Japan's new residency rules leave long-term foreigners facing uncertain futures
Japan moves to tighten rules for foreigners
Japan will tighten permanent residency rules from October 1, requiring applicants to exceed the average household income, prove Japanese proficiency, and hold a pension pot equal to 30 years of payouts. The changes, applied retroactively to applications since April, come as anti-immigrant sentiment rises and the far-right Sanseito party gains seats. Long-term residents like Abdul and Sarah Nelkin now fear rejection and are weighing leaving or giving up their original citizenship.
Even seemingly decent people are just saying racist stuff. I've worked for this country and specifically avoided breaking any rules, and they're saying you are never enough. That's really hard.
- autoexec
Requiring proficiency in the language is reasonable, but requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane. That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
- Revanche1367
The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
- zergrush
I just find it odd so many non-Japanese media and commentators weigh in on this.
Japan is not a multicultural country. You can't become Japanese through paperwork. It is very much through blood heritage, your language and cultural proficiency.
The bar to be Japanese is much higher than say Canadian or French. So why shouldn't they create laws that is aimed at benefiting themselves and their country without depending on foreigners?
Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
- thatslast
> 56.3 percent of Japanese people said they opposed accepting more foreigners, up from 35.6 percent in 2024
that's a huge jump in 1 year. What happened?
- dgunay
Don't worry, I'm sure they're going to aggressively tackle the cultural and economic problems contributing to their fertility crisis, right? Right?
- redrix
The 30 years of pension is a bit ridiculous. Why not make the requirement scale with the applicant’s age?
Someone applying for PR at 30 has far more time to contribute than someone applying for PR at 50.
- lazyasciiart
This is certainly going to conflict with their moves to make it easier to attract aged care workers to the country. Perhaps all the elderly people are expected to patriotically look after themselves?
https://unseen-japan.com/foreign-elderly-care-workers-japan/
- famahar
It's really unfortunate that they have approved these changes. I know at least 7 people that have decided to leave Japan because of it. They were making enough money to support themselves, but under the rule they basically gave no chance of ever reaching that new income requirement. Some jobs just don't have that much upward financial mobility. Which is fine if you live outside the city without a large family, but these rules are harsh to anyone that isn't working a high pay job. Permanent recidency would have allowed them to work outside their visa category, easily start a business, and utilize their Japanese language skills in a larger market.
Its quite a shock since historically the government has moved extremely slow when implementing policies that have a large impact. But the last 6 months have been extremely anxiety inducing with a new immigration change being announced and approved every month.
- ks2048
I support countries having the ability to limit who can enter, but “rich people” is a terrible metric. How about “cool people” or “nice people”?
- iamEAP
I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws, in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
Countries have a right to change their laws, but I believe it’s in everyone’s interest for those laws to be changed while respecting principles of predictability and legal certainty.
People planned and rearranged their entire lives around immigration law in force at one point, perhaps 5 years ago, and now a new law is going into force that slams the door shut to having a basic sense of stability, with only a 6 month transition period. It’s cruel. And it sends a bad sign to anyone looking to move.
The USA can afford to be cruel because people will deal with it for high wages. Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large. It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.