The Visa Game

    Japanese Immigration authorities have always published rather strict guidelines for visas, often leaving out important details and arbitrarily interpreting and applying the rules that have been published. Although other countries have similar tough practices with visas (the U.S. is a real mess), it can be said that Japan is one of the more strict countries and its rules more confusing than others. In addition, the ambiguous rules seem to be constantly changing.

    Nevertheless, do not despair. At the same time, if you are a native speaker of English, Japan can be one of the easier countries in the world to enter and work in if you know how.

    Officially, working visas can only be granted to skilled or educated foreign people to perform work that is necessary and that Japanese nationals cannot perform. However, in practice there seems to be a tacit understanding, if not a direct agreement, between Immigration and the business community that allows a variety of visas to be given for many different purposes.

    One important area is foreign language instruction, which the government of this export-driven Japanese economy believes is vitally important. Therefore, as long as there is a school or company that will sponsor a college graduate native speaker of English (essentially meaning there is market demand), Immigration will generally issue the working visa without much trouble. Furthermore, let me tell you emphatically; there is a huge market demand for English conversation in Japan.

    Working visas for other nonteaching jobs will also be issued for workers from companies that request them. Generally foreign firms in Japan are allotted a certain number of visas for expatriate staff based on a percentage of their total staff. For example, if a foreign company employs 500 Japanese they could employ about 25 to 50 foreign nationals depending on how strongly they made their case with Immigration.

    Japanese firms can also sponsor foreigners to work for them in Japan by making the applications and stating that the foreign employees are essential to their business activities. The firm also has to explain why the jobs the foreigners will do cannot be done by a Japanese. In many cases, Japanese firms will meet the essence of the law by ambiguously listing the prospective employee's job category as something like "language consultant" or "translator," even if he or she will be making sales calls to foreign clients, designing software or whatever.

    The title of this chapter is "The Visa Game" because sometimes it seems like a game with winners and losers depending on how crafty you are and how well you play the game. Imagine that you are a quarterback with the ball on your own 20-yard line. Immigration is the defense, and you have to go 80 yards for a score (obtaining your visa). To an inexperienced quarterback, this could be a daunting task, but with good knowledge of the defense, a well-prepared game plan, and good play execution, you should find yourself in the end zone before long, just like Joe Montana used to do.

    At the beginning, you will be told by officials at Japanese embassies abroad that in order to go to Japan to work, you must first obtain a working visa before entering the country, which requires sponsorship by a company in Japan. Although the embassy officials are only doing their job, this is a little irrational (like a Catch 22) because 90 percent of the people who are hired to work in Japan are hired in Japan. Particularly most English schools generally will not even consider resumes sent from abroad. There are just too many unknown variables making it unlikely that any one applicant will ever work for them and thus not worth their time to respond. Most schools would rather rely on people who can walk into their office and meet with them, in other words, people who are already in Japan.

    So, here is the catch: In most cases, you will have to first go to Japan as a tourist on a 90-day visa (for most countries). You then interview for jobs, which is legal. However, when asked at the airport Immigration desk or at an overseas embassy while you apply for a tourist visa, I certainly would not mention that is what you intend to do. I underlined this point for emphasis. Going to job interviews on a tourist visa is not illegal, but if you give Immigration or embassy officials reason to believe that is what you will do, it is not illegal for them to not allow you to enter Japan.

    After arriving in Japan and finding a company that will sponsor you, you can then get your visa changed to a proper working status. Sometimes this can be done in Japan, but usually you will have to leave the country to do this. However, it is not much trouble to fly to Korea or Hong Kong for a few days. The cheap shopping might even pay for the trip, and or the school might pick up the tab as well.

    In recent years some countries like the U.S. and the U.K. have had reciprocal agreements with Japan where each country's nationals can enter for tourism without obtaining a visa. This is convenient, but in this area Japanese Immigration is very strict. You cannot change this status in Japan because essentially you have no visa status. However, if you take the extra time to actually get a tourist visa stamped on your passport by a Japanese consulate before leaving for Japan, it may be possible to change your status in Japan, depending on what Immigration officer you happen to get, which month it is, or which way the wind is blowing that day.

    The time from when you find a company to sponsor you and this company submits the paperwork to Immigration until the time you receive your certificate of eligibility should take anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on how busy Immigration is. It seems to be shorter toward the end of the year. After receiving this paperwork, you must then leave Japan for a few days and get the actual visa issued at a Japanese embassy or consulate abroad. You can then reenter Japan and begin working.

    Thus you could expect to have two weeks to two months free time on your hands without pay after finding a job, especially if you are being sponsored by one of the leading schools. On a more questionable side of the visa game, however, the practice of working on tourist visas is widespread if not even the norm. I would even go so far as to say more than 60 percent of the people I have spoken with who work in Japan, started working on a tourist visa, even if it was only a few private lessons. Many still work on tourist visas.

    Frankly speaking, Immigration does not seem to care about people teaching English on tourist visas (provided they do not overstay) nor is any action seldom taken, at least not against English teachers. Moreover, this is not just a phenomenon with individuals and small schools. Many well-established English schools in Japan routinely hire and work people on tourist visas, although the largest schools generally do not do this. It was not until just a few years ago that there was even a law on the books that would allow employers to be prosecuted.

    This is okay, the schools will tell you because your paperwork is being "processed" for a visa. Often the schools will skirt the rules by saying that you are only "training." Only they have your contract and since your payday could well be six weeks away from your starting date, there is no evidence to suggest that you have been doing anything other than "training." Of course, once they pay you, they have clearly broken the law, but this is the way they have been doing things for decades without any serious objections from Immigration.

A Visa Story

    When I first came to Tokyo to work (after finishing a year of study abroad in Tsukuba), I got a full-time job with a smaller medium-size school after two weeks of job hunting. Although I had a student visa at the time, the school gave me a weekly work schedule with 40 hours (more than the 20 allowed for under the student visa) and assured me that my visa would soon appropriately be changed to a working visa (all done in Japan at the time) with them handling all of the paperwork. Just leave everything to them I was told.

    Several of the other teachers at the school were working on tourist visas and had been waiting for several months for sponsorship, and all of the teachers with working visas had gone through the same game. In several cases, the school even asked teachers to extend their tourist visas another three months due to a "backlog" at Immigration.

    It became clear that the school was intentionally waiting until the last possible moment to sponsor teachers with proper visas and lying to us about what was going on. In fact, two months after starting work and a week before my student visa was to expire, the school manager told me I had an appointment to go to Immigration with several other teachers to get the working visa.

    A few days later, three of us were waiting in the lobby of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau. The number two guy in the company met us. He hastily pulled new contracts out of his briefcase and asked us to sign them on the spot with little explanation. The only difference was that the starting dates had been adjusted to coincide with when the working visa was to be granted. The school manager clumsily explained that these contracts were only for "paperwork" purposes and that the other contracts would still regulate our employment. We all signed, and we all received our one-year working visas that day, to our great relief.

    One other brief experience at the school:

    Two teachers from another branch had been getting restless about getting their tourist visas changed to working visas. So, one morning they ignorantly went to Immigration to see if they could get anything done about it.

    While they were waiting at the counter, one of them said, "Hey, could you hurry it up. I have to be at work at 1:00 o'clock." This caught the attention of the Immigration official who with raised eyebrow inquired, "You are working now?" The teacher either without knowing or perhaps as part of a deliberate strategy spilled everything.

    The result was a phone call to the school demanding that the two teachers not work until their visas were properly processed. The school complied (without any loss of pay for the teachers) and properly sponsored their visas the next week. There were no fines nor any punishment by Immigration. Other teachers were asked by the school manager not to go to Immigration by themselves.

    To date, I personally do not believe much has changed in the industry as a whole. As I previously mentioned, however, the larger schools basically follow Immigration rules and procedures. As the schools get smaller you will find more and more inconsistencies, but I am not attempting to blame these people. The school owners are small businessmen and women just trying to survive, and their business is putting native English speakers in front of classes.

    I have never heard about an English school being raided, nor have I heard about an English teacher being punished for working on a tourist visa (so long as it is not overstayed). Although I do not doubt that these things have happened, the entire situation seems to be treated like jaywalking; it is on the books but not enforced. There are many things like this in Japan.

    Amazingly the tax office and the Immigration office seem to have no communication at all. As long as you pay your taxes, the tax office could care less what kind of visa you have, and as for Immigration, they seem to have bigger problems to worry about, e.g., tens of thousands of illegal workers who have overstayed their visas. Chasing down a few English teachers on valid tourist visas simply is not very high on their list of priorities, but at the point anyone overstays a visa, tourist or otherwise, finding and deporting that person does become a high priority for Immigration.

Another Visa Story

    Rather than "Another Visa Story," perhaps this should be entitled, "A Success Story." In 1992, I had just returned to Japan after a three-year absence in the U.S. where I had completed a master's degree. Although I had higher goals, with over $30,000 in debt I nevertheless found myself doing some part-time work back at an English school where I had worked three years before. Unfortunately this school was on the verge of bankruptcy, although unknown to the teachers at the time, and salaries would not be paid for quite a long time.

    One of the full-time teachers I met, Doug, was in a difficult situation. He had two months of back salary (full-time) owed to him; he was on a tourist visa; and he did not see how he could manage by taking two to three weeks to find another job and then wait another six weeks for the payday.

    Mostly out of desperation Doug did the only thing he could. He started his own school... kind of. First, he made up a sign advertising for English students with his phone number. He then made several hundred copies and posted them all over his neighborhood and some other areas of Tokyo that were convenient to him. He put a few signs on bulletin boards, but most of them (pasted to cardboard with strings attached) went on various poles near train stations and busy intersections.

    The calls began to come in, and within three months Doug had ¥180,000 a month in income from about 15 lessons a week at prices ranging from ¥3,000 to ¥5,000 per hour. Including cancellations, Doug actually taught about 10 to 12 lessons a week to get the ¥180,000. The money was paid right away with each lesson, and Doug was earning most of his previous monthly salary of ¥220,000 even though he was teaching only about one-third of the previous teaching time.

    Just before the extension on his tourist visa expired, Doug flew back to his home country to spend the Christmas holidays with his family. He then reentered Japan with a new three-month tourist visa. Just before this expired, he applied for and received a three-month extension. Just before this expired, he flew to Korea for two weeks of backpacking and shopping. He then reentered Japan with a new three-month tourist visa. Just before the extension on this expired, Doug was back in his home country spending another Christmas with his family.

    In fact, Doug repeated this cycle for five years until marrying a Japanese and getting a spouse visa. Along the way he asked for and received some new passports in his home country, and it seems that he lost his passport a few times in various Asian countries where he traveled to, always obtaining a new passport before returning to Japan.

    Five years later, Doug earns about ¥500,000 a month with a 40-hour week, nearly all of the work being private lessons at his home (reaching that level about three years ago); he lives on the 31st floor of a new high-rise building (¥175,000 per month for 75 m2); he earned a black belt in karate; and he married a beautiful Japanese lady. Doug has never even been to college.

    The legality of Doug's actions could be brought into question, but this is a very common story, although Doug is the only person I know who did this for five years. During the entire time, however, Doug never overstayed his visa. He never gave Immigration a reason to identify him as an illegal worker.

    Moreover, Doug used to tell me that he really wanted to stay in Japan, but sponsorship was impossible because he did not have a college degree. He began going to a karate school and tried applying for a cultural visa to attend the school but was denied because he had not studied karate in his home country. Doug said his rationale was that this was the only way he could stay in Japan. Even if Immigration were to somehow find him out and deport him, he would be no worse off than if he left on his own.

    The main point I would like to make about getting a visa is not that you should come to Japan and work on a tourist visa, but that in most cases you will have to come to Japan to find and secure a good job. So, do not be afraid to come on a tourist visa in order to go to the necessary interviews in person, and then change to a working status later. Related to this, you should also be ready for some likely "inconsistencies" with actual Immigration rules, often at the orchestration of well-established language schools, or maybe at your own initiative through offering private lessons.

    In regard to ethics, some people might not think it is appropriate for me as the author to present things that are not entirely in line with Immigration rules. As I mentioned before there is a kind of Catch 22 surrounding the rules. In fact, it would be rather difficult for most people to come to Japan to work if absolute honesty were used at all times and all rules were followed to the letter. Again, in many cases it is the established schools that are guiding people along questionable paths.

    Moreover, Japan is an irrational society with completely different ethical standards from Western society. I would describe this as "situational ethics," meaning that what is right or wrong depends on the circumstances of the situation. One characteristic seems to be that it is okay to bend the rules as long as you are doing it for the company or the group and you do not get caught. If by some chance you do get caught, then you have lost face, and must take the fall by apologizing profusely and possibly resigning in disgrace as well to make amends for your actions.

    Committing ritual hara-kiri is not so common nowadays, but politicians and business leaders occasionally hang themselves or jump off of buildings, still considered an honorable thing to do. In the case of a foreigner, I guess atonement would mean making a profuse apology before being allowed to get on an airplane and go home.

    Looking at the big picture, Japan is a society where top government ministry officials routinely take bribes and irresponsibly dole out precious tax money to inefficient bloated firms with excessive prices; major companies in many industries routinely engage in unethical business practices; gangsters have established offices where they carry out business often negotiating with police as to what crimes they can and cannot commit; the police in turn routinely ignore blatant crimes that occur openly and regularly.

    All of these things are the norm in Japan. With fine upstanding examples like these from the government itself, it is no wonder that English schools and companies as well apply their own brand of situational ethics in regard to the visa status of their foreign employees to allow them to operate their businesses and survive.

    I did not write this script for Japanese society. I am only reporting on it. I just call 'em the way I see 'em. More importantly, I believe that newcomers to Japan should be aware of the situation as it exists. Otherwise you could easily find yourself afraid to even come to Japan because it seems impossible. You could also find yourself in a rather stressful situation of being asked to begin work while your visa application is being "processed." By understanding the situation, you will at least be able to go through the process with a little more ease knowing what to expect.

    Finally, I would like to comment about some specific visa types. The most common type is the "Specialist in Humanities/International Services" Visa which is issued to people who work at English conversation schools. A close cousin to this is the "Instructors" Visa for people who teach at more institution-like organizations, e.g., high schools, colleges or vocational schools. There does not seem to be much different between the two except that the Instructors Visa seems to enjoy a higher standing at Immigration.

    At the end of a one-year contract for teaching, Immigration has allowed people to "self-sponsor" themselves in recent years. This was a very nice thing for Immigration to do because it takes much of the leverage away from the schools and empowers teachers. Essentially, you can work wherever you want to, often piecing together several good paying part-time jobs. As long as you present evidence of having earned enough money and paid tax on this, Immigration will allow teachers to self-sponsor themselves.

    For people on Instructors visas this seems to be a simple thing to do, but it is more difficult for people on the Specialist in Humanities/ International Services Visa. In this regard, Immigration procedures are quite arbitrary. Immigration seems to base its decisions on the reputation of the school(s) you are working at and the amount of income you earn. Someone earning the minimum ¥250,000 a month at several English conversation schools would likely not be allowed to self-sponsor whereas someone earning ¥500,000 a month working at a high school and several part-time jobs would not have much trouble at all. As for all of the people in between, you will just have to roll the dice and see what happens. Most people should keep a good relationship with at least one school that could responsor you.

    During the bubble it was very common for people to obtain "Cultural" visas as a way to stay in Japan. These visas are granted for six month periods so that people can study different cultural aspects of Japan, including Japanese language, flower arranging, judo, etc. The main requirement to get this was that you be enrolled in one of these kinds of schools and have evidence of attendance to renew after six months. Under this visa, people can work up to 20 hours a week, but since nobody is really counting, people often piece together a couple of part-time jobs for full-time work.

    Due to widespread abuse, people using these visas solely for the purpose of working, Immigration has tightened up the requirements making it more difficult to get this kind of visa. The main obstacle is that you must show evidence of having attended this kind of cultural activity in your home country for six months or longer. Thus, you could not suddenly decide to study flower arranging after arriving in Japan and then get a cultural visa for that.

    Short-term entertainment visas are also commonly used by people doing work in fields such as modeling, acting, entertainment, etc. Here the requirements are similar to any other line of work. Basically, you need to have a company sponsor you.

    Once you locate a sponsoring company for whatever kind of work you will be doing (generally through interviews in Japan), you will then receive a certificate of eligibility which in most cases must be presented to a Japanese embassy or consulate abroad together with other paperwork that your sponsor will provide. At times this can be done in Japan; again be sure to check the wind direction that day. What better way to check the wind direction than to talk to people you meet in Japan who just completed the Immigration procedures.

    For further and more detailed information on visas you should look at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' URL: www.mofa.go.jp/visa/ There is also a detailed book on the subject, A Guide to Entry, Residence and Registration Procedures in Japan for Foreign Nationals, which is produced by the Japan Immigration Association. The main summary of the various visa types from this book's most recent edition (1996) is listed on the following pages.

    After this summary of visa types, we have provided a list of many (not complete) Immigration offices throughout Japan. When we started calling these offices asking for their addresses, many Immigration officers began arrogant interrogations over the telephone without answering our simple question, "What is your address?" Some of them were so abusive that my assistant could not take it anymore and had to give up after an hour. I guess some Immigration officers just enjoy yelling at foreigners, one of the perks that comes with the job. For next year's edition, I personally will take to the phones; read the riot act, if necessary, to these so-called "civil servants"; and get this complete information. The list of Immigration offices is followed by a list of overseas consulates and embassies.

{The visa table which appears in the book has been omitted. Please look for this information at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' URL: www.mofa.go.jp/visa/}

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