After twelve years here, I finally received my Permanent Residency permission stamp last week.
I became eligible back in 2005, after living here for ten years (you can also become eligible by being married to a Japanese citizen and living here for five years), but since I still had a valid visa for another year I didn’t bother. Then, when it came time to renew my spouse visa last June, I decided to fill out the paperwork for permanent residency and submit it at the same time. The spouse visa renewal took two week to complete. The notice for my residency finally came after eight months. I went down to the immigration office the next day and got my passport stamped. Monday I have to go to my local town office and get a new alien registration card.
So what does this mean?
No more visa to renew, which means no more waiting for hours at the immigration office
No more dependence on anyone to stay in the country. Granted, I have no plans to leave my wife, but at least this means that if something catastrophic happens I’m not facing deportation on top of everything else.
Freedom to do any work I choose, as well as going into business for myself or just sitting on my butt all day, with no need for a guarantor.
Eligibility for government housing loans if we ever move to a new place.
Eligibility to vote in some parts of Japan (though not Tokyo at the moment).
Intangible warm fuzzies and a general feeling of accomplishment.
As mercenary as it sounds, it would probably depend on taxes.
China probably has the same deal worked out: I file returns in both countries, but my income earned in Japan is exempt from US taxes up to a fairly high amount (I still pay all the local, state and national taxes that Japanese citizens do, as well as US tax on income earned in the US). If that exemption were taken away, I’d probably start signing up for Japanese citizenship. I like America, but not enough to pay a double tax load when everything I do, have and get is here.
Thanks! Any idea why it takes so much longer than a regular visa?
As it turned out, I was one of three at my office who got their Permanent Residency this month. By coincidence, all our visas came up for renewal last June, so we decided to team up, find out exactly what we needed (I think 90% of we hear about immigration rules here is rumor and anecdote), and apply at the same time. I’d just recently become eligible, but the other two had been in Japan for 16 and 18 years (the latter actually got asked at the renewal counter why he was being so stupid as to keep renewing a regular visa), and had put it off because they’d heard horror stories about how intrusive and time consuming the process was.
Looking at the requirements, mine was actually the easiest since I had a spouse visa, so while the others had to show that they were financially stable and involved in their communities, mine was just assumed. In any case, they all took about the same time.
I’ve heard (and note my earlier post about 90% of immigration info being rumor), that it’s not required, but some officials pressure applicants to do so. More people every year are going permanent, so as the number of people applying for citizenship inevitably rises, there will undoubtedly be some outcry which will lead to an official clarification of what the rules are.
A name change would be awkward in my case, since my wife has taken my last name and our son (who is already a Japanese citizen) has a very non-Japanese name.
I wonder, Japanese law forbids spouses from having separate last names, except when one of them is a foreigner. If I have to change my name to become a citizen, does she have to change her name as well?
I got my back a few years ago, and it was actually pretty easy. My wife is thinking about applying now. I only know of a few Westerners who have citizenship, which doesn’t really seem to offer any advantage over p.r.
Kinda already have. Most folks follow a pretty relaxed mix of Shinto and Buddhism, but my mother-in-law is one of the minority who’s serious about one over the other, and in her case it’s Shinto. So far, the primary tenet seems to be, “when in doubt, wash.”
In Japan, there is something known as a “family register” (koseki), which is the ultimate arbiter of who you are legally. When a Japanese citizen has a name change – say they got married – the change is first made to the family register. You then take a copy of the register to the passport office and get a new passport with your new name. It works similarly when you gain citizenship. First a new family register is created and you then obtain all other documentation based on it. Legally, there are only certain characters that can be used to write a name in the family register: 2230 kanji, hiragana and katana. The roman alphabet is not accepted.
As far as the family register is concerned, legally, you can keep the same name but you need to write it phonetically using katakana if you’re not from a country that uses chinese characters.
Like Sublight wrote, it’s apparently very common for bureaucrats to try to get people to change their name to something Japanese. Since neither the law governing family registers (koseki-hou) nor that governing government procedures (gyousei-tetsuzuki-hou) specify any rule other than the one outlined above, this sort of pressure is illegal. It’s still common, though.
Disclaimer: IANAJL
That said, congratulations!
I’m planning on applying next year when my current visa is up for renewal.
