[ElProlactin]

The problem is that identifying who the "best" immigrants are for your country can be very difficult when thousands upon thousands of people are trying to game the system.

Japan is a very attractive destination for a variety of reasons (highly-developed, safe, relatively "cheap", etc.) so you have lots of people who are willing to jump through some hoops and put up some capital for a chance to live there.

I wouldn't say that the changes to the business manager visa are going to help Japan attract the "best" immigrants. They will definitely hurt some good people who are contributing to Japan. But on the whole they will probably be reasonably effective in weeding out most of the abusers. Not all, but most.

It's a sledgehammer approach because a scalpel is very difficult to use when so many people want to live in your country.

[Scoundreller]

And as you put up more roadblocks, the more you select for desperation. Your best prospects have lots of options and can take a path of lower resistance.

Just as in sports, if you’re trying to draft a top kicker/thrower/catcher/goalie/whatever, they’re going to avoid onerous terms and outsized effort.

[ElProlactin]

> And as you put up more roadblocks, the more you select for desperation.

This isn't actually true in all instances. You can literally buy residency (or even citizenship) in numerous countries, so anyone who is optimizing for the path of least resistance will always have options.

Japan is a very unique destination. It's one of the most developed countries in the world, with world-class infrastructure, a super interesting culture, great food, abundant nature, etc. For Westerners, housing is relatively inexpensive in much of the country, with tons of akiya (empty houses) available for purchase because foreigners can (at least for the time being) buy property with few restrictions. Due to the weak currency, very few developed countries (and basically none in Asia) are as affordable to Westerners.

The problem with the business manager visa is that many of the people obtaining it weren't really interested in running businesses in Japan. They were setting up shell companies to get residency.

Raising the capital requirement and adding new requirements around employment and language will no doubt hurt some legitimate business manager visa holders but realistically, the number of people running legitimate businesses in Japan who might have to leave will be dwarfed by the number of people who used the visa as a workaround to get residency.