[dudeinjapan]

Company founder in Japan here. This is largely how I read this specific news--its narrowly scoped to prevent patterns of abuse, which there have indeed been isolated cases tantamount to human trafficking.

That being said, there is a broader trend, that Japan's immigration authorities are becoming more foreigner-hostile, reflecting a broader political view shift in Japanese society (see: Sanseito political party) and one could argue in the US and globally.

One data point: a few months back we had one of our employees denied a Permanent Resident Visa due to a clerical error where our company forgot to notify the immigration bureau of an address change--we literally moved our office across the street, same city block. Our lawyer said such a case was unheard of a few years ago; these were always handled as simple corrections, instead the poor chap had to go to the back of the 9+ month waiting queue.

Our lawyer says the news is too new to know what concrete ramifications it will actually have on us, a tech company which uses English as the main language for engineering roles.

[laurieg]

Relatively small clerical errors causing people to get permanent residency applications denied is becoming a trope. The ones I have heard:

- Client company address changed 4 years ago and the paperwork wasn't filed within 2 weeks.

- A late pension payment 2 years ago.

- Pension and health insurance were paid on time, but the date stamp on the physical payment slips was smudged and so "did not prove" that it was paid on time.

- City hall workers didn't send out health insurance slips in time, applicant (through no fault of their own) couldn't pay by the deadline.

This level of strictness is affecting people's lives, ability to make plans, get mortgages etc.

To add to this, permanent residency application times are now very long. After you complete your application some people are waiting nearly 2 years to get a response. There is a lot of vagueness about what happens if the rules change during your application period.

[hogehoge51]

Unfortunately, tbis may be the simplest and most cost effective way to clear the backlog. It's unfortunately for people who in good faith made honest mistakes or were victims of honest mistakes. But it also may be a low cost way to filter out bad faith applicants who were never planning to pay pensions/taxes fully. An assymeytry of information means we never see the balance of honest mistake vs dodgy excuse makers.... Alos, Japan tends to play the grey zone of rule interpretation as a buffer zone for signalling hard feedback. it is generally periodic and ends after a while.

[pjjpo]

Is it just me or is 1 year excessively short for qualifying for PR? I'm a bit unsurprised that it results in less leniency in applications, there are probably just too many applications because the thresholds have gone down (not saying salary education etc requirements are trivial, but a far cry from the old wait 10 years).

[dudeinjapan]

Yep, I've heard variants of all of those first-hand from people who work at my company.

[mc3301]

I hate to say this is a strange "win-win" in the end (politically speaking). It'll be a little harder for Japanese companies to take advantage of foreigners, often trafficking them to quite shady working and living conditions with very little pay. This has potential to protect some foreigners from that situation here. Additionally, this looks like a "win" for the anti-foreigner crowd, because "now it's tougher to get a visa here, haha!"

So it's good for foreigners, while also placating the anti-foreigner group.

I know many foreigners here that work in absolutely atrocious working conditions, getting kicked by bosses, seeing crushing death of their coworkers in the factory (and still expected to return to the same unsafe work the next day), tiny wages while living half-dozen people in tiny apartments. It really is sad, and the problem is the companies... not the foreigners.

[dudeinjapan]

Sure there are misbehaving companies. But the solution should not be to block PRs from employees at well-behaved companies like mine. Instead the govt should clamp down directly on the bad behavior. Japan has mastered the art of ignoring real problems, and attacking substitute/scapegoat problems instead.

[kalium-xyz]

Seems like the guys covering his ass. Ive had visas denied in japan over small errors. I dont use visa lawyers anymore and no longer have this issue.

Might ofc also be that the immigration officers got tired of working till 10pm every day

[dudeinjapan]

You mean immigration lawyer covering his ass? Possibly. It wouldn't be the staff member.

[garbawarb]

Are you Japanese? What was your motivation behind founding in Japan?

[dudeinjapan]

No, I'm American. I was working as a quant trader in Tokyo (originally Lehman Brothers, then Nomura) and I was laid off from my job, and with nothing else do I decided to found a company in Tokyo. 13 years later I'm still here with ~300 staff now.