I’ve read in various internet sites that if you do it by yourself the acceptance rate goes below average, I want to know if this is true, and if you have any advice as well I would like to hear it!
For my background I have 12 years in Japan to which 7 are working years. I am also married to a Japanese national
Thank you
18 comments
I’m about to apply and don’t intend to use one. No one has any reliable data on acceptance rate etc so all you’ll get here is a bunch of anecdotes.
The lawyer is only there to help you check off all the paperwork you need for submission. At the end of the day you still need to gather the documents yourself, whether in person or online. As you are married to Japanese national I’m sure your spouse is definitely more helpful if willing.
If you’ve been married for 3 years it’s pretty much a rubber stamp to get PR as long as you’ve keeping up with your social obligations.
What a lawyer will do is tell you in advance if you should apply or not. If you don’t have all your ducks in a row, they’ll tell you not to bother until you do.
There are legal services that support PR applications that only charge you if you are successful. Might want to reach out to one of them and see what your options are.
If you’re married and using a lawyer, you are probably either rich or are in a sham marriage.
It’s so easy to get PR via the marriage rate that it’s almost ridiculous. Just need to get the paperwork. The reason for wanting PR needs only to say “To be here with my family” or something similar.
Just got mine today. It’s not tough to do it yourself. Expect a few trips to the shiyakusho, tax office and pension office though.
For all except national tax, you can get your spouse’s documents without them being there
My lawyer is the reason I got PR. They were about to reject me (cause: Even though I had been in Japan for 13 years, I had done the unspeakable crime of divorcing a Japanese national), and would have if I had been the one applying directly.
But they contacted the lawyer, negotiated to allow me to try via the points system (didn’t even know that was a thing). I quickly on the following day took and passed the BJT exam to get more points, and the PR went through.
With your profile though, it looks like you won’t have any such issues.
In your case you can easily apply by yourself. Lawyer is good if a case is not straight forward
It was not difficult for me to do alone. If you don’t have an arrest record or tax arrears or other complications, why would you need a lawyer?
Best to use a lawyer just to make sure the paperwork is spot on. It’s not a difficult process just has to be 100% correct. You can cut down costs by collecting your own tax paperwork etc. If anything is wrong the application will get thrown out and you will have to apply again.
I got it without a lawyer. As long as you get all the documents and they’re filled out correctly, you’ll be fine without one. If you don’t trust yourself to collect everything needed or want to save time running around, get the lawyer. Otherwise, take your time and be thorough.
I imagine the acceptance rate falling below average for those who don’t go through a lawyer are because of missing or incomplete documents.
if you can afford it, the lawyer will make sure you submit everything you need and even stuff that might not be on the list but is helpful if there’s any special circumstances. one caveat i will add, though, is there could be additional fees on top of their base charge. i used one for naturalization, and thought that some of the standard practice costs would be built in, but nope. he charged for every single packet sent out, and even though they are only a few hundred yen each, it added up to an extra 2-3万円 quickly! there were some other charges as well, so my final cost was 1/3 more than expected. not sure if they all do that, but it’s something to consider.
I paid 200,000 yen for an immigration agency to advise me and manage it for me. Was well worth the money as I would have used a different application approach that likely would have failed, I know now. Instead it took three weeks.
If you haven’t paid your taxes and nenkin late for the past 2years this is free
Lawyer just gather the documents and will go on your behalf, but it won’t affect positively your application. Up to you to decide if whether your time is more precious than 150.000yens
If you’ve been paying all your pension, taxes, and healthcare obligations, and have a steady, decent job, and you’re white and from a first world country, you’d be wasting your money using a lawyer. The paperwork is very easy. I got my PR six weeks after applying, via the ten-year route.
Unless you have some giant red flag on your application then I think hiring a lawyer would be just an expensive form of overkill.
For someone with more than a decade in Japan and married to a Japanese national the application process is not hard at all and something you can easily navigate on your own.
Depending what your current visa is.
If you are under a spouse visa, you have been married for longer than 3 years, I’d say do it by yourself.
I applied for mine (coming from a Child of a National, I waited to have the 5 year visa, but recently I was told the rules changed and you can apply with a 3 year visa as well), got it in 5 months. Then I applied for my husband (his visa was Long Term Resident), and got it also below 6 months.
It is a pain to collect all the needed documents, but it is not impossible. I am very good at organizing all the papers for Immigration purposes, so it was just more than the normal renewal process but it was smooth.
I am not aware of any statistics regarding acceptance rate with vs without lawyer so this is just my personal anecdote.
My wife wanted to use a lawyer who actually advised against an application because of a late pension payment and my unstable income situation (self employed, wife was unemployed) during the 2~3 year period prior to the application. I don’t remember the exact number but IIRC it would’ve cost us a bit more than 10万円 regardless of outcome.So we decided to try it ourselves and I honestly don’t understand why the lawyers charge so much money.
It was a pretty straightforward process. We went to the immigration office, got a detailed list of the exact documents that they wanted for the application. They also recommended some optional documents like bank statements, proof of savings etc. for my case.1 trip to the city office, 1 trip to the tax office and then taking pictures and copies of a bunch of documents like the pension payment receipts, writing a motivational letter, filling out the forms and so on. The whole process took us like 2 weeks because we were dragging our feet. I imagine it could be done in like 1 or 2 (week)days with enough motivation and high stress resistance.
6 months later I got PR. At the time of the application I was on a 3 year spouse visa. IIRC both the city office and the tax office charged us a couple 100円 for each document so we paid a total of maybe 3~4千円 for all the documents, photos, copies and transportation. The worst part was actually the wait for the results because even though we tried to not get our hopes up we still kind of did.We got a call the day before the postcard arrived. While they refused to tell us the result directly, they told us that we should not forget to bring the money mentioned on the post card.
edit:
Wife is a Japanese citizen, no children at the time of application