Japanese government suddenly raises income bar for foreigners seeking permanent residency, will apply new rules even to applications filed six months ago.

On Thursday, the Japanese government announced new guidelines for foreigners seeking permanent residence in Japan.

Under Japan’s Immigration Control Act, foreign nationals seeking to become permanent residents of Japan must satisfy three conditions. They must demonstrate good conduct (i.e. not break any laws) and have financial assets/job skills that will prevent them from becoming a burden on social welfare programs. Finally, the applicant’s permanent residency status must be determined to serve Japan’s national interests.

Those are all broadly defined conditons, and the Japanese government’s new interpretation of them is going to significantly raise the bar for displaying financial security. Until now, an annual income of roughly 3 million yen (US$19,000) was considered to be a baseline, but generally acceptable, amount for a permanent residency applicant. 3 million yen isn’t a lot; it’s more or less a typical salary for a low-level office job in Japan. Still, with proper budgeting and a frugal lifestyle, it’s enough to make ends meet.

Under the new guidelines, however, foreigners will have to show that they earn an annual income above the national average for Japanese citizens. It’s unclear whether this is referring to the applicant’s individual income or that of their household as a whole, but according to government statistics the average unmarked adult income in Japan is approximately 4.5 million yen, bringing minimum required income up by 50 percent. The increase is even larger if evaluators are going to be using the average household income for Japanese citizens, which is 5.8 million yen.

But hey, if those foreigners who want to obtain permanent residency status can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and double their income, they can just file their applications before the new guidelines go into effect, right? Nope. The government announced the new guidelines on October 1, and said that the higher-than-average-Japanese-citizen income requirement will be applied to permanent residence applications filed as of April, but that’s not April of next year. No, the new income guideline is being retroactively applied to applications that were submitted as much as six months ago.

▼ It seems unreasonable to make the only alternative to the retroactive increase be to travel back in time and file your application on an earlier date, seeing as how even the wealthy struggle to find usable time machines.

Two other criteria are set to change from this coming April, one of which involves the amount of time a foreigner who’s married to a Japanese citizen has to live in Japan before they can obtain permanent residency. Currently, the couple must have been married for at least three years, and the foreign spouse must have lived in Japan for at least one year in order to be eligible. From April, those requirements are going to be lengthened to the couple having been married for five years, and the foreign spouse having lived in Japan for at least three. Note that these requirements are in addition to the above income requirement, not a substitute for it.

Foreign residents who are not married to a Japanese citizen will need to have lived in Japan for 10 years in order to be eligible for permanent residency, an amount of time which is unchanged from the current system. The 10-year residency requirement is going to be a moot point for many younger applicants, though, because from April evaluators will also be looking at permanent residency applicants’ projected pension benefits, with the new guidelines saying applicants should have benefits equivalent to those of someone who has been paying into Japan’s national pension system for 30 years.

All of this is taking place against a backdrop of Japanese residents dealing with the most severe price inflation in generations for basic goods and services, while also seeing more and more foreign tourists spending carefreely while on vacation in Japan. At the same time, Japan’s foreign resident population has increased, but as the majority of them are working for Japanese employers and getting paid in yen, they’re not reaping the benefits of the weak yen that foreign tourists are. Foreign residents can still make easy scapegoats for frustrated Japanese nationals who feel like their standard of living is eroding, though, and with foreign residents of Japan not being able to vote, it’s not surprising that politicians going to bat for them on this matter are in short supply.

Aside from playing to the preferences of a certain segment of the voter base, it’s hard to see how the new guidelines will actually benefit Japan. The required 30 years of pension benefits is likely to have a negative affect on younger foreigner’ interest in relocating to Japan, since it would involve taking on the risk of potentially spending their prime working years in Japan without knowing whether they’ll be able to settle in the country permanently until they hit their 50s. That, in turn, lessens the potential for immigration to help counteract the negative effects of Japan’s falling birthrate and shrinking total population. Raising permanent residency requirements isn’t going to do anything to help Japan attract the world’s best and brightest expats, either. The stricter guidelines don’t do anything to benefit them, and between Japan’s lower salaries for executive positions compared to overseas companies, plus the weak yen, high-flying professionals can earn significantly more working elsewhere, then enjoy the best of what Japan has to offer to wealthy leisure tourists without really needing to reside in the country.

But hey, at least if foreign residents are unable to obtain permanent residency under the new guidelines, at least they can look forward to paying higher fees when they have to renew their visas.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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