This was an interesting read. The equivalent story for Switzerland would not be so rosy, unfortunately. I wish we had a points based system here, they seem like a useful addition of fairness to the fundamentally unfair global migration situation.
Permanent residency (C permit) is only possible after 5 and 10 years of residency in Switzerland, so not comparable with Japan's fast track system for highly skilled professionals. Only option 1 is possible. Visas for non-EU countries are restricted. This favors highly educated people anyway which is the same as in a point-based system. For example, if your salary is low, it's basically impossible to get a visa.
I don't see how the point-based system would be an improvement, the system is already based on fairly unambiguous rules. You meet the requirements, you get the visa/permit. You don't meet the requirements, you don't get the visa/permit.
For example:
- You'd like to get a work visa as a third-country national? Meet the requirements in FNA, Chapter 5, section 1 [0].
- You'd like a C-permit (permanent residence permit) in Kanton Zürich? The requirements, in as much detail as I could ever ask for, are here [1].
Switzerland has to be the most rule-based society I've ever lived in. This is baked into the very constitution itself as Art. 9 [2]: "Every person has the right to be treated by state authorities in good faith and in a non-arbitrary manner."
Having gotten a Swiss C-permit (permanent residency) myself on the five year fast track it was rather easy. But looking at previous interactions it all feels very dependent on what privilege you have in the form of your nationality.
If you are from a "good" country things are a lot easier. E.g. I didn't have the TELC B1 test done when I sent in all the papers. So I had a co-worker help write a formal letter explaining I would forward the test results when ready and got the permit before the results.
There is even a set of countries that are exempt from the language requirement (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain,
Greece, and Liechtenstein). Some of which make sense as they share a language with Switzerland while others I wonder what the story really is...
In contrast, friends from a "bad" country would be stringed along on 6 month L-permits, also for the spouse (who didn't get the right to work) while I brought my partner (we still aren't married) and got her a B-permit that could easily be upgraded to a working visa from the get go.
There are very few people from 'good' country list that want to go to Switzerland (or any rich country) for nefarious reasons. Be it running from law or wanting to live off benefits. So there is less hoops to check those people.
There are far more incentives to try to get to rich country from a poorer country, if you make the process too easy you will get an increase of people wanting to come in. And those are hardly going to be only doctors and engineers. It will be poor and low income in general, willing to bet all.
This isn't fair, its discriminatory and racist approach. But it is also reality of this planet. Life is unfair.
One problem with Swiss immigration is that due to our treaties with the EU, we basically have to let in every Eurozone immigrant, which limits our leeway in immigration with the rest of the world.
Overall, I argue that those treaties are worth the price, and they are entirely fair considering what we want from the EU, but they are unfair in their treatment of Euro vs non-Euro immigrants.
Traditionally, it was more local than that: It was done on a community level. But it is becoming increasingly an administrative process because the previous system was too obviously arbitrary.
Outside of Luxembourg Switzerland has the highest net migration rate by percentage of population of all western countries. Based on that I don't think it's intolerance of immigration as much as "scaling problems" as you put it.
* In Switzerland, about 30% of the population are foreign born — comparable with e.g. a classical immigration country like Australia, higher than Canada, and twice the proportion of the US. So I would not agree that the Swiss are particularly intolerant of immigration.
* Switzerland is relatively densely populated, especially considering that a sizable proportion of it is not really habitable.
> In Switzerland, about 30% of the population are foreign born
Not really true, it's around 23% and on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,000 are Italians, 295,000 are Germans and 110,000 are French, which are not really immigrants in the real sense being official languages in Switzerland (Italians were over 450,000 in the 80s, so there are less Italians than before in Switzerland).
On the other side Germans were very few in the 80s and are now the second largest group, due to tax benefits Swiss banks can guarantuee to very rich people (Switzerland is basically a tax heaven, that's the main drive for immigration, they are not really having an "immigration problem" like other countries in Europe are facing).
One popular example of such auto inflicted "immigration" is Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA founder, who lived in Switzerland for 40 years or Carlo De Benedetti, industrialist and media publisher, who's born Italian but naturalized Swiss citizen .
One other point to consider is that immigration in Switzerland is also due U.N. agencies being there.
The third and last point: Switzerland is surrounded by Alps, immigrant go there using planes, they are not the kind of immigrants that come to Europe on shitty boats in the Mediterranean sea.
The discrepancy between our numbers is most likely that about a third of the foreign born population of Switzerland is naturalized. The number you're citing is foreign NATIONALS. But naturalized immigrants still are foreign born.
> [Italians, Germans, and French] are not really immigrants
They were born in one country, and moved to another, which makes them immigrants. Whether they speak a national language is immaterial (and, in the case of Germans, the spoken language in Switzerland is not all that close to many German dialects).
Is an Asian Indian or a Kenyan in the US "not really an immigrant" if they speak fluent English?
> tax benefits Swiss banks can guarantuee to very rich people
Swiss banks used to be fairly powerful, but I can assure you that this power did not quite extend to setting tax rates for individuals. You're probably thinking of Lump-sum tax agreements, which do exist, but only for about 5000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump-sum_tax
> a tax heaven, that's the main drive for immigration
There are certainly a good number of wealthy immigrants for which this is true, but for the vast majority, I'd think that high wages are the main driver. This is true both for countries like Portugal, whose immigrants typically take low skilled jobs, and countries like Germany, where many immigrants are in high skilled professions.
> immigration in Switzerland is also due U.N. agencies being there
True, but not numerically all that significant on a national level.
> not the kind of immigrants that come to Europe on shitty boats
I can assure you that Switzerland still has more of those than billionaires coming for the tax benefits.
> They were born in one country, and moved to another
That's a moot point in my opinion, Italians in Switzerland come mainly from the areas near the border (I used to live half an hour away from Lugano).
And there's a big difference: Italian is an official language in canton of Ticino (southern Switzerland) because the population is in large percentage of Italian heritage, it was formed by occupying Italian cities, and is an independent self governed Region inside the Helvetic Republic (formerly Helvetic confederation) where Italian is the solely official language.
Kenya uses English as national language because it was colonized by UK, but their original language is Swahili.
Kenya and US don't share a border where both countries use the same official language.
> Italians in Switzerland come mainly from the areas near the border
Do you have any data on this? Anecdotally, it feels like quite a few came from southern Italy.
> the population is in large percentage of Italian heritage
Most of them were Swiss for several hundred years before Italy was a country, so I'm not sure how far that heritage extends.
I know for a fact that Swiss Germans see themselves as quite distinct from Germans, and Romands see themselves as distinct from the French, and I don't think Ticinesi see themselves as any more Italian than the other population groups.
> where Italian is the solely official language.
Bosco/Gurin would like to have a word with you…
> Kenya and US don't share a border where both countries use the same official language.
Use Kenya and Tanzania, then. Or France and Belgium. Or the Netherlands and Belgium.
In the decade 1961-1970 Italian migration to Switzerland increased, because Switzerland needed more and more workers, in 1964 the two countries signed a new agreement about immigration policies and in 1970 there were over a million Italians in Switzerland.
Italian came mainly from Lombardy, Piedimont and north east (an area called tri-veneto) but in the middle 60s thanks to the economic boom in Italy they had the option of staying home so Switzerland started looking for workers in the southern regions.
> Most of them were Swiss for several hundred years before Italy was a country
Italy existed before it was an official country
Swiss occupied Italian cities in the 1500s
> don't think Ticinesi see themselves as any more Italian than the other population groups.
Just like in Veneto they see themselves differently from Italian from the south
It doesn't make them different though...
> . Or France and Belgium. Or the Netherlands and Belgium.
In fact they aren't immigrants
They are both EU citizens
The point is Ticino and northern Italy close to the border (Varese and Como area) are practically the same place
In Switzerland they speak Italian, French and German, in Italy we speak Italian and French and German are two recognized official languages, in some areas there are two official languages, documents can be written in both and places have double names for example Bolzano/Bozen or Noasca/Nauchi
There is even a franco-provençal recognized community in Apulia, in the deep south. Those countries go back in history for thousands of years, they had relations from the dawn of times, saying that an Italian or a French in Switzerland is an immigrant is like swearing in a church.
That's why we made EU, because especially the original group of 12 should have no reason to call people from other countries "immigrant"
> on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,000 are Italians, 295,000 are Germans and 110,000 are French, which are not really immigrants in the real sense being official languages in Switzerland
Who ever said that immigrants don't count as immigrants if they already speak the national language?
My mother's family immigrated from the UK to Australia when she was a child. They all spoke English as a native language. That fact didn't make them any less "immigrants". Back then (early 1950s), the vast majority of immigrants to Australia were native English speakers and had always been (back to the very start of European colonisation). It was only in the subsequent decades that immigration to Australia diversified and native English-speakers became a successively smaller percentage of all immigrants. But even today, the number one country of birth for foreign-born Australians remains England; China and India are in the second and third spots, respectively; New Zealand fourth. (Australian immigration statistics treat the four constituent countries of the UK separately.)
Full disclosure, my uncle went to live in Switzerland in the 70s because Canton Ticino is Italian, people living there were and still are Italian and they chose to have Italian as official language, because it was their language.
Italy and Canton Ticino share a common border and speak the same language.
Same thing on the French side, a little less on the German one.
UK and Australia aren't even on the same side of the planet!
Whereas the border between Italy and Switzerland if you pass with an Italian plate or document is virtually non existent.
I used to go skiing in Livigno and it is faster to got through Switzerland, most of the times they didn't even stop us.
They saw the vignette on the windshield and didn't even bother to go out in the cold to check.
I don't consider a French person in Italy an immigrant, but a fellow European.
Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro.
They adhered to the free trade market in 1972, entered EFTA in 1992, they are part of Schengen since 2008, EU is the largest trading partner for Switzerland importing ~50 billions of goods and services, accounting for ~7% of Swiss GDP, why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me...
I think maybe the issue is that the word "immigrant" means informally different things to different people, and something else again officially.
A person from country A who voluntarily moves to country B with the intention of staying there permanently is officially an "immigrant". That's the international standard definition used in immigration statistics, so we can compare immigration statistics between different countries. As far as the official definition goes, it doesn't matter whether the source and destination countries have a common border or are on other sides of the planet, whether they speak the same language or not, whether they are culturally alike or culturally dissimilar.
Now if you are talking about what "immigrant" means informally, that's something which varies in different countries. In Australia, you get anti-immigrant sentiment, and a lot of Australians respond to that anti-immigrant sentiment by saying "we are all immigrants! (except for the Indigenous)". In Europe, I think the term "immigrant" has a more negative connotation. That method of "reclaiming" it doesn't work if your ancestors have lived in the same place so long that nobody is really sure when they immigrated to it, but whenever it was, it was likely thousands of year ago. Hence the term tends to be associated more with immigrants from poorer countries, whereas immigrants from richer countries don't want to be called that, and others don't want to call them that, even if that's technically what they are.
> Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro.
Well, Denmark and Sweden are officially part of the EU without the Euro. Switzerland is not officially part of either the EU or the EEA. Although a messy system of piecemeal bilateral deals makes it a quasi-member of the EEA.
> why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me...
Because by the formal official definition of the term they are, even if by many people's informal definitions they are not.
It’s the large numbers. One of the Swiss Sunday newspapers has published the latest numbers today. Depending on the canton, foreigners are between 15% and 50% of the population. And among children below 6, the Swiss have become a minority in their own country.
How would you define "originally"? Switzerland has demonstrable signs of habitation by Homo erectus 300,000 years ago and by Neanderthals. It was part of the Roman empire for several hundred years.
It has been de jure independent since 1648 (with the exception of a few years of Napoleonic control), and de facto for at least 150 years before that.
And yes, in between there were were several hundred years where Switzerland was part of whatever passed for "France" and "Germany" in those times, but I'm not sure that era was any more fundamental than the rest of history.
That used to be common until a few decades ago, but naturalization for Swiss-born children of immigrants has become much easier in recent years (and much more of a legal right, rather than a privilege granted at the discretion of communities).
What is the benefit of large scale immigration beyond helping with the low birth rate? Switzerland is a successful economically prosperous country with a strong cultural identity.
> Switzerland is a successful economically prosperous country with a strong cultural identity.
Who is also countinously looking for people going to work there.
I got a call for a remote job for a U.N. agency two weeks ago.
They are calling it immigration, but it's more people going there for tax benefits or because have been called there or because the U.N. and many Financial or Legal HQ offices are there.
One of the answers to your question is in your second sentence. A significant part of migration is highly educated people moving to a different country for skilled work. Which benefits the host country because it means their companies get the skilled workers, are more productive, and pay more taxes. (Before someone says "They're taking our jerbs!", in Germany and Switzerland they are desperate for good engineers.) It's even better if they were educated elsewhere, meaning the host countries get these highly educated labor force "for free".
On the flip side, it's a brain drain for the exporting countries, of course.
>Which benefits the host country because it means their companies get the skilled workers, are more productive, and pay more taxes.
If a country already has a high per capita GDP why does it need more money? What do the people in the country gain from more money in total? More labor generally lowers how much workers are paid so each person in the country is likely to get less money afterwards. More productive workers means more workaholic workers which again moves the bar so locals are now expected to work more as well. Again, a net loss for the existing population.
Thanks for accusing me of lying. Got any statistics to prove me wrong? I suppose I should also do research to prove what I believe to be right, but from the amount of headhunters contacting me on LinkedIn, my gut feeling is I'm not wrong...
BTW an abundance of graduates don't always equal "good engineers". There is also an abundance of mediocre engineers.
I've lived in a major urban region of Switzerland for the last 12 years and I could not disagree more. I've seen companies looking for capable software engineers for years, including paid relocation and arranging temporary housing for them to move into.
Brutal != high salaries. I know someone who got triple the salary when moving from Germany to the US without even trying that hard (FAANG would have been something like 6-8x the salary).
Points remove the subjective nature of acceptance process which makes it more fair. It is much fair than a old lady sitting behind a desk and judging you based on 10min of interview.
Yes. It favours the privileged but countries tunes the thresholds for points based on kind of people they want in their country. In the example you mentioned, more educated.
Countries regularly abuse and malware their own regulations for their own purposes. For example, Japan imports cheap labour from Nepal and Southeast Asia, and treats said labour very poorly. There is no avenue for “fair” treatment for the affected parties
It's not clear that points systems like this really select for optimal benefit, though. They tend to be biased toward the qualifications that are already well represented in the country.
Looking at immigrants I've met, yes, qualifications count for something, but sheer hustle and ambition can play a role as well, and often those propagate into the next generation too.
In hiring decisions, I was told to try to select for potential, not qualifications. Points systems are the classical "select for qualifications" move.
I don't think anyone said they're optimal benefit. But on the whole increasing the education and income level of your immigration pool is going to be more beneficial to your country than the opposite.
Potential can be a part of the point system. You yourself made some sort of crude scale of potential when you were interviewing people. Nothing wrong with formalizing that.
Yes, it's considerably harder to administrate such a system in an objective manner. A points system has the advantage of being objective. But that doesn't necessarily make it fair or a well chosen policy.
I'd say it's impossible to administrate such a system in an objective manner. If you could administer it in an objective manner then you can quantify and formalize it.
A point system doesn't mean the parameters are well chosen but by it's very definition it's more fair then an interview without any formal requirements.
It’s fair to the country as the country is able to make informed admission decisions weighted by the needs of the country, rather than a take-all-comers model.
It’s fair to the applicants as they have a clear set of guidelines as to what they need to do to become eligible for admission. Need to learn English to boost your score (As in Canada)? Cool. That’s tangible and clear. On the other hand America’s system of, roughly speaking, “Indians need not apply” isn’t exactly fair to the applicants.
Note: a points based migration scheme doesn’t preclude for instance refugee admissions, and Canada’s system has a points escape hatch if a province nominates you based on their specific needs too.
Is it really fair? There are several countries with degree mills for things such as masters even when they do not show the competencies required for such degrees.
> I wish we had a points based system here, they seem like a useful addition of fairness to the fundamentally unfair global migration situation.
Let's not kid ourselves: fairness* would be if migration would _not_ be restricted. A point-based system is a good way to further grant privileges to the already privileged, though.
* As in: no additional layer of unfairness created by the State.
I live in a country with nationalised healthcare and a strong welfare system. About 75% of gov expenditure is pensions and welfare.
If the borders were completely open then it is likely this system would collapse or perhaps be forced to introduce the idea of "second class" citizens with tiered benefits.
It's possible this might not happen but as far as I know the experiment has never really been tried.
There's a lot more to nations than just "land and freedom of movement". There's a regulatory climate, political system, local culture(s), defence, social contracts. It feels to me a bit like you are handwaving away all the "hard" parts of being a nation.
The half-way solution is to restrict immigration those who can demonstrate they'll contribute and not be a drain on locals (i.e, not divert too much resource away from existing citizens who currently benefit from and support the system). It's very divisive and a compromise that leaves many unhappy. Interested in your thoughts on balancing universal benefits with open borders.
Housing prices in e.g. Zürich and the surrounding area are already insane. There's something fundamentally sad about being priced out of the place you grew up in, let alone the country.
Also competition for jobs. I know of one instance where a country fast-tracked permanent residency for those who study accounting. Guess what happened? There's now a glut of accountants and real wages have dropped.
Thanks for sharing this—I'd heard about the points system but I haven't seen any personal accounts of going through the process before, so it was illuminating to read one.
Unfortunately, there's no scheme to allow foreigners to stay as a resident if they work remotely for a company that doesn't have a presence in Japan, as I do. (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)
Of course, such a provision is pretty rare, but it's still a bummer. I wonder if immigration policy might ever consider such situations—such a worker is basically injecting money into the Japanese economy for little cost on Japan's part. But perhaps there are downsides that I haven't considered.
When a company wants to hire a remote worker in a country in which they don't have a local legal entity, they often turn to an agency which does have a local legal entity and acts as the official employer (covering pay, tax, benefits, etc) on behalf of the real employer. Do such agencies have branches in Japan? How do the Japanese immigration authorities view them?
Gitlab [1] uses Safeguard Global [2] to act as official employer in a number of countries (including Japan). I'm sure Gitlab is not the only employer using Safeguard's services, and I'm sure Safeguard is not the only company offering this service.
Besides the method skissane mentioned, if you have sufficient capital (roughly five million yen / 50kUSD last I checked) you can get a "business operator" visa, open a business, and have your foreign employer pay into the business. If the "business" runs a profit you should be able to get your visa renewed continually. It's a little more legally complicated to set up, but has advantages like not requiring a college degree or ten years of proven experience in one profession.
I was considering that route to self-employment before I learned about the change in the HSFP visa.
> (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)
If you are a resident of a country it's only reasonable to expect you to pay taxes there...
You can try for a student visa for Japanese language school for two years. If you're willing to pay for a plane ticket to a nearby Asian country, you could probably renew it in perpetuity every three months. There are also other visas like entertainment or modelling that you could try to obtain for three months. You can even teach English part time and try to get a visa that way.
As you make friends and build up a network you're certain to find a way to make it work.
In practice, visas are easier for people from Western developed countries. The only major risk of overstaying a visa is getting a random stop from police and at worst you just get deported. It's really not as restrictive as it seems. I've met plenty of people who visited Japan on a whim and ended up staying for years.
> Unfortunately, there's no scheme to allow foreigners to stay as a resident if they work remotely for a company that doesn't have a presence in Japan, as I do. (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)
And I remember seeing somewhere else that some other countries in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean either have similar visas or were planning for them.
I'm curious to know -- for people who seek residency in Japan, do they typically do it with the plan to stay forever? Or do they use it for the employment, etc, and have the longer term desire to go back to their original home country?
I ask because from all that I've read, foreigners take even generations to feel comfortable and accepted in Japan. What's the permanent residency a path towards, for most?
>>>I'm curious to know -- for people who seek residency in Japan, do they typically do it with the plan to stay forever?
I do. It's a "sweet spot" place to live. No threat of violence from law enforcement, significantly reduced threat of violence from the general population, extremely high standard of living, and the country is well-positioned as a base of operations for travel or business across most of Asia. Also, despite some high expenses compared to America, it's a great place to own a sports car if that is a major hobby (and it is for me). Many of the happiest people I know are Western expats in Japan who are small-business owners. It's important to disconnect from the "Japanese corporate wage slave" or "English teacher" life experiences. I'll never back to the US if I can avoid it.
I didn't bring family with me, I'm building one here. Re: neighbor acceptance, it's hit or miss but mostly hit. In my last apartment, my next-door neighbor was an older guy who spoke no English but always wanted to shoot the shit about my project cars. I think he used to be a bosozoku (young Japanese biker gangs) back in the day. My Japanese is pretty poor but I can express myself on certain subjects, especially cars. There's a guy at one of my favorite junkyards who keeps inviting me to go drifting with him and I barely understand his Japanese; he has a very heavy local accent. There was also a young guy who worked at my local Family Mart convenience store who was a metalhead (he was wearing a band T-shirt one day), so we would occasionally talk about bands. Him: "Do you know....Fleshgod?" "Fleshgod Apocalypse? mochiron sa (Eng: of course!) I saw them live in Osaka!" "Ahh, sugoii (cool) ! They are....very good! I like." \m/ >_< \m/
You'll always be "the gaijin" but most people are friendly. I had some good experiences in Thailand as well, having just the right physical features to kinda blend in as long as I didn't open my mouth. But that's a longer story...
PR is not a pre-requisite for citizenship. In fact, in some ways citizenship is easiest to apply for (you only need 5 years of residence vs PR's 10), though the application process is longer and more involved. Of course, you must give up all other citizenships so it is a decision not to be taken lightly.
Here’s how I got mine: got married to Japanese national. Worked and paid taxes for 8 years in a job that wasn’t teaching English. Applied for and paid ¥8000. Waited half a year. Received the OK to pick up my new perm resident card the week before my family packed up to move back to Australia...
Seriously one of the most simultaneously exciting and annoying pieces of mail I’ve ever received.
I am planning to apply in 1.5 years on the 70-point system. I've had 70 points for the last half year, in January 2020 I will be at 65 points and in February 2021 I will be back at 70 points again.
I don't speak Japanese though, so there are a couple of things I'm curious about. For instance, it says "Either graduated from a Japanese university or completed a course of a Japanese graduate school" and I did a semester in a Japan university as an exchange student. But it was as an undergraduate, so I'm not sure if it counts. I'll be contacting the linked company in the article, thanks for the read!
Note to self: remember to re-download the guidelines every once in a while. This has been in my mind for ~3 years and they have changed them (for the better mostly!) a couple of times. A clear example is that now you don't need to have the high skill visa for the given time, but you just need to have the points for the given period (and even that is a bit ambiguous, it says you need to have the points at the time of applying and 3 years before, but it doesn't say "for the duration of those 3 years")
Harvard and Princeton still have a student deliver speech in Latin in commencement. Anecdotally, since most graduates have no clue what they are saying, someone would hold a sign telling them when to laugh and when to applaud.
I don't know of any others that are quite that bad, but most are pretty flowery. I'm still waiting to get the "rights and privileges" my university promised come with the degree.
Benefits based on having the degree in immigration point systems is a nice example of such a privilege. So is having that university's name on your resume, in cases like Brown where it's a famous name.
A good friend actually used June Advisors Group mentioned in the article a couple of years ago. The firm (really a sole attorney) sounded very helpful and got his business set up with a residence card pretty easily. IIRC it took a couple of months end-to-end.
Hmmm, when I investigated the HSFP in 2016, Immigration told me I had to get a job at a Japanese company, and THEN apply for said visa. You can't apply for the High Skill Visa, even if you have more than enough points to qualify (which I did), while you are job-hunting on a tourist visa, for example.
>>>What changed in 2017 was that if you could demonstrate that you had the points historically you could apply for a PR without ever having the HSFP visa. That's the process I used.
It should be noted that there are some incredibly onerous and far reaching global tax and inheritance implications of taking on PR in Japan. Anyone doing so should fully research before making the jump. (I’ve been a Japan PR for 5 years after 15 years of artist and student visas.)
I've seen people mention this before but it seems to be based on a misunderstanding - your tax obligations to Japan are not based on your visa status, but on the length of your residence. See this official government page, it doesn't mention visa status anywhere.
It looks like in some documents the term "permanent resident" is used to refer to "residents of more than five years" or similar, but it's not a reference to visa status.
Besides the terminology issue, I suspect that part of the confusion may be that the PR application does require proof you've been paying taxes, and Immigration can ask for further proof. In my own case my annual tax statements were enough.
Thanks for the article. With Japanese PR, I know you can leave and reenter on a special reentry visa. Are reentry visas easy to get? Would repeatedly getting (by doing a reentry visa-run to japan every 5 years) them while spending most of your time outside of japan result in losing your PR?
You used to have to apply for a re-entry visa. Technically Japan distinguishes between "entry permission" and "status of residence", which few countries do and, given it's an island, doesn't really make any sense, but that's the reason for the policy. With the change to the Residence Card system in 2012 normal travel no longer requires applying for re-entry visas. Here's a notice from when it changed:
To add to what bojo said, when you apply for it at the airport these days you basically just fill out a tiny piece of paper and they say "OK, see you when you get back" if you're going away for less than a year. I don't go overseas much but if memory serves the process is basically the same for PR and non-PR visas.
I don't really know much about the implications of only coming back once every five years or so.
These days you can get your reentry permit directly at the airport, and in the case of a PR you can stay outside the country for up to a year. Much better than the “buy an expensive stamp” system they had prior. I moved back to the US at the end of 2018 and haven’t gone back, so I assume my PR expired. That said, if I ever went back I could likely re-obtain it due to my spouse being Japanese.
I’m not aware of anyone trying to game keeping their PR, but I do know that if you need to repeatedly stay out of the country for awhile you need to provide a solid reason (like caring for a sick parent).
If you don't have the intention to live in Japan permanently then you're supposed to give up PR. When you apply for a longer re-entry permit they ask about reasons for being abroad. I think the immigration officer would take a film view on many "visa runs" with no job, house or family in Japan.
For those interested in foreigners obtaining Japanese citizenship, check out the story of Debito Arudou. It's a whole higher level of difficulty. At some point I think only around 16 naturalizations were happening per year, of a country of 100 million.
There are over 10,000 naturalizations per year with a 99% approval rate.
Your figure sounds like one of those weird Japanese legends. And I haven’t read Arudou’s naturalization story, but he’s well known for over-dramatizing everything and has an incredibly biased agenda so it’s probably best not to take anything he says too seriously.
Good write up with plenty of detail, thanks for sharing.
The gap between highly skilled professional and regular worker seems to be a huge chasm. You can get PR in 1 year with enough points but you must wait 10 if you are a regular worker.
Also, to apply for PR on a regular work visa you must have a visa length longer than 1 year. This can effectively be used to block PR applications. I know someone who had been in Japan for 15 years who cannot apply for PR because of this rule. As the application is never even allowed to be made, these people do not show up in statistics about successful Vs rejected PR applications either
If they have been in Japan for 15 years, keep getting 1-year visas, and want to stay in Japan long-term, they should speak to a lawyer. There are various criteria that decide how long a visa you get, and while they aren't explicit there are things you can do to make it much more likely you'll get a long visa.
At my first job I was a "contract employee", which was a much less stable position than I realized when I signed up, and I couldn't get more than a one-year visa either. Later I changed jobs and became a full employee and got a 5-year visa without issue.
I wish my own country was so strict when granting visas and protecting our borders. Every week thousands of people cross are border illegally to stay, making my already poor and indepted country even poorer.
Does your Japanese permanent residency allow you to avoid paying American income tax, or are you still required to pay BOTH Japanese and American income taxes?
The only way to avoid having to file American taxes as an American is to stop being one, to give up your citizenship. Doing so makes you pay a punitive exit tax on all you assets as if you had sold them.
Before going down that route, keep in mind that you are obliged to file taxes on your global earnings, but if your "foreign" earnings are taxed at a higher rate than they would in the US and that country has unilateral reciprocity agreements (most places you would be thinking of going would meet both criteria) and you don't have any US income, then you have to file but don't pay anything. If any of the previous points isn't met then you will have to pay the difference. Basically Americans always pay at least an American tax rate, no matter where they are.
If you give up your US citizenship anyway, why would you actually pay them anything? It seems like your obligation to pay the US government ends with your nationality.
You're required to file taxes in both countries, but the taxes are not additive. Basically, you have to pay the regular taxes in your country of residency, and then pay the US any difference to what you'd have paid in the US.
Or if the foreign tax credit or foreign earned income exclusion aspects of US tax law serve the same purpose as the treaty would. And the treaties often have gaps or gotchas, though they help a lot.
(I'm an American in Canada, so I've had to become familiar with all of the above as applied to my case.)
the US allows exclusion of foreign earned income up to a certain point (~$105k for 2019 filing year) under one of two scenarios:
- you spent over 330 full (midnight-midnight) days outside the US + its territories, with some important but clear exceptions for things like traveling
- you are a "bona fide" resident of another country; this involves an review by a US government official. typically these people pay taxes in another country, send their kids to school there, etc.
America taxes citizens regardless of residence, but there’s a treaty so you can credit all taxes paid to Japan and you only end up paying the higher of the two.
"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."
- Lafcadio Hearn (1850 - 1904)
You may still have to pay tax even if you renounce your US nationality, if the IRS finds that you have renounced your nationality so that you don't have to pay taxes anymore.
"The expatriation tax provisions under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) sections 877 and 877A apply to U.S. citizens who have renounced their citizenship and long-term residents (as defined in IRC 877(e)) who have ended their U.S. resident status for federal tax purposes."
US has had the federal tax exclusion limit. As long as you are living outside the US for longer than 330 days a year, the first $110k of foreign earned income is tax free.
As long as you are a US citizen you are expected to pay Federal income tax, no matter where you are in the world, and no matter where you earned it. The US and Eritrea are the only 2 countries on the planet with this policy. I think you can get your tax burden reduced if you can prove you've paid taxes to another jurisdiction, but don't quote me on that...
Actually, I think Japan also technically taxes worldwide income of non-resident nationals. And even permanent residents, regardless of where they reside.
Moreover, some countries like Finland require you to pay taxes on worldwide income for a number of years after you're no longer a resident of the country and only then granting you tax freedom from income sourced outside of the country. And there's no amount of income you can exclude like the USA's $108k or whatever the figure is currently.
You do get a foreign tax credit. There is also a foreign income inclusion that lets you avoid all taxes, but it comes with some severe restrictions (including not being in the US for more than ~30 days in any 365-day period).
Japan is honestly desperate for these types of PR candidates. I almost went for it but they have a large death and exit tax, if I’m not mistaken.
A friend did it and left afterward for Australia because he realized he didn’t want to be middle-aged in Japan as a foreigner, and also regretted it in the end due to the tax liability.
> That presented another problem - I had forgotten, but my degree was in Latin. All documents submitted as part of an application have to be translated into Japanese, and I don't speak Latin.
Wait, what?
I wouldn't expect such quirkiness from an American university, though being founded in 1764 kinda explains it.
(The translation, while correct, is also extremely literal and a bit outdated)
Thanks, I had looked it up to check the latin (not that I'm an expert, far from it) but it certainly looks more "conversational" than the English translation
The university president at the time the author graduated (and and also at my own graduation few years earlier) was a classics professor who has good Latin ability, so she conducted most of the ceremony overall in Latin. Of course some bits of English were included, such as when honorary degree recipients or students selected to speak at the ceremony were doing their bits. Yes they provided translations and I think subtitles too.
The current university president is less proficient in Latin, so she does most of the ceremony in English, only using Latin for the few bits that the University rules require to be in Latin (including the moments when the degrees are formally conferred).
there is no way you can do point-based immigration reform in USA, because it's not politically correct, not diversified, unhuman, etc.
Combined with all those looting these days I'm actually very interested in countries like Japan or Singapore via immigration, enough bullshit here indeed.
Learning Japanese is the largest challenge, I can do English in Singapore, maybe Australia.
And no to Europe, both Europe and USA are on their death road to socialism.
Japan is more socialist than US- stricter worker rights, universal healthcare, lots of government funded programs for young kids and their parents (they recently made daycare free upto certain age) and ever increasing taxes (the recent one was 2% hike in October last year).
> In 2011 I graduated with a Master's degree from Brown University and then moved to Japan and got a job as a software engineer.
I'm curious why you would do this. In any other occupation, I could understand it. In many respects, Japan is a more advanced civilization than the United States. But as a SWE, there is nowhere else in the world that you can make a higher salary than the United States. Even if your long term ambition was to move to Japan, wouldn't you be better off becoming financially independent first and then moving?
Not everyone is optimizing for making money. I left a Silicon Valley FAANG for another country more than five years ago, even though I was making ~3x there compared to what I made in the new place. Even with the higher living costs, that's still a lot more money.
I regret nothing. I'm so much happier here than I ever was in the Bay Area, and I doing this early in my life allowed me to have a lot of fun and stories to tell. Why would I "waste" my precious 20s and early 30s being miserable and retire at 35? Who even wants to retire? I wouldn't even know what to do with that money? Buy a house and sit in the garden the whole day? :) Not the life I wanted.
This whole "make a lot of $$$ and be miserable in your 20s to optimize for the future" is such a common thing I see in SV and HN as part of the narratives that these VCs are pushing. I think you have it all backwards. You can make money any time. You can never back to your 20s and 30s where you don't have health problems, are full of energy, and have an easy time making friends.
Another illusion is that these are absolute numbers. They're relative. When you're young, $100k is a lot of money. Enough to be happy and worry-free. Once you have that, you need $1M in cash to be happy and retire. Once you have $1M but realize everyone around you is making $1M/year to retire at $10M you suddenly need $10M. This will repeat itself, and you'll never have enough. You'll just become more miserable realizing how much more everyone else has. Yeah, platitudes. We all know this, right? Turns out, this cycle is totally unconscious and incredibly hard to break once you're in it and surrounded by such people. Get away while you can.
At least for me, this was one of the reasons why working at FAANG where everyone is striving for $$$ made me miserable. It gave me such a warped view of the world.
> working at FAANG where everyone is striving for $$$
This really hasn’t been my experience at either Google or Facebook, in fact I would nearly go so far as to say the opposite is true. I’ve seen far more “striving” in the traditional corporate world
The common term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you make more money your “needs” keep increasing. It’s incredibly challenging to reserve this trend but very easy to follow it.
I think the best way to prevent this is, whenever you get a raise, open a new bank account and have the difference direct deposited into it. That way, the main bank account that you work with regularly, always sees the same amount deposited.
> “ I left a Silicon Valley FAANG for another country more than five years ago, even though I was making ~3x there compared to what I made in the new place.”
This is kind of what the comment you’re replying to was suggesting. Take advantage of the high income first before moving.
> “You can make money anytime.”
Sure, but interest compounds - money earlier is way more helpful than money later.
I always wonder a little about the family wealth of people that write things like this. Most of the people I know who left high paying jobs come from wealthy families and they’re already basically working for fun.
I didn’t grow up poor by any means, but I also don’t come from family wealth. If I want to have a family of my own, and make sure we will always have a place to live, saving high salary (and equity) in order to reach financial independence is worth it.
If you don’t want a family or you come from wealth then prioritizing other stuff is probably fine. If you do want these things though, I think it’s helpful to be more forward looking until reaching financial independence.
> “Not the life I wanted.”
Totally reasonable, but what people want over their life changes. Financial independence gives you freedom to be able to change too.
> I always wonder a little about the family wealth of people that write things like this. Most of the people I know who left high paying jobs come from wealthy families and they’re already basically working for fun.
Seriously, these replies that turn securing a future for you and your family into some kind of avarice anti-virtue are ridiculous.
As per the OP, the Quality Migrants visa becomes harder to obtain once you reach 30. Japan wants young talent to replace their aging workforce so youth is valued and considered. Grinding in the valley could have caused him to lose the chance to move to Japan completely.
What city are you in if you don't mind me asking? While I agree with the sentiment to live in the present, I do think many of us don't see ourselves living in major US tech hubs for long, it's more of optimizing for money when you are young and de-prioritizing certain other aspects while making sure you still remain Happy and not miserable. For instance, if you are from India, you can get 3x+ salary/savings, learn different cultures/lifestyle and also learn from the best in technology and business for the cost of living away from your family (which you kind of do anyways if your family isn't in an Indian tech hub city).
"Work" (as in the thing you do for money) doesn't make me happy so why would I want to work for the rest of my life? Also, if I'm coming from a poor family why would I want to stay poor and doom my children?
I'd rather want to "work" (as in the thing you do for happiness) for the rest of my life and be "rich" at the same time.
But big SV money? I wouldn't be so sure. Ageism is rampant in tech. FAANGs love their coders young, in 20's-30's. Also the dollar saved earlier in life is worth exponentially more later thanks to compound interest
There's no better place to solve your financial problems than in SV in your 20's.
I did this and lived there for 11 years, half of it working at mobile game companies at scale. Yeah, comparatively the salaries suck compared to the US, but I got to experience a culture completely different from my own the entire time. Only optimizing for cash seems like a waste of a life, so many interesting things to do besides chase money.
I’m now back in the States though, and all that skill building I did in Japan paid off. Making boatloads managing a software engineering department.
I've always wanted to live in Japan. I sometimes feel like I'm optimizing way too much for money, and reading the article it seems like I only have 5 more years to practically have a chance at being able to live in Japan. So I'm convinced that maybe some things are worth giving up for happiness.
So what am I supposed to do in order to accomplish the goal of working in Japan? I've self-studied the language since high school and would say I'm competent at reading and listening but not production. I haven't taken the JLPT yet but I would study for it if I'm going to take this seriously. I also have a lot of savings so money is not really as much of a concern.
I would really, really want to if time is quickly running out for me, but I don't understand what relationship I have to the country that would merit being able to stay there at least on a work visa besides the fact that I want to live there and enjoy the culture, which TFA states is not good enough of a reason. The author's NLP job was itself related to the Japanese language, but there is no specific connection to Japanese that my skills would provide. And I haven't so much as gotten a response back from my dozen attempts at an internal transfer at a Top 100 company. Sometimes it feels like the only reason you're able to get a job is because you know the right people, and I don't personally know anyone living in Japan.
As long as you have a 4 year university degree you can apply for and get sponsorship from a company if they are willing to do the paperwork for a work visa, and just renew as required.
Knowing Japanese helps a lot, but some tech companies hire English speakers - possibly because most of the employees are foreigners anyways.
You can apply directly to companies if you can manage to track down their career pages (and read it if no English version), no prior connections required. However, it’ll be hit or miss as to whether they will sponsor you, and a big question mark if American during this COVID crisis.
There’s a certain form of thinking I’ve become more aligned with, which is that not everything we do needs to be optimised. Additionally, trying to optimise everything may reduce the overall success compared to the naive “just do it” approach.
I assume this is something that is person valued, and the easiest way to ensure it happened was to just do it. The optimisation proposed also has a hidden risk of never doing it at all, or other things getting in the way.
That reminds me of the Japanese craft of kintsugi, where broken/damaged everyday household objects honored and elevated above their station via repairs with gold inlay. It’s finding perfection in the mundane, leaving something undone, just so. Very Japanese vibe.
Some things are better off left broken in view of being later restored, rather than being discarded and instantly replaced with nondescript sameness. Newness itself isn’t bad, but it is alluring; and yet, we can’t leave our culture by the wayside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
US high-skill jobs optimize exclusively for high numeric salary while the culture in other developed countries allows high-skill people to have a subjectively higher quality of life while earning less money.
The US can't be beat if what you want out of life is a big house, a big SUV, and as much money invested as possible. If you want things like a lot of paid vacation time, the option to live in a walkable community, working public transit, more psychological and economic security in the face of major illness or injury, etc, then you'll get a better deal elsewhere. Most places other than Japan also offer a much better work-life balance. Which is better really depends on what kind of lifestyle you want.
Why would I want to move to the US if the high salary / working at FAANG is not the most important thing to me and I’m already from a developed country?
For some reason a lot of people assume high salary is the most important aspect of life. Sure, US SWE salaries are absurdly high, but SWE earns relatively well in almost any other developed country too,
I can understand that people are personally upset when they are affected by travel restrictions, but this whole outrage about "foreigners are second class citizens" (often even: "this shows Japans racism") is just just silly.
1- The restrictions are not about race, but about which countries have mismanaged the pandemic. People from Taiwan and some other south east asian countries are allowed to enter. (Ironically, exactly those people are / have been much more commonly the target of Japanese racism).
2- They most likely would prefer to also ban Japanese citizens (whatever race) from returning from hot-spots like Florida or Brazil. They just can't because of legal reasons. Citizenship gives you certain rights.
3- You can call PR and other visas "second class citizenship" if you want, but the fact is: you're just not a citizen. You also can't vote. You also can't become prime minister. You're not a citizen and don't have the rights of a citizen. That's the same in every country, including yours. Why didn't people with PR complain about being "second class citizens" for years about those other rights?
I think that many of those with PR would rather be (first-class) citizens; it’s not always just a personal choice to not be one.
I think it’s pretty clear that if you plan your life in a secondary country, and they allow you to via permanent residency, you would not want them to lock you out at a whim.
>Aware of foreign residents’ concerns, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last month that Japan would loosen some of the rules. On Wednesday, immigration officials said at a news conference that they had begun readmitting those who left before the start of the restrictions in April.
