Guest Work in Japan: Some Inside Info

Inside info from an anonymous reader

I recently received this email from an anonymous reader:

Dear Professor Caplan,

My wife and I are long-term residents of Japan on renewable visas. We typically renew every one to three years. Until now, the fee has been roughly $40 USD (¥6,000), which was modest. However, the administrative hassle and uncertainty involved have always been significant.

The Japanese government recently passed a law that will dramatically raise these renewal fees — by roughly 5 to 7 times for most people. The new fees are expected to range from around $200 to $600 USD depending on visa length and category, with some cases potentially going even higher.

As someone who has written extensively about immigration policy, I thought this development might interest you. Japan has traditionally been very restrictive on immigration, and this large, sudden cost increase on existing legal residents could serve as a revealing real-world test case. It will be interesting to observe its effects on skilled workers, family formation, economic contributions, and public attitudes toward immigration.

I greatly appreciate your clear and principled work on open borders and immigration economics. Thank you for everything you do.

Best regards, [redacted]

To which I replied:

Even $600 is a rounding error compared to the earnings a janitor makes in Japan versus the Philippines, no?

Which led to a rather fascinating response, which I run in its entirety with the sender’s kind permission.

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Totally a rounding error. My wife is from the Philippines and I’ve lived there for 2 years a couple of time. I’ll include two wonderful pictures of us at the end of this email. My wife went to nurse assistant school in the Philippines with 3 lady friends. Her friends work hard 10-12 hour shifts and make about 450 pesos per day, that would be about $7 for a long hard day as a nurse assistant. When my wife got here I emailed her resume to all the hospitals within 1km, two got back to me right away and she was hired within a week despite speaking no Japanese.

Also we lived way outside Tokyo so this is not just like some sort of zero cost of integrating into the system thing. It was a huge amount of extra work mentally on everyone to get her into the job and working smoothly. But she was undoubtedly productive at that hospital and worked there until all the lockdowns and stuff, of course. She made the starting salary of 1400 yen per hour which is about $8.50 an hour. My math shows she started off making about 10 times the salary for doing the same job and everyone was happy. Little bit of stress on everyone to integrate her into the hospital but it was fine.

The numbers add up to exactly what you cite in larger studies. It matches my real-world experience living away from the cultural zoo enclosure that most country capitals tend to be. I guess it’s just one more huzzah for the generally exactly correct thing that you say all the time in your writings. I appreciate that.

My hope is a bright side of the increased cost of the visa will be there isn’t so much damn stress about if it gets approved. Our life is always on a damned knife edge because we would have to totally give up our lives if we suddenly had to move back because of our visas not being renewed. That aspect of this whole thing is never brought up enough in my opinion.

Have a wonderful day. If you get to Japan again I’ll happily buy you and your boys some Yoshinoya in Kawasaki.