people obtaining said visa even tho they clearly missed the requirements. My question is now: What documents should I gather to have a higher chance when applying? Has anyone reading this gone through the same process already?
Thanks for reading this, I greatly appreciate any help or advice I can get as I now have 30 days left to prepare.
27 comments
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This may get you sent off to /r/movinginjapan jfyi since this is a bit of an edge case where you’re living in Japan but also talking about likely leaving and moving back. You *could* also post there but they can honestly be extremely unhelpful.
So first thing is you need an immigration lawyer, full stop. Because they’ll make your case much better; preferably your company foots the bill for this, but it doesn’t have to be so. They can also give you a more realistic idea of whether or not you can qualify based on recent experience with immigration’s recent standards.
So once you have a visa lawyer you should probably look at two main paths;
One is the HSFP visa, which you mentioned, and which *I believe* you can get without a uni degree, BUT I would not at all expect to be accepted unless you meet the minimum points. Since you don’t have a degree and limited Japanese, they’d need to be paying you quite well to meet the minimum. Frankly if you don’t meet the points requirements I doubt they’d even consider.
There is another path to look into; the Specialist in International Services visa (one subcategory of the very common Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services set) actually only requires a minimum of 3 years of experience, instead of the more common rule of thumb of 10 years. You rarely hear this mentioned because people like to parrot what they’ve heard about 10 years, but there’s a whole rather broad category of visa that you potentially meet the work experience requirement for. This is where the immigration lawyer will really come in, since they’ll need to massage their job description to make sure that it looks like it falls under the applicable category, but from what you’re saying:
> I was also managing their SNS, texting, and connecting with people for the company in English and German.
It sounds like it’s basically exactly what you’re doing. Now, just because the law says a minimum of 3 years doesn’t mean that immigration gives it out much now (back in the day they were fairly loose; I know of someone who got a visa to work at a foreign beer bar where in reality he was mostly just a bartender, but they emphasized the need to understand the imported products and keep up with the beer industry news in English as justification), so you need to have the company on board to push for it and write a job description with the help of the visa lawyer, provide a decent salary, etc.
To be clear, what visa were you applying for before?
**Edit:** see all the people AGAIN repeating “10 years” in comments below. There being a visa category which has 3 years specifically on the books (though by no means does it guarantee approval) as being allowed is a major thing which more people should know about, yet *every time* this comes up you’ll just get a dozen people (incorrectly) saying 10 years or nothing. This is especially applicable when this sub is mostly Westerners and English speakers who’s jobs *very* frequently entail dealing with overseas contacts and thus job descriptions can emphasize those aspects in order to make the case they fall under International Services.
If much of your work is done in English or German, you may be able to apply for a Specialist in Humanities visa which doesn’t require a degree especially if you have several years of experience in the field. Or the company could just hire you as their English translator/teacher and you do the IT work as a “side gig”.
University Degree or 10 years, relevant, documented experience has always been the rule, at least for the last 30 years. From chefs to programmers. I have seen great sysadmins forced to leave because they could fulfill the rules. There seems to be another route which is to get a relevant certificate from a Japanese å°‚é–€å¦æ ¡ apparently the test is trivially easy if you are already experienced in the field and can read the multiple choice questions in Japanese.
I doubt if the immigration office ever bend the rules on this one.
A pretty well hidden option you have is go to the Philippines and sit for the an examination ( I think it’s jitse) with the Philnits organization which is in English and is basically equivalent to having a degree for getting an engineering visa in Japan and a couple other countries and you don’t have to be a citizen of any of those countries to sit for it. Just an FYI though, it’s a pretty hard exam.
Japan for ya
If the company was supporting you and immigration still rejected the working visa you’re pretty much out of luck. The bachelor’s degree or 10 years experience has been a pretty solid rule for as long as I can remember.
I would consult with an “immigration lawyer”. While I’m not sure if anything can be done, but if anything could be, I don’t think it is something that you should be trying to do on your own…
Good luck!
Consider getting a degree online from some university like Western Governors University. It’s not like a regular computer science degree that takes four years, but more like an IT degree that you can finish in under a year and apply existing IT certificates toward.
You’re forgetting option 4 which is to move back to Germany, or another EU country, or any other country you have citizenship/residency/working rights and work remotely for them, gain your required experience or get a degree and then get a work visa
You have basically zero chance of getting a highly skilled visa without a university degree.
You seem like a hard-working and capable person and my life advice to you would be to go and get a CS degree and go make bank at a big tech firm after.
Try an immigrantion lawyer. They’ll have a screening with you to see if you are worth their time. If you pass that then there’s a good chance they’ll be able to help you out as they don’t accept cases for everyone. I used this office after I finally divorced my ex: https://samurai-law.com/en/
P.s. this is in Tokyo
Try an immigrantion lawyer. They’ll have a screening with you to see if you are worth their time. If you pass that then there’s a good chance they’ll be able to help you out as they don’t accept cases for everyone. I used this office after I finally divorced my ex: https://samurai-law.com/en/
P.s. this is in Tokyo and Osaka.
After a rejection with company support already, good luck with that one. Genuinely.
Just mark your work experience to include working part-time remote for my company in the US for an additional 3 years (this could have been while you were a student still)… giving you a grand total of 11 years experience. I have a US phone number, website, email, and can write a letter of recommendation to immigration for you.
One thing, they never check the 10 years work history (they don’t call)… but you already told them u have 5 . That’s over. Had Russian and German friend who got the humanities , skilled for IT job and they were a little paranoid as the previous 10 years ago companies don’t exist anymore, so they can’t prove it . Both no degree. Btw they got the visa and still here (10 years ago)
I’m not sure if getting HSFP is possible in just 31 days. Some of the points will take some time to acquire. Off the top of my head you can aim for.
– 5 YOE: 10 points
– 10M salary annually: 40 points
– Under 30 years old: 15 points
– Pass 2 Japan IT exams (things like FE, PE): 10 points
– Pass JLPT N1: 15 points
That’s 90 points right there and you only need 70 points to qualify for the lowest HSFP visa. But like I said some of the points above might not be possible right now, and might even take a few years to get.
I wonder if they could set up a shell company for you and get you a business owner visa lol. If it’s legal it would be a drastic measure but it sounds like your company drastically needs you.
Or maybe they can directly contract the needed work out to you after helping you set up a company and you can stay on a business visa?
Option 4) get a waifu like the immigration officer surprisingly told you to
One thing you could look into if you have the funds is start your own business in Japan and get a business manager visa and have your old employer as a customer. This would require a lot more work and money so probably not worth it but it’s one way to possibly stay.
If you can’t stay, then the people running this country are dumb as hell. You’re contributing to our country’s economy, you’re skilled, but your productive economic activity is being hindered by some arbitrary rules pulled out of some old fart’s ass. If there’s one thing Japan needs to change, this is it.
Would strongly advise to talk to lawyer.
If your company really needs you then you for sure have a couple ways to get a visa. Talk with them, ask them to get a lawyer and to check the available options.
Personal advice : don’t force it, it happened to me, it happens to many. Working holiday is not a gateway to a life here. It is a cultural exchange, a holiday. I understand it is mentally difficult but it was meant to end. You have been here only a year, no real ties no wife etc, N5 you say, doing the computer at some hotel, good for you good experience smile because it happened, don’t overstay, go back to Germany, lots of things left to experience in Europe too. Do not think that the door here is definitely closed. If you really want it you will be back in few years. Don’t force it or it won’t happen. Good luck
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned, and isn’t really documented anywhere official, is that apparently immigration got a lot stricter with switching from working holiday to work status.
Used to be a non-issue (did so myself), but in recent years I’ve seen tons of people around me get rejected for that reason. Especially from certain countries (god knows why) – Germany was one of them. Take that with a grain of salt, as I can’t find anything official on that. Immigration is like a black box.
Further, disregard everything you heard directly at immigration. The staff working there don’t know shit. Talk to 3 people there, and you’ll hear 4 different answers, most likely all of them wrong. At least that’s my experience.
Talk to an immigration lawyer or scrivener. You’re not in the best position, and need all the help you can get. They’re cheap, and even a single consultation will give you the answers you need, or at least a path to follow.
You could also do a degree (in English) in Japan while working part time for that company. It’s like the language school option, but at least you end up with a degree and long term employment. Not necessarily a better idea than doing a degree in the EU and returning to Japan later, but I’m putting it out there as an option.
I don’t have any solutions to suggest – I just had intense anxiety reading your story and felt really empathetic. These kinds of visa issue have always been my nightmare – even after living here for a long time. Good luck, hope you’ll find.
German hehe, I have no recommendations for the visa, I have been working in IT on the humanities visa for quite a while, but if you find a way to stay but still want to get a degree, maybe do it at Fernuni Hagen as it’s quite cheap and can be done from everywhere in the world. I’m doing my masters there right now.
A bit confused. Isn’t a Voc. degree (2 years) is similar to a local senmongakko (2 years)? All foreigners here can get a Humanities visa with that.