[a_bonobo]

It's the same in Australia; when you apply for permanent residency your application goes into a black hole. I wanted to learn more about my status and all I got back from the immigration people was 'the agent processing your application will contact you. We do not give out contact details for your agent. You will have to wait'. It took about 8 months.

Once your 'regular' visa expires you go onto a bridging visa which same, you can't really leave the country.

It's expensive as hell too: I think in the end I had a total cost of $7,000, just in application fees. Sounds like immigration is horrible everywhere.

[mb_72]

8 months is not that long; these days the wait is longer. However, you are aware of how long the wait will be, there information is right there on the Australian Immigration website: https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-pr...

Providing updates to everyone waiting simply wastes time and resources; again, you know roughly how long it's going to take as the estimated times are provided. Hassling the agent on your case is unnecessary.

Regarding leaving and returning Australia - Bridging Visa class Bs are made available if you have good reasons to be leaving and coming back.

I can see this from two sides - my (now ex) wife went through getting temporary then permanent residency in Australia; yes, it was a pain and expensive, but Australia has high standards of living etc, which is why lots of people want to come here. The other side is this - immigration is one of the reasons why there are not enough houses to buy or places to rent, making life difficult for citizens or people who have PR or TR. So if the process of having more immigrants who also require housing is expensive or difficult, I think you'll find a lot of people are not particular sympathetic.

[rtpg]

Japan immigration (if you have a college degree) seems to be pretty high up there. PR takes a while, and processing is a bit of a black hole, but generally speaking you apply, application extends your visa a bit, and they get back to you within the period. And it’s maybe $100?

People complain but its generally predictable save for applications for a 3 year visa can lead to a 1 year visa or a 3 year visa or a 5 year visa

[usr1106]

Isn't Japan the industrialized nation with the lowest fraction of foreigners?

[shiroiushi]

AFAICT, Japan has the easiest immigration for skilled professionals, by far. However, this has been the case for less than 10 years, as they totally revamped their immigration laws in the 2010s sometime to try to attract more such people, so of course it's going to take time to see the difference. Japan is also somewhat difficult for foreigners to live in because of the language barrier, but Germany isn't that different here: in my experience as a tourist there, it's nothing like Netherlands where everyone and their dog speaks perfect English. In Germany, the college-educated people generally speak it quite well, everyone else, you're lucky if they know any at all, and it seems like you won't do well living there if you can't speak the language. In Japan, it just depends on your company: a lot of people here have lived here for years or decades and still don't speak Japanese, because their job is in English. German is probably easier for European-language speakers to learn though.

[usr1106]

> it's nothing like Netherlands where everyone and their dog speaks perfect English. In Germany, the college-educated people generally speak it quite well, everyone else, you're lucky if they know any at all, and it seems like you won't do well living there if you can't speak the language.

There are 2 kinds of countries in Europe:

- Those where movies and TV shows are dubbed: Germany, France etc. Especially the older generations and working class don't speak English too well

- Those where movies are English with subtitles: Many of the smaller countries with their own native language. So everybody is exposed to English all the time and many speak English pretty well.

(Have not watched movies in the Netherlands, but I could guess many are not dubbed?)

[dash2]

My experience in East Germany was that even waiters spoke pretty decent English and would switch to it at any opportunity. Not quite Holland, but not far off. I had a friend who had lived there 10 years and still didn't speak German.

[shiroiushi]

I think that's an eastern Europe vs western Europe issue. In my experience as a tourist in both, people in eastern European countries (like Czechia and also Hungary) had much better English skills than people in (mainly former West) Germany. Even since the fall of the wall, eastern Europeans seem to have eagerly learned western ways and that includes English, whereas western Germans were already western, but didn't need to know English for that. East Germany is still quite different from west Germany (except Berlin, which is unique).

[pezezin]

> Japan is also somewhat difficult for foreigners to live in because of the language barrier, but Germany isn't that different here

In the case of Japan, you also have the insanely difficult writing system, probably the most difficult writing system in current usage. The German language might be difficult, but at least it uses an alphabet with a somewhat consistent spelling.

[shiroiushi]

The writing system isn't that big a deal. For daily life, it's more important to be able to converse in basic/conversational Japanese, not to be able to read literature, and you don't have to read kanji to talk to people. Just learning katakana is enough to read all the foreign loanwords (which are everywhere these days), and knowing hiragana + some basic kanji is really plenty to get by. For reading anything more difficult, just use Google Translate's camera ("Lens") function.

[gunsle]

You’re correct, but as a foreigner that lived in Japan for 3 months, it gets very old constantly having to use google lens or translate just to go grocery shopping. In most European countries, people will know a tiny bit of broken English at least, and most of the words you can figure out on packages/signs by their roots.

I loved living in Japan, but even where I lived in Shinagawa, it was very rare finding someone with any English skills at all unless they were young and college educated in the states.

[pezezin]

I strongly disagree. Yes, speaking is more important than reading, but being illiterate in a modern society is not fun. And as the other comment said, having to use your phone all the time gets old really fast.

[laverya]

> German is probably easier for European-language speakers to learn though.

This is a bit of an understatement. Japanese is a category-V language, taking an estimated 88 weeks of full-time study to learn, while German is a category-II language taking just 30 weeks.

[skinpop]

There are other reasons for that. Application is cheap and relatively fast(~3 months in my case).

[shiroiushi]

>And it’s maybe $100?

Even better, it's 8000 yen, which with the current exchange rate is about USD $60.

[worddepress]

Australia "what countries have you been to and when" is fun, if you have traveled a bit. I thought being to Tunisia during arab spring and China and Russia might be issues! Overall it was hours of paperwork. Wife's grandmothers maiden name kinda crap in there too IIRC. Upside is Citizenship was relatively easy after this (because you have done PR already). Just had to learn some stuff about what happens in Canberra :-).

[RoyalHenOil]

It took me almost two years to get my permanent visa in Australia (Liberals were in power at the time and had just gutted the immigration department shortly before I applied).

However, I did not have any issues with the bridging visa. It gave me full rights to employment, medicare, and fair taxation (unlike the Work and Holiday Visa I started with, which drastically limited my ability to work, had me paying all medical expenses out-of-pocket, and taxed all my income at the highest tax bracket), and I traveled overseas a few times on it without any issues.

The application fees were expensive, but the bridging visa more than made up for it. I made much more money on the bridging visa than it cost me to apply, so even if my application had been rejected, I would have come out far ahead financially and had a lovely 2-year working holiday in Australia — far better than what the Work and Holiday Visa offers.