With fast-track permanent residency rule, Japan looks to shed its closed image

With fast-track permanent residency rule, Japan looks to shed its closed image

By Kazuaki Nagata, staff writer

With the goal of attracting more skilled foreign workers, Japan moved to relax requirements for permanent residency for such individuals last April.

Before the change, skilled non-Japanese workers had to stay in Japan for at least five years before applying for permanent residency, but now only one year is required.

With the new fast-track rule, Japan is trying to shed its closed image, lure more skilled people, and retain those already working or studying here who can contribute to growing the economy.

Some experts said the sped-up process will likely have a positive impact but that whether it will be a game-changer remains unclear.

They also said Japan has other issues to work on, including easing the language barrier and changing aspects of its traditional corporate culture — including a seniority-based personnel system — to motivate foreign talent to come to the country.

“Developed countries have been competing to attract talented people … and Japan can’t fall behind,” said Satoshi Kurimoto, director of the technical cooperation division at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

To keep the economy upbeat, it’s critical for companies to have skilled foreign employees who can bring fresh perspectives to management and production development and help expand to global markets, Kurimoto said.

Fast-track permanent residency will lead to the influx of more talent, he said. “We are hoping that this will erase the closed image of Japan,” he said.

Since 2012, Japan has used a point system for skilled non-Japanese workers. The points are given based on individual backgrounds, including age, income, Japanese-language fluency and academic degrees. The system is intended to give preferential treatment to proficient workers, including a shortened path for permanent residency. When the system debuted, those who had 70 points or more could apply for permanent residency after five years. Normally, it takes 10 years to apply for the status.

With last year’s deregulation, the minimum stay has been lowered to three years for those with 70 to 79 points and one year for those with 80 or more points.

The 80-point mark isn’t necessarily a high hurdle, according to Makoto Sano, who heads Tokyo-based Acroseed Co., which provides consulting on recruitment of foreign workers and support for visa applications. Foreign employees working for major firms have a good shot at reaching that level, he said.

International students studying in Japan can also score high since they can get points for graduating from Japanese colleges and universities, so the system gives them an incentive to stay and work, Kurimoto said.

As of last June, the Justice Ministry had recognized 8,515 people as highly-skilled professionals with 70 or more points. It aims to triple that figure to 20,000 by 2022.

“When I talk about this, everyone says ‘it’s amazing’ ” that Japan gives permanent residency so quickly to skilled workers, said Katsuhiro Hashimoto, director at Fourth Valley Concierge, a Tokyo-based firm that matches Japanese companies with foreign workers.

But he said few people are aware of Japan’s new system, noting that he always promotes it at overseas job fairs.

“(Foreign people) still have the image that Japan doesn’t accept overseas workers,” said Hashimoto, adding that it will probably take two or three years for the number of such workers to surge.

While its global presence may have declined over the past decade with China taking over as the world’s second-largest economy, Japan still seems like a favorite choice among non-Japanese, Hashimoto said.

The fast-track system is also designed to keep those already in Japan from leaving, and they are apparently welcoming the move.

“Requests from foreign workers to get permanent residency have drastically increased,” said Sano of Acroseed.

“It’s a really big thing for foreign people living in Japan whether they can get permanent residency … the new rule makes it easier, so they seem to be excited,” he said.

But when it comes to whether it facilitates the inflow of more people from abroad, “I think it’s a different matter,” Sano said. He said this is mainly because of the living environment in Japan, particularly the language barrier.

“A lot of people say the language is a concern. They are hesitant, believing that English is hardly useful here,” he said.

This was partly echoed by Peng Jenhui, 36, who is from Taiwan and has been working in Japan since 2010. Peng, who lives with his Taiwanese wife and daughter, said various procedures necessary for living in Japan are dealt with only in Japanese, posing issues for non-Japanese residents.

“I experienced the application process for a nursery school, but the guidance is in Japanese and procedures at municipal offices are in Japanese,” said Peng, who works at Fourth Valley Concierge as the manager of its business development division.

Japan needs to foster, however slowly, an environment where foreign workers can live comfortably without having to be fluent in Japanese, Peng said.

In the meantime, he welcomed the new fast-track permanent residency rule. Peng and his wife both have highly skilled professional visas, and his wife is currently applying for permanent residency.

“I think it’s a really good thing, as Japan needs more foreign workers,” Peng said.

He said they want to get permanent residency to live here for a longer period because he and his wife like Japanese nursery school education as well as other aspects of Japanese life, including clean air.

The government is aware that something has to be done to ease the language barrier.

For instance, the Japan External Trade Organization runs a website for non-Japanese and gives tips for living in Japan, such as how to set up bank accounts and cellphone services, according to Kurimoto of METI.

The education ministry is also working to support children who cannot speak Japanese at schools, he said.

Hashimoto of Fourth Valley said that, on top of the language barrier, some Japanese corporate traditions don’t really fit non-Japanese workers.

“Japan’s traditional personnel system is unpopular among them … the seniority rule is not as visible as it used be but it’s still there to a certain degree,” Hashimoto said.

Some foreign nationals looking to get a job in Japan expressed concern over the issue.

A 24-year-old Chinese college student in Tokyo, who has been studying in Japan for three years and is looking to stay and work, said she is worried about the traditional hierarchy within companies. The student was attending a job fair for international students studying in Japan held by Tokyo-based Vein Global Inc. last month.

She also expressed concern about adjusting to Japan’s business manners, such as how to behave during drinking parties and speak politely in business Japanese.

Hashimoto said it would not make sense to completely change the personnel system for a minority of workers.

But “I think it’s important for Japanese companies to adjust the system for a diverse workforce,” he said.

This is the last in a four-part New Year’s series examining Japan’s immigration policy as the nation struggles with a shortage of workers and an aging population.

Comments

 * S.J.: There has been much talk about this topic over the last few years, yet so little action or progress has been made. Japan recently had the distinction of being ranked last among 11 Asian nations for its appeal to highly skilled foreign employees, behind countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia (according to the 2017 IMD World Talent Ranking). Worldwide, Japan ranked 51st among 63 nations ("Japan ranks dead last in Asia for top foreign talent", The Japan Times, Nov 21, 2017). Anyone who thinks that changing permanent residency rules will change this or the reality of Japan being one of the most closed countries in the world must not understand the real reasons for Japan's unpopularity. As an American expat with many years of experience working profesionally in the highly skilled category at large Japanese companies in Tokyo, I think what's holding Japan back has much more to do with the following issues than visa rules.  If one comes from a developed country, then working professionally in Japan is really like being in a time warp and this is true even at some of its largest corporations. The business practices, processes and mentality in corporate Japan are a throwback to the 1950s. It is no wonder that Japanese workers work such long hours, yet they have the lowest productivity among all developed countries. Why would anyone come to Japan when all they'd learn here is the way things used to be in the past, rather than going to a country like the U.S. where they can see what the future looks like?  Japanese corporations are in general extremely insular, unwelcoming and hostile places for foreign workers, where they routinely face widespread racism, bigotry, discrimination, bullying, exclusion and xenophobia. They are notorious for not offering foreign staff much in terms of job security, compensation, training, professional development and career advancement opportunities. Foreign staff in Japan are almost always treated as second-class expendable workers. Why would highly skilled professionals put themselves in such a negative and self-defeating environment?  Remuneration levels in Japan are lower than other developed countries, especially considering Japan's high cost of living. The standard of living is also lower given Japan's cramped housing, long and crowded train commutes, lack of open spaces and recreational facilities for adults and kids alike, an almost complete absence of cultural activities like world-class museums, live performances, and high quality art, movies and music. A well known issue about working in Japan for expats is just how tough it can be on their spouses, who are in many cases totally isolated while living in Japan. The result is alarmingly high rates of depression and mental illness among them. So, highly skilled foreign professionals also have to ask themselves if it is worth living is such a professional and social bubble and subject their family to the same?  Speaking, reading and writing Japanese at a very high level is an absolute requirement for living and working in Japan, since almost no one at Japanese companies or society at large can speak or understand English. However, for the vast majority of foreigners learning Japanese is a fool's errand (unless you hail from a country that uses kanji). This is becuse most find spending a lifetime learning Japanese to be an extremely poor Return on Investment. More often than not, fluency in Japanese does not provide foreigners with the types of professional or social opportunities they thought it would, because the doors they though it would open either do not exist for foreigners of they found that Japanese fluency did not help open them since they are tightly guarded by the forces of quite extreme insularity, racism and xenophobia. For obvious reasons Japanese is also completely useless outside of Japan (unlike many other languages which can be used in multiple countries). The truth about a tribal and insular country like Japan is that there are no prospects for foreigners to ever be accepted into Japanese society, since they will be perpetual outsiders in Japan. So, is it really worth investing so much time and energy chasing a mirage?  Another well known fact among the professional expat community in Japan is the very transactional and short-term approach favored by Japanese companies when it comes to foreign staff. Japanese companies often prefer a revolving door policy for foreign workers, where they are replaced by another foreigner every couple of years. This keeps their expectations low, since shorter tenure workers don't expect real job responsibilities, salary increases, career advancement or participation in decision making. Japanese companies have a long history of making promises and dangling carrots to recruit qualified foreigners, but once these candidates are hired, the same companies show a complete disregard for the employment agreements and contracts they offered foreign staff. As such, Japanese companies routinely show blatant disregard of Japanese labor laws when it comes to foreign employees. The rights, privileges and protection of workers under the Japanese labor and employment laws do not apply to, or protect foreign employees for all practical purposes. The Japanese judicial system is famously corrupt, racist and xenophobic, so non-Japanese workers cannot expect to receive any relief or fair treatment from Japanese courts either, hence foreign workers in Japan have no recourse. This is something that is not lost on Japanese companies and it emboldens them to freely exploit foreign staff without fear of repercussion.  One other very important factor why highly skilled professionals have reason to shun Japan is that Japan's old-fashioned, conservative and entrenched corporate culture is the polar opposite of the more modern, forward-looking and progressive corporate culture one finds in other developed countries. The skills and attitude required for survival in Japan are totally different from those valued in other countries and what makes highly skilled professionals successful back in their home countries. So, in order for them to survive in Japan they have to unlearn everything they relied on to be successful in the past (their intellectual curiosity, assertiveness, independence, creativie thinking, risk-taking, asking questions and challenging old assumptions, etc) and they have to reinvent themselves by dumbing down to be more palatable to the Japanese. After all, this is the only culture I know of where asking a question in a professional setting is perceived as making a personal attack on someone. This also means that almost everything an expat learns in Japan will be completely useless outside of Japan, so returning to one's country after a few years working in Japan is a little like starting all over again. An expat assignment in a foreign country is supposed to give one a leg-up, but for most expats returning from Japan it seems to have the opposite effect.  Lastly, expats have to also consider how happy and motivated the local staff is in the country they plan to move to. Several surveys show that Japanese workers do extremely poorly on this measure. Just last year, Japan was declared to have the world's gloomiest and most pessimistic millennials in the world, based on a survey of 18 countries surveyed by ManpowerGroup. Last year also there was an article published here in The Japan Times under the heading, "Japanese workers distrust their employers, survey shows". It cites a survey conducted by Ernst & Young which shows that Japan comes in dead last in all three categories out of the eight countries surveyed about whether workers trust their company, their boses and their colleagues. In Japan, only 21 percent of employees trust their employer, only 22 percent of the employees trust their bosses and only 22 percent of employees trust their teams/colleagues. In other words, 4 out of 5 Japanese workers do not trust their companies, bosses or colleagues. Foreign expats would be wise in asking themselves, does this seem like a healthy and optimistic place for me to build my future career on?  Given all these challenges Japan faces, a change in visa rules is a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 * e. (at S.J.): While your writing is a bit over-the-top, all of your points are true. I found this part especially resonated with myself: "More often than not, fluency in Japanese does not provide foreigners with the types of professional or social opportunities they thought it would, because the doors they though it would open either do not exist for foreigners".  I found out that the better my Japanese got, the less interested people became in meeting me, and businesses in the teaching profession actually looked down on it!
 * N. (at S.J.): Some points you wrote reflect my views as well.
 * K.B. (at S.J.): You forgot to mention the egregious tax (income and estate) laws in Japan with regards to foreigners. One need do little more than change planes there and you will find your worldwide assets being confiscated by the Japanese tax authorities. And definitely don't have the bad luck to die while you are there. Anyone with a moderate level of income or assets would be crazy to spend any time in Japan.
 * S.J. (at K.B.): Good point. This was reported recently in the Bloomberg piece, "Tokyo Pushes Back on ‘Bizarre' Death Tax That Deters Expats" (Nov 13, 2017). According to this piece: "Considering a work stint in Japan? You’d better make it short, and you’d better stay alive. That’s because the government subjects long-term foreign residents to inheritance tax of up to 55 percent on their worldwide assets -- meaning heirs could be forced to give up their family homes or businesses, even if they’ve never set foot in Japan.  “Japan doesn’t seem to want long-term residents anymore,” said Paul Hunter, secretary general of the Tokyo-based International Bankers Association.  In April, the rule was tweaked to restrict it to people who have lived in Japan for more than 10 years. At the same time, the government added a “tail” clause that allows tax authorities to claim a former resident’s global assets even if he or she dies within five years of leaving Japan.  Expatriates “can’t die in this country,” Shigesuke Kashiwagi, Japan head of U.K. investment company Schroders Plc, told Koike in June at a meeting of a panel formed last year to advise the local government on luring financial firms to Tokyo.  Not only will the tax prompt talented people to hesitate about coming to Japan, it could also force financial-industry veterans already living there to leave, according to Hunter. Ten years is “not a long time out of a working career” and the tail provision is “really, really bizarre,” he said."
 * C.M. (at S.J.): That is correct. That’s why my very good friend who has been living in Tokyo for the past 18 years had to transfer to KL because of the ridiculous law. Imagine his business is in Tokyo yet he has to live in KL and just visit Japan once every 3 months to check on his company!
 * O.K.: I spent nearly 15 years in Japan, was (and still am) fluent in the language, and I do like Japan a lot. But in the end I just had to leave. My biggest concerns are NOT how long it takes to get the permanent residency:  1. Education system is inward-looking and unsuitable for the global-minded children/parents. 2. Glass ceiling for foreigners for senior management positions, even in many foreign firms. 3. Japanese government wants foreigners to stay, but not have any say - there is absolutely no connection between permanent residence and citizenship.  And that is before I even start speaking about the defunct pension system, bullying of foreign children at schools, extremely long working hours, increasing taxes, crammed office spaces (by European standards anyway) and many other "small" things.
 * J.B.: Bizarre that an article on this subject would not even mention the tax implications of permanent residency.
 * CLJF: Japan is not the only developed country that expect applicants for PR and citizenship to meet minimum requirements for proficiency in the local language. It would seem like common sense to learn the local language before going somewhere - many do a little language study before even traveling somewhere as a tourist, let alone to live. To demand the system change to accommodate you when you don't seem willing to put in sufficient effort yourself is unreasonable.
 * M.K. (at CLJF): However Japan didn’t provide the support in learning languages the way Germany or other developed countries do. The language is extremely difficult to learn and it takes time to master yet so little understanding from coworkers. They take for granted that you speak English because you are foreigner not because you invested your time and money learning. You have the unique skills foreigners have but you also need to have the skills Japanese people have. Japanese workers are not expected the same. On top of that there’s no “language ability” as performace evaluation. They only see “you can’t do what Japanese can therefore you are incompetent”. Talk about fair treatment;(
 * L.B. (at M.K.): Extremely difficult for Europeans, yes, but mostly because it is so different. it should be less of a problem for other Asians, like the Taiwanese mentioned. It's not much more difficult for a speaker of a Chinese dialect to learn English as it is to learn Japanese.
 * N. (at CLJF): nobody is talking about Japanese citizenship, only about long term residence. these two are completely separate issues.
 * Guest: This comment was deleted.
 * e. (at Guest): Your projection about Peng is quite amazing. And wrong.
 * J. (at Guest): Or he and his wife are working crazy hours whilst also bringing up a young child? Qualifications such as a PhD and high salary level at a relatively young age contribute greatly to the 70 points required.
 * P.B.: Get real, Japan. How can you be expecting foreigners to work for you, when your country is so xenophobic.
 * t.: The vast majority of people do not want nor look for PR, they just want to be able to work and live freely. Few people want to settle. The closed image Japan has is due to the draconian policies that for decades made it virtually impossible for anyone to come to Japan, get a job and just work. Good example of this are the thousands of Indonesians and Filipinos who want to work in many Japanese industries, and many industries and businesses want to hire them, but the insanely absurd requirements enforced by the central government make that impossible. It's the govt. that stops foreigners from working in Japan, not society as a whole. The opposition to foreign workers do not come from the businesses or the customers, it comes from the government.

Source

 * https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/04/national/fast-track-permanent-residency-rule-japan-looks-shed-closed-image/#.XbOZibJE2hA