New Residency Status to Come into Effect in Japan Monday

Tokyo, March 30 (Jiji Press)--With Japan expected to accept up to some 340,000 foreign workers over the next five years following Monday's enforcement of the revised immigration control law, the central and local governments are facing an urgent need to prepare for an influx of such workers. Under the revised law, new residency categories will be created to allow more foreigners to enter the workforce. Type one status will be granted to industry-ready foreigners and type two to those with higher skills. The new visa program covers 14 industries that suffer serious labor shortages, including the agriculture and auto maintenance sectors. Type two workers will be limited to the construction and shipbuilding industries. Foreign workers applying for type one status will need to pass sector-specific skill tests and common Japanese-language exams for all applicants. Such tests will be launched in April, with skill tests for the nursing care, restaurant and accommodation sectors and Japanese-language exams conducted in the Philippines and Japan. Successful applicants are expected to join the workforce around summer. As for the remaining 11 sectors, foreign technical trainees gaining the type one visa will be the main new workers for the time being. Some of such trainees may gain the visa status as early as mid-April. But preparations for accepting new foreign workers remain slow. The central government planned to conclude memorandums of cooperation on the new residency status with nine countries in order to eradicate malicious brokers, but it had struck such a deal with only four countries, including the Philippines and Nepal, as of Friday. The government is expected to sign such a memorandum with Vietnam and Mongolia soon, but negotiations will unlikely end anytime soon with the remaining three countries. In addition, a fewer than initially assumed number of local governments applied for state subsidies to finance the establishment and operation of consultation windows for new foreign workers. Some local governments are expected to start the fiscal year from April without such windows. The central government regards consultation windows as a pillar of its policies to create an inclusive society. The Justice Ministry plans to take a second round of applications for such subsidies from Monday. END