COVER STORY: Living in Japan—Home from Home

Smoothing Integration of Resident Foreigners

In July 2009, the bill for partial amendment to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act passed into law in the Japanese Diet. In this article, Professor Kazuteru Tagaya of Chiba University talks to the Japan Journal’s Osamu Sawaji about the key features of the revised law. Professor Tagaya—the head of the Residence Management Committee established under the Commission on Immigration Policy—was instrumental in putting together the proposal that served as the basis for the amendment.


Every state has laws and systems that regulate the entry and departure of foreign nationals and their residence status. In Japan, the management of the immigration and residence of foreign nationals had been conducted on the basis of two laws, namely, the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (hereafter, Immigration Control Law), and the Alien Registration Act (hereafter, Alien Registration Law). In July 2009, major amendments were made to these laws, and these amendments are now gradually being implemented.

Changes to the training and technical internship programs have been in effect since July 2010.

The purpose of the programs is to educate people from developing countries in the advanced technology and knowledge that Japan can offer, and to develop human resources capable of contributing to the economic development in their native countries. “Until now,” says Professor Tagaya, “trainees and technical internees enter Japan under the residence status of ‘Trainee,’ as their purpose of staying here was to get educated. It comes as no surprise, then, that institutions were not obligated to conclude an employment contract with them.”

At some hosting institutions, trainees and technical internees were required to engage in unskilled labor, and failed as a consequence to acquire specialized knowledge and skills. “To eliminate deplorable cases like that, the revised law gives the residence status of ‘Technical Intern Training’ to those engaged in hands-on technical training and training involving internships. This means that hosting institutions will be obliged to observe the Labor Standards Act and the Minimum Wage Act following their entry.”


Since July 2010, moreover, residence statuses that had been separate, such as “College Student” and “Pre-College Student,” were amalgamated. Prior to the change, the Government had typically given the residence status of “Pre-College Stu-dent” to international students enrolled in high schools and Japanese language schools, whereas foreign students studying at colleges were given the status of “College Student.” By amalgamating these statuses into the single classification of “Student,” international students no longer need apply to change their visa status when entering “college” from their “pre-college.”

From July 2012 onward, moreover, the maxi-mum period of stay for those with the resident status of “Student” will be extended from the current two years and three months. This change will render unnecessary the filing of an application for extending the period of stay while still in school. In addition, an action has already been taken since last April to allow international students to continue looking for a job for up to one year from graduation (not just for 180 days as was stipulated formally), provided that their residence statuses are legitimate and their colleges support their job search activities. The Japanese Government has put on its agenda a plan to recruit 300,000 students from overseas by 2020. By improving convenience for international students, the modifications should provide legal support for achieving that plan.


Another major change concerns the introduction in July 2012 of a new system of residence management. At the moment, when a foreign national enters Japan with the intent of staying in the country for the medium to long term, information about the person at the time of entry is kept with a local immigration office in accord with the Immigration Control Law, whereas the post-entry information is maintained by a municipal authority in the person’s place of residence based on the Alien Registration Law. However, local authorities find it increasingly difficult to keep information about foreign nationals up to date with the necessary agility. Moreover, despite the fact that the number of marriages between Japanese citizens and foreign nationals is rising, information about Japanese and foreign nationals are stored under different systems: in the case of the former, the basic resident register sys-tem based on the Resident Registration Law, and in the case of the latter, the alien registration sys-tem based on the Alien Registration Law. For this reason, an international couple may not be recognized as a single household, and this has consequently complicated the provision of household-based administrative services such as the National Health Insurance system.

Under the new system of residence management, the Alien Registration Law is abolished and the national authority manages in integrated fashion information about the residence of foreign nationals. Accepting information about the residence of foreign nationals, the municipal authorities then submit this to the national authority.

The Resident Registration Law was also revised so that, as with Japanese citizens, information about foreign nationals would be kept under the basic resident register system. In this way, resident foreigners should be able to enjoy a range of administrative services comparable to those already available to Japanese nationals, such as national health insurance and the child allowance, because the office procedures to receive administrative services have been simplified.

“It is Japanese policy to accept foreign nation-als in greater numbers. The Immigration Control Law was revised to integrate foreign nationals le-gally entering Japan as residents, not to leave them unattended,” says Professor Tagaya.