There are approximately 3.96 million foreigners residing in Japan. There have been some cases of suspected fraudulent acquisition of visas for foreigners wishing to stay in Japan for long periods of time. When our reporting team conducted a follow-up investigation, a certain reality came to light.
Located in a residential area of Nerima Ward, the building houses approximately 80 registered companies on the second floor alone. The building, however has no sign of anyone being present. Nobody answered when the doorbell was rung and called out.
There are other buildings like this one in Arakawa Ward, where 46 businesses are housed on the ground floor, though the shutters remain down. Upon investigation, 21 out of 46 companies had managers with addresses in China.
Mr. A, who is originally from China and works as an administrative scrivener, handles visa applications and other procedures, agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity.
From Mr. A's story, the visa application process is as follows:
1) A visa application request is received from China, Taiwan, etc. via social media.
2) To ensure smooth registration, Mr. A, who lives in Japan, establishes a company with the applicant as representative director.
3) After registration, Mr. A resigns from his position as representative director.
https://news.ntv.co.jp/category/economy/e8931c7cb837491c96260443770ac176
9 Comments
I fail to see what the benefit is and the article is suspiciously light on details. Plenty of breathless reporting on these paper companies is a Nick Shirley-esque way, but this is all I could find on the supposed benefit:
ビザ取得を支援する男性
「医療関係とか、例えば子供の補助とか、（原則）3割の医療費を払うだけでいいから、それを狙って」
ビザを取得して日本に住むことで、社会保障制度を利用できることなどが魅力だと話します。
Really? I don’t understand how it could be worth it for Chinese people in particular. Can someone explain the benefit? And how many people are even on the visa type in question?
lmao what is this actual garbage rag trash. “ There have been some cases of suspected”
If I wanted social security system, I’d rather move to the Netherlands
Interestingly, this article does not appear on the English language version of the same website. (Or, at least, it hasn’t been uploaded yet.)
This is scare mongering to justify stripping foreign residents of their right to social security benefits.
lol the United States would be much better, even though not at the same par as many European countries. If you can’t pay at the hospital and you don’t have insurance, by law the hospital cannot reject you from the emergency room. You will still be treated regardless.
40,000 people on the Busness Manager Visa. There’s about 120 cases of potential fraud here.
0.3% fraud potentially.
But hey, when the moonies have their fingers in government an slush funds exist for a large swathe of the governing population, that’s ok.
After seeing some opposing views, I have one more issue with this article.
I think everyone knows that, at least for working visas, you need some undisclosed, transcendental immigration score of being a good boy and paying the juminzei and not changing companies and not having parking tickets 諸々 if you want to have a 5 year visa *eventually* right?
So are you telling me that, right before the change of value of capital, the Immigration accepted numerous applications of people who had no history of management, just with a pinky swear promise of managing a company (and a bounced check as proof of the money, I guess), with offices on the same general location, knowing that many people have been abusing this visa and the value was outdated, and gave on the first try 5 years for Chinese of all people? (No offence, I think Chinese are chill, just saying that you would suppose Japan would be harsher to you)
My hypothesis is that some people are confusing the “up to 5”. I don’t know how the management visa works, but find it pretty unlikely they’d give 5 to people with minimum amount and no history. But I digress
If that’s what was happened, then there is something extremely rotten in the Immigration. Even raising the value won’t matter. I know 5 million is low for running a company now, but it’s not a value that someone who is too poor to have healthcare in China have at hand to “treat a daughter with a serious disease” suddenly like that, methinks.
I understand very well people getting this visa to never opening a company and then getting a job. I saw this irl. It seems someone just was desperate to link this to the whole “gaijins sucking the healthcare system” pretty sloppily.
Lastly, why don’t they ask the Immigration why this is happening? Asking another gyoseishoshi is pointless. As someone who suffers and have many friends who also suffer in their hands, I deserve to know why they are so blind to manager visas from China. What’s going on? I want to know too.
Having multiple companies registered at one address doesn’t sound very odd to me. It sounds like a perfectly normal virtual office service.
I have a virtual office at Servcorp in Toranomon that my company is registered at. I imagine that there are hundreds registered there.