[aurareturn]

This new law is doing what it's suppose to do. You can't get a business visa for $300k in the US. You need $800k in a bad area or $1m in a good area to get an investment visa.

Why should Japan allow $30k? Doesn't make sense.

I had a friend who was looking to move to Japan and abuse this visa. The business was only there to get the visa with no intention of operating it.

I'm not Japanese and I don't live in Japan but even I think this new law makes more sense than previous.

[bamboozled]

I had a friend who was looking to move to Japan and abuse this visa. The business was only there to get the visa with no intention of operating it.

So this invalidates what ? I know many foreign people Who moved to Japan, work harder than many Japanese I know and run great businesses but it was only possible due to the low initial outlay for the visa.

If your friend came here he still had to pay taxes, present income statements and pay pension , if he didn’t his visa would be revoked. The new rule is to appease the xenophobes at voting time. It’s as simple as that. What will happen ? Rich people who will actually come here an abuse the system will be the ones they get to stay… this is country with a rapidly depreciating population and currency valuation remember…

A smarter solution is to evaluate the visa application. based on the intentions of the person wanting to start she business. Not locking out large swathes of people.

[aurareturn]

If the US lowers investment visa to $30k, I’m sure many comers will work very hard.

So why doesn’t the US do it? Why doesn’t every country give you a visa for $30k business investment?

Japanese people are saying they no longer want mass low quality immigrants. They want fewer, higher quality ones. Nothing wrong with that. All their recent immigration policies point to toward this theme. It’s their country. Let them do what they want without calling them xenophobes.

[bamboozled]

My comment was about the increasingly high bar for entrepreneurs / protectionism. Immigration will happen regardless of the cost of a business visa...

What is a "low quality immigrant" and why do you think immigrants with money are "high quality immigrants? Because the most damage I've seen done to Japan and the culture is rich people from Singapore, China and Taiwan buying up large swathes of property and then keeping them vacant while driving up property prices and locking out locals. The high price of a business visa will ensure this trend accelerates as more and more actual well intentioned foreigners are locked out of opportunities. Basically if you're a hedge fund, you have the ability to setup shell companies and rape the place.

Anyway, there is still mass migration happening, and it will continue to happen as the population ages they need more workers, it's everywhere now, airports, combinis etc, that has nothing to do with the "business visa". Most actual poor people were never planning to come here to start a business anyway, they were coming here to do slightly less shitty jobs than they were doing in their home countries.

[sashank_1509]

What is the demographic looking to immigrate to Japan. I’m surprised to hear Chinese as my outsider view was that China was as good if not better place to live compared to China, is it because they’re afraid of their government and want a liberal democracy instead?

Or is folks from poorer and more distressed countries looking to come to Japan.

[SenHeng]

Better passport for their kids, better and more reputable, internationally connected banking system to store their wealth. The latter bit is particularly important as China limits the amount of money one can send out of the country.

[decafninja]

How would this give a passport to their kids? Isn’t Japanese citizenship notoriously difficult to obtain?

[SenHeng]

It was always ridiculously easy to get Japanese citizenship. 5 years of residency, don’t break any laws including traffic, pay your bills on time. Done.

It has recently been changed so that you now require 10 years of residency.

https://www.turning-japanese.info/p/misinfo.html

[daneel_w]

So is it 5 or 10 years? Another person responding in this same branch says it used to be 10 but is now 5.

[alephnerd]

5 years. It's fairly easy to get. Sometimes it feels like half of the Beijing intelligentsia is in Tokyo now.

Lots of Chinese academics, engineers, investment bankers, and others shifted to Tokyo in the past few years. Even the kinds of salons and meetups you used to see at Tsinghua or Peking have almost entirely transplanted in Jimbocho based on my friends account.

[SenHeng]

It used to be 5, it’s now 10. It’s a very recent [0] and sudden change.

O: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20260327_11/

[TimorousBestie]

I think it’s probably easier and safer for a Chinese national to obtain Japanese citizenship than American citizenship.

If you’ve got ten years (or until recently, five) of residence and can pass the interview process, the acceptance rate for Japanese citizenship is something like 95%+.

On the other hand the process of getting American citizenship can run up to twenty years or more, it’s very expensive, and throughout the process the immigrant has few rights and can be deported for basically no reason, up to the moments before the naturalization ceremony.

If I were a freshman at Fudan thinking about my exit strategy, I know which one I would pick.

[SenHeng]

20 years ago Singapore was handing out PRs and citizenships to Chinese students like candy. All of my classmates got PR a few years out of school, then citizenship again 2 years later.

And so many of them immediately moved on to the US.

[dismalaf]

China cracks down on corruption from time to time and lots of rich Chinese got their riches through corruption, so they're always looking for places to stash their ill gotten gains, their family and an offramp for themselves.

Helping launder this dirty Chinese money is a huge business here in BC (Canada) and across the world.

[dismalaf]

Too late to edit but to add to my comment, it's also the reason this segment of Chinese buyer will massively overpay for real estate, visa pathways, etc...

Western governments also look the other way since these people are defrauding China (our rival) and bringing money to the west.

[bamboozled]

I feel like that’s the kind of person this new Japanese business will benefit most.

Rich money launderers who will enter at higher price point and plan to run shell businesses.