Japan sharply increased permanent residency fees and tightened requirements for foreign applicants. Officials cited rising public anxiety over immigration.
Japan increased its application fee for permanent residency by 2,000% on Thursday, raising the cost to 200,000 yen, about $1,271, from 10,000 yen, as part of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s broader push to tighten immigration rules. The increase, the largest in Japan’s history, took effect alongside new minimum requirements covering income, pension contributions and Japanese-language proficiency for foreign nationals seeking long-term settlement.
Takaichi, a hard-line conservative who took office recently, said the measures were necessary to address growing public concern over a rise in both immigration and tourism since the pandemic, driven in part by a weak yen and companies recruiting overseas staff to offset domestic labor shortages. “There are citizens who feel anxiety and a sense of unfairness,” Takaichi wrote on social platform X in announcing the policy. Under the revised rules, foreign nationals married to Japanese citizens or permanent residents must now wait five years of marriage and three years of residency in Japan to qualify, up from three and one years respectively; the standard residency period required for other applicants remains 10 years. Starting in April, applicants will also need to demonstrate basic conversational Japanese ability.
The changes followed a more than 400% increase in some tourist visa fees in July, which Japanese authorities described as reflecting inflation and currency fluctuations. Foreign residents now make up about 3.4% of Japan’s population of 119 million, the highest proportion on record, though permanent residents specifically still represent less than 1% of the total population. Critics, including some foreign residents, said the new requirements unfairly burden people already established in the country; Tokyo resident Micaiah Stevens, who has lived in Japan for a decade, told the BBC he felt the changes were unfair to foreigners in situations similar to his own. Rights advocates and some analysts have also noted that anti-immigration sentiment has spread on social media in Japan, accompanied by widely circulated but unsubstantiated claims about welfare spending and public safety linked to foreign residents. Hundreds of foreign residents reportedly lined up at immigration offices in the days before the fee increase took effect, seeking to file applications under the previous terms.
This report is based on information from AFP, UPI, the Associated Press and France24.