Japan implements language proficiency requirements for certain visa applicants

mmikhael about 3 hours ago 31 commentsRead Article on japantimes.co.jp

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lamasery•about 2 hours ago

Key detail:

> 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.

The claim appears to be that people were using up visa slots for things like interpreters or other jobs where clearly 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.

[EDIT] I mean, in the framing provided by the government, the above appears to be what's going on. Governments may lie, of course.

Tade0•about 1 hour ago

There's also the issue of people going to Japan to buy out several properties to then rent them out.

socalgal2•about 1 hour ago

Is that a thing? I remember a few years ago when they added a bunch of regulations to rentals that raised the costs.

dudeinjapan•31 minutes ago

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.

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.

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.

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.

kakacik•about 1 hour ago

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.

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.

But japan is japan and one of most closed societies globally, nobody should be surprised by this.

vr46•32 minutes ago

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.

And twelve years ago, the Swiss voted to restrict EU FoM for itself and the backlash was instant.

Can't blame the government, this is the Swiss voting public doing their best to be dickheads.

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.

Mainan_Tagonist•13 minutes ago

Such dickheads the Swiss voting public, how dare they exercise a direct democracy?! So inconveniencing!

freetime2•43 minutes ago

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.

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.

I regret not studying sooner and harder, and a clear language requirement probably would have influenced me to try harder.

helsinkiandrew•about 2 hours ago

> The new benchmark has been set at the equivalent of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) B2 level.

B2 is upper intermediate. Probably 2-5 years of study

https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-referen...

pjc50•about 2 hours ago

Or JLPT N2. Which is quite difficult - approx 4000 words and 1000 kanji. That's several years of learning for all but the most proficient.

(The scale starts at N5 and lower numbers are harder)

fl4regun•about 1 hour ago

It should be noted that JLPT is not a direct equivalent to CEFR. CEFR requires you to pass speaking and writing, JLPT does not demand you to be able to write, or speak, at all. IT only tests listening and reading. This ironically means that while yeah, you will be able to read a LOT of kanji with JLPT N2, you might not be anywhere near B2 level at speaking and conversation, and probably not at all when it comes to writing (writing Kanji is a whole other thing beyond being able to read, it requires dedicated practice, but anyways a lot of people now don't need to since you can type it out on your phone or computer, and just copy that onto the form or whatever you are writing on)

cute_boi•about 1 hour ago

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

bena•about 2 hours ago

I mean, seems fair.

If I'm applying for a work visa where the work I'm doing would require me to know Japanese, I should know Japanese.

eviks•about 1 hour ago

Why do you need that requirement be validated by people and at a level not connection to the place of work?

ryandrake•about 1 hour ago

Presumably 1. the "places of work" are not doing sufficient validation, and therefore 2. regulation is needed when the non-regulated path is failing.

vidarh•31 minutes ago

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.

So either you vet the companies offering those jobs, or you vet the visa applicants.

lo_zamoyski•33 minutes ago

Because the government is responsible for border control and immigration?

The alternative is that the company must provide evidence, but I don't see how this is better.

fzeroracer•about 2 hours ago

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.

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.

pavon•about 1 hour ago

But the law doesn't apply to all ESI jobs, just a subset which (ostensibly) do need to know Japanese.

fzeroracer•20 minutes ago

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.

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.

bena•about 2 hours ago

See, I would have figured the "Specialist in Humanities" part of it would not include software development.

I just looked up the definition/qualifications for it and I misunderstood the bit.

I thought it was sub categories. Engineers, who are Specialists in Humanities, who are doing International Services.

But it's more like three different categories. Engineers OR Specialists in Humanities OR International Services.

It seems like they could just move International Services to its own category. (Based on the information in this link: https://portal.jp-mirai.org/en/work/s/highly-skilled-hr/giji...)

morpheuskafka•about 1 hour ago

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?

serf•about 2 hours ago

>If I'm applying for a work visa where the work I'm doing would require me to know Japanese, I should know Japanese.

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.

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 a lot of people.

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.

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.

bena•about 2 hours ago

Ok, but neither of those are about work visas.

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.

pjc50•about 2 hours ago

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.

estebank•about 1 hour ago

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.