Key detail:<p>> Immigration authorities say the move is aimed at preventing cases in which foreign workers obtain visas under one category, but then engage in unrelated or lower-skilled work.<p>The claim appears to be that people were using up visa slots for things like interpreters or other jobs where <i>clearly</i> you'd need good language skills to actually do the job, including in Japanese, with the intent all along of doing some other job instead. An up-front test should let through almost all of the legitimate claimants of these visas, and stop almost all the fraudsters. Probably a lot cheaper than a similarly-effective level of after-the-fact auditing, or more-extensive checks into applicants' work situation.<p>[EDIT] I mean, in the framing provided by the government, the above appears to be what's going on. Governments may lie, of course.
There's also the issue of people going to Japan to buy out several properties to then rent them out.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Its not shocking, I see it implemented ie in Switzerland, where half of the world tries to get in. Since each part has their own language and none of that is english, its pretty important to exist in society for anything but brief visitors.<p>Its not restrictive as this (B2 is pretty high level in any language, here its weak B1) and resefved for 'higher' permits like C, for which you anyway need 10 years of residency in normal circumstances.<p>But japan is japan and one of most closed societies globally, nobody should be surprised by this.
Except the Swiss are total arseholes about it, they won't even grant citizenship to people born there or who've lived there for twenty years and speak the language. Many want to cap total population at 10 million, we'll see what happens in June.<p>And twelve years ago, the Swiss voted to restrict EU FoM for itself and the backlash was instant.<p>Can't blame the government, this is the Swiss voting public doing their best to be dickheads.<p>Japan is a bunch of islands, yes it's pretty closed, but Switzerland is a land-locked village with fewer people than London and entirely dependent on trade and the movement of people and money for all they have, and barely a scrap of a language to call its own. English is super common there, probably as a way of democratically inconveniencing everyone.
> Except the Swiss are total arseholes about it, they won't even grant citizenship to people born there or who've lived there for twenty years and speak the language.<p>Japan has those issues as well, look up Zainichi Koreans
It looks like they are proud of their country and want to keep it as is. They’ve seen what limitless immigration did to other countries and want none of it. Respect to them.
This is the correct reality. If there would be public vote in surrounding countries, ie mosques would be banned there too (btw those standing and having permit before the vote keep functioning).<p>But none of the german, french, italian etc politicians have the balls to let society decide for themselves, controversial topic or not. And people then wonder why in extremely left-leaning country like France there is high popularity for extreme right parties.<p>Maybe british with their one self-kneecaping brexit vote cured them, but public voting in general was never on the table.<p>Swiss are the most free nation globally. At least I havent hears of any on similar level. They vote responsibly, heck they have 3x the amount of immigrants per capita then next top country in Europe, but they want only people who can find work there, plus they host tons of refugees. And yes they dont want to lose their unique identity, they have enough examples around them to be wary and smart. I'd say they do their share and some more
This is completely untrue, right after obtaining C permit, you can apply for citizenship since its also 10 year residency requirement. Language requirement is lowest in countries I know, written test is a joke, blindly I did it online and it was above 90% without preparing at all, threshold is around 70% IIRC. Rarely there is committee after that, most people around got it after passing test.<p>Of course if you have active criminal record no point doing that. If you keep going away for 6+ months often it gets reset. If you have obviously lied on your tax return thats an issue too.<p>I know this intimately since right now going through this proces. One american colleague is doing the same. Right now, its much easier than ie in France.
Such dickheads the Swiss voting public, how dare they exercise a direct democracy?!
So inconveniencing!
As someone who has been living in Japan for years now, and still has a long way to go learning the language, I generally support language proficiency requirements. First, it should be noted that these are fairly common sense requirements designed to reduce fraud - requiring people applying for work visas that require Japanese proficiency to actually be able to speak Japanese. I suspect there will be more requirements in the future for things like permanent residency, but will wait for those to actually be implemented before commenting one way or another.<p>And second - it’s really hard to participate in society if you can’t speak the language. I think this creates resentment for both Japanese citizens and foreign residents alike.<p>I regret not studying sooner and harder, and a clear language requirement probably would have influenced me to try harder.
> The new benchmark has been set at the equivalent of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) B2 level.<p>B2 is upper intermediate. Probably 2-5 years of study<p><a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-1-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale" rel="nofollow">https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-referen...</a>
I think every country should do this. What I am seeing these days is that people who deserve visas are struggling with visa issues, while untalented people are getting visas easily
I mean, seems fair.<p>If I'm applying for a work visa where the work I'm doing would require me to know Japanese, I should know Japanese.
Why do you need that requirement be validated by people and at a level not connection to the place of work?
Presumably 1. the "places of work" are not doing sufficient validation, and therefore 2. regulation is needed when the non-regulated path is failing.
Unless the places of work are vetted, setting up a company to offer a job, and collect fees for offering said "jobs", would seem to be a simple way of committing fraud in that case.<p>So either you vet the companies offering those jobs, or you vet the visa applicants.
Countries are not just places you work, first of all.
ironically the first people who would disagree with you are the people who passed this piece of legislation<p>slightly more seriously though work is one place where language acquisition happens organically, work is where culture <i>emerges</i> and despite the grievances I have with Anglosphere one great aspect of it is that they are never so frail to think that language can or must be imposed by a commissioner.
Because the government is responsible for border control and immigration?<p>The alternative is that the company must provide evidence, but I don't see how this is better.
The key thing is that the ESI category includes a lot of work which you don't need to know Japanese. For example, software engineering jobs in Japan are often at either larger multinational companies or companies with enough presence outside of Japan that they have teams which are in English.<p>Japan has been on a recent anti-immigration kick via making visas harder and more expensive to get while also blaming them for all of their problems which, isn't really gonna work out for multiple reasons.
But the law doesn't apply to all ESI jobs, just a subset which (ostensibly) do need to know Japanese.
This is true that it primarily applies to jobs which say they need to know Japanese as an attempt to prevent fraud, but realistically it doesn't actually accomplish anything beyond punishing honest businesses. Companies will just lie about the language requirements, and visa holders will have no incentive to properly report the fraud because they run the risk of their visa being revoked and kicked out of the country.<p>There are smarter ways to implement a language requirement, and really this is part of a trend of Japan tightening up restrictions on foreigners to try and solve a perceived problem by a fraction of a fraction of individuals.
See, I would have figured the "Specialist in Humanities" part of it would not include software development.<p>I just looked up the definition/qualifications for it and I misunderstood the bit.<p>I thought it was sub categories. Engineers, who are Specialists in Humanities, who are doing International Services.<p>But it's more like three different categories. Engineers OR Specialists in Humanities OR International Services.<p>It seems like they could just move International Services to its own category. (Based on the information in this link: <a href="https://portal.jp-mirai.org/en/work/s/highly-skilled-hr/gijinkoku-conditions-and-features" rel="nofollow">https://portal.jp-mirai.org/en/work/s/highly-skilled-hr/giji...</a>)
Teaching English is humanities though, not IS, so that doesn't work. (To clarify, teaching at any sort of private company. A K12 school has a dedicated Instructor class that can't be used for anything else.) And translating (which requires proficiency) is IS in some cases I think?
>If I'm applying for a work visa where the work I'm doing would require me to know Japanese, I should know Japanese.<p>the naturalization act of 1906 and the immigration act of 1917 , in the US, were some of the hardest fought-for and controversial laws ever put in place.<p>The immigration act got vetod by 3 different sitting presidents in different forms , and the naturalization act included a 'free white persons & natives' clause that screwed over <i>a lot</i> of people.<p>It was pretty widely seen as a method to minimize poor working people. Both laws were used a ton during the commie red scare against citizens, and the 1917 law is essentially held responsible for the separation of families / 'port of entry tragedies' that separated families based on things like language.<p>now : i'm not saying that Japan is walking in the same foot-steps, just pointing out that language/culture exclusivity within legal spheres usually ends poorly for the people.
Ok, but neither of those are about work visas.<p>If I'm applying for a work visa, it's because I expect to be in that country to work, not as a permanent resident.
I think we need to acknowledge that all but the most transitory fruit pickers may want to settle permanently after working in a country for many years, and should not unreasonably be prevented from doing so.
If i were working in a country for many years, I would make some effort to learn to communicate with the other people who live in that country, before becoming a permanent resident. I understand this is very difficult; I've been studying Spanish every day for almost 2 years and I am nowhere near fluent. However, I suspect I would be further along if I lived somewhere where people commonly spoke Spanish.
What is unreasonable prevention?
> I expect to be in that country to work, not as a permanent resident.<p>Aren't work visas basically the only realistic path to permanent residency for most people?
Without knowing the numbers, I'd wager that the majority of work Visas worldwide are "dual-intent", to use the USCIS parlance. Restrictions might be higher or lower in different countries, but there's generaly a path dor moving from a work visa to permanent residency.
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