| Key detail: > Immigration authorities say the move is aimed at preventing cases in which foreign workers obtain visas under one category, but then engage in unrelated or lower-skilled work. The claim appears to be that people were using up visa slots for things like interpreters or other jobs where clearly you'd need good language skills to actually do the job, including in Japanese, with the intent all along of doing some other job instead. An up-front test should let through almost all of the legitimate claimants of these visas, and stop almost all the fraudsters. Probably a lot cheaper than a similarly-effective level of after-the-fact auditing, or more-extensive checks into applicants' work situation. [EDIT] I mean, in the framing provided by the government, the above appears to be what's going on. Governments may lie, of course. |
| Company founder in Japan here. This is largely how I read this specific news--its narrowly scoped to prevent patterns of abuse, which there have indeed been isolated cases tantamount to human trafficking. That being said, there is a broader trend, that Japan's immigration authorities are becoming more foreigner-hostile, reflecting a broader political view shift in Japanese society (see: Sanseito political party) and one could argue in the US and globally. One data point: a few months back we had one of our employees denied a Permanent Resident Visa due to a clerical error where our company forgot to notify the immigration bureau of an address change--we literally moved our office across the street, same city block. Our lawyer said such a case was unheard of a few years ago; these were always handled as simple corrections, instead the poor chap had to go to the back of the 9+ month waiting queue. Our lawyer says the news is too new to know what concrete ramifications it will actually have on us, a tech company which uses English as the main language for engineering roles. |
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| ▲ | nvch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not exactly. I got (and renewed) the Swiss permit with zero knowledge of any official language. However, my wife had to present the basic certificate or my promise that she would learn the language. | | | |
| ▲ | vr46 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Except the Swiss are total arseholes about it, they won't even grant citizenship to people born there or who've lived there for twenty years and speak the language. Many want to cap total population at 10 million, we'll see what happens in June. And twelve years ago, the Swiss voted to restrict EU FoM for itself and the backlash was instant. Can't blame the government, this is the Swiss voting public doing their best to be dickheads. Japan is a bunch of islands, yes it's pretty closed, but Switzerland is a land-locked village with fewer people than London and entirely dependent on trade and the movement of people and money for all they have, and barely a scrap of a language to call its own. English is super common there, probably as a way of democratically inconveniencing everyone. | | |
| ▲ | FabCH an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | No country in Europe automatically grants citizenship just because you were born there. That’s a US thing. The closest are places like France where you can get it at 18 if you were born in France and meet a few more criteria. And because Switzerland has mandatory military service, a lot of men born in Switzerland don’t _want_ to naturalize, especially those with EU passports. Switzerland isn’t really that much different from other EU countries when it comes to citizenship, except for the 10 year requirement. That one is on the high side. But for some reason it gets a lot of press as a particularly difficult country to naturalize in. | |
| ▲ | avadodin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > lived there for twenty years and speak the language Which one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland | |
| ▲ | kakacik 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is completely untrue, right after obtaining C permit, you can apply for citizenship since its also 10 year residency requirement. Language requirement is lowest in countries I know, written test is a joke, blindly I did it online and it was above 90% without preparing at all, threshold is around 70% IIRC. Rarely there is committee after that, most people around got it after passing test. Of course if you have active criminal record no point doing that. If you keep going away for 6+ months often it gets reset. If you have obviously lied on your tax return thats an issue too. I know this intimately since right now going through this proces. One american colleague is doing the same. Right now, its much easier than ie in France. | |
| ▲ | Mainan_Tagonist 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Such dickheads the Swiss voting public, how dare they exercise a direct democracy?!
So inconveniencing! | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, do they think they have a country or something? Don’t they know they’re just an economic zone between France, Italy, and Germany. | |
| ▲ | kyleee 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s islamophobic as well | | |
| ▲ | Mainan_Tagonist 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Don't muslim citizens and foreign residents in Switzerland enjoy more rights than in pretty much any Muslim country? There is definitely some hostility to some aspects of Islam, aspects which seem to only recently have become central to the exercise of worship for some (the veiling of women for instance), yet this has not translated to some outright discrimination of muslims. Bosnian and Albanian immigrants for instance appear to have been integrated and/or assimilated into society. | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Don't muslim citizens and foreign residents in Switzerland enjoy more rights than in pretty much any Muslim country? That’s a great observation, and probably true in the case of every single liberal western democracy. Especially if you’re a woman, gay, etc. |
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| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | socalgal2 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Except the Swiss are total arseholes about it, they won't even grant citizenship to people born there or who've lived there for twenty years and speak the language. Japan has those issues as well, look up Zainichi Koreans | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough an hour ago | parent [-] | | These days Zainichi Koreans are granted citizenship pretty much automatically if they request it. But some choose not to, mostly because they prefer to retain Korean citizenship instead (Japan does not allow dual citizenship). Yes, previously they were forced to choose Japanese names to naturalize, but this has not been the case for a long time. |
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| ▲ | nslsm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It looks like they are proud of their country and want to keep it as is. They’ve seen what limitless immigration did to other countries and want none of it. Respect to them. | | |
| ▲ | GuB-42 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Switzerland has a fertility rate of about 1.4 and decreasing, unless they do something, there won't be much of a country left in a few generations. Solutions can involve immigration or natalism, but something has to change. Japan is worse. | | |
| ▲ | dublinstats 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or significantly increasing life-expectancy. Or new fertility technologies. A few generations is a long time. The birth rates of the immigrant waves would presumably just plummet quickly anyway as they join the culture. Since that seems to have happened with all our other health problems. | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don’t know anything about Switzerland, but immigration isn’t a solution to the prospect of Japan “not having a country left in a few generations.” There might be more or fewer people living on the islands, but “Japan” will be gone either way. | | | |
| ▲ | LAC-Tech an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A lot of people would rather live in their own aged society than a slightly younger foreign one. Emphasis on slightly younger. Fertility is declining basically everywhere. Much of the developing world is now below replacement including India and China. | |
| ▲ | slaw 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Africa has fertility rate 4.02 in 2025. Do you want Switzerland look like Africa? | | |
| ▲ | Thorrez 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are numbers in between 1.4 and 4.02. There's no reason Switzerland would need to swing to the complete opposite end. | |
| ▲ | LAC-Tech an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Africas fertility rate is declining massively as well. | | |
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| ▲ | nslsm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The solution to a low fertility rate is to… destroy the country? What’s the difference? | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No one wants an actual answer that would definitely work, which is to ban or curtail education of women, ban the sale of birth control, and to tie social security retirement benefits to the number of children you have raised. The Taliban did this and it likely does more for pumping up the numbers of all their little baby terrorists than any scheme the West has concocted. So instead we get stuff like "more money or time off" which turns out doesn't really do dick, "more support for children" which turns into a gazillion social workers up your ass for the tiniest perceived sin in raising your child, or "free childcare" with the caveat that if anything goes wrong our glorious progressive family courts will absolutely financialy ass-rape you taking 20% + alimony + half and now you have to pay taxes for everyone else's "free" childcare out of that leaving you nothing more than a van to sleep in while your liberated ex-wife buys a nice pair of shoes and a new car with the latest check. As it turns out birthing and raising children just really fucking sucks, and people can "release" their need to give parental energy 99% of the way by having 1 child that they just give more attention to without all the drawbacks of pumping out 3 or 4 more. There is no flowery Western Karen pleasing program you can wrap that up into. |
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| ▲ | kakacik 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is the correct reality. If there would be public vote in surrounding countries, ie mosques would be banned there too (btw those standing and having permit before the vote keep functioning). But none of the german, french, italian etc politicians have the balls to let society decide for themselves, controversial topic or not. And people then wonder why in extremely left-leaning country like France there is high popularity for extreme right parties. Maybe british with their one self-kneecaping brexit vote cured them, but public voting in general was never on the table. Swiss are the most free nation globally. At least I havent hears of any on similar level. They vote responsibly, heck they have 3x the amount of immigrants per capita then next top country in Europe, but they want only people who can find work there, plus they host tons of refugees. And yes they dont want to lose their unique identity, they have enough examples around them to be wary and smart. I'd say they do their share and some more | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why ban just mosques? Let’s ban churches too. When will the Catholic organization be held accountable for decades of child abuse? | | |
| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not saying you should ban mosques but when they do the whole call to prayer thing at 2am, I understand. Guessing you've never had to sleep any extended period of time near a mosque. If church bells rudely woke me up at 2am I'd understand the church banners too. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well maybe molesting children and covering it up should be more of a reason to ban churches. But I agree that should come under noise ordinances. I don’t care who someone chooses to worship as long as it doesn’t interfere with me. | | |
| ▲ | mothballed an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's a numbers game as to why, not an argument being raped isn't worse. Relatively fewer people have been raped by a priest. Easily 100+x have been sent into a rage by the fucking call to prayer at 120 decibels. People tend to get more upset about things they have actually experienced. |
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| ▲ | LAC-Tech an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | This discourse feels like you are deliberately pretending not to understand things. | | |
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