Would having British citizenship help get a job in Japan?

3 comments

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

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   **Would having British citizenship help get a job in Japan?**

   I heard that the JET program prefers hiring people with citizenship from English speaking countries.

   I have lived in England for most of my life but only have Polish citizenship. My English is better than my Polish and I have a university degree from England but I’m wondering whether I could lose job opportunities in Japan if I don’t actually have British citizenship. Does anyone know how much this actually matters in Japan?

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2. Getting a visa to work as an ALT (like the JET program) requires that you’ve completed 12 years of education in English. They may be less careful about verifying that if you’ve got a passport for an English speaking country like the UK.

   The UK has a working holiday agreement with Japan, but so does Poland. Although generally to make use of this program you’d need to be a citizen of the country you’re living in. As a non-citizen of the UK you can’t apply for a working holiday in the UK, and the embassy in Poland may have residencey requirements.

   Other than that, what’s more important is the skills/education/experience you’ve got and the employer to sponsor you.

3. JET isn’t a job, it’s a cultural exchange program with a hard time limit. The government pays young people to come and hang out in classrooms so Japanese kids aren’t afraid of foreigners. If it inspires them to study English, even better. These foreigners are not teachers and the “work” they do isn’t work. The government gives them just enough to live like a university student.

   ALT companies are essentially the same thing but have a middleman taking 35% to 50% of your salary in return for taking on the liability of having an illiterate migrant worker as an employee.

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   You can apply for these experiences as long as you have had 12 years of education fully in English. The government is far more picky than the dispatch companies but somehow end up with the same quality candidates. Guess you get what you get when you are targeting upper middle class university graduates that never had a job.