What you need to check on your employment condition

When you get job offering, you will be pleased to get it. You will imagine how your new life in Japan looks like. You might think of your future career plan as engineers. It is natural to think of these points and imagine bright future after you get job offering.

But As a legal profession who’ve been supporting foreign citizens in Japan to get their working VISA, there are some points you need to check on your employment condition. I’ve seen some clients got the condition to start their job hunting again even through they got job offering.

1. Type of employment

When you get job offering letters from your new employers, first thing you need to check is types of employment condition. You need to check whether your employment type is full time or part-time. This is quite important in Japan in a lot of means.

Generally, getting permanent position is better when you consider of getting Engineer VISA. It doesn’t mean there is no chance to get Engineer VISA with part-time positions. But the successful rate is generally lower.

Some companies might say they want to apply for your Engineer VISA by making fake employment contracts for full time workers. But this is against Immigration Law and labor law in Japan. So, you should not work for such employers.

2. Social security

When you check types of employment, the next thing you need to check is social security. Japan implement social security system to provide people with assistance so they could get access to medical service and safety net. Here is social security you might join.

Pension

National Pension (Kokumin-Nenkin)

Welfare Pension (Kosei-Nenkin)

Medical Insurance

National Health Insurance (Kokumin-Kenko-Hoken)

Health Insucrance (Kenko-Hoken)

You need to know that your employers have the duty to make you join social security program which you are obligated to join according social security law of Japan. Certain employers has the duty to make their employees join Welfare Pension and Health Insurance if the employers meet following conditions.

a. Employing more than 5 staffs permanently

b. Being legal entity like K.K or G.K

If your new employers do not offer you Welfare Pension and Health Insurance even through, they meet these conditions, you should avoid working for the employers. You can’t get Engineer VISA.

3. Unemployment benefit

Like social security, Immigration Bureaus are so careful on Unemployment benefit. If your companies do not make their employees join Unemployment benefits, So, you could get rejection if your employers do not join Unemployment benefits for their employees.

4. VISA support

As an Immigration Law practitioner, I would like to recommend my clients to check how much support your employers will give you on getting Engineer VISA from Immigration Bureaus.

It is quite sad that some employers think preparation of working VISA is just money-consuming since they don’t have to do such procedures if they hired Japanese engineers. This is why some employers might take uncooperative attitude on VISA procedures.

In my practice, there are some cases which finally withdrawing applications from Immigration Bureaus. Employers agreed to support Engineer VISA application at first time. But later they were tired of supporting on VISA since it turned out supporting on Engineer VISA applications is harder than their expectation.

To avoid such situation, you need to discuss with new employers to check how much support they could give you. If it turned out that they can’t give you so much support, you should find another employer which are more supportive.

Theses are check points you need to care when you get job offering, I hope these information help you to select the best employers.

Daichi Ito

Immigration Law Practitioner

080-5183-4897

daichiito@kamalegal.com