Japan to introduce new Green Card scheme to attract highly skilled workers

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Japan is initiating measures to entice foreign direct investment into the country by introducing a visa regime with fewer restrictions and lower corporate taxes.

Said to be a move to attract talent from all over the world, including India, it will see the Land of the Rising Sun launching a new Green Card scheme, known as the ‘Japanese Green Card for Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals.’ Touting it as the fastest visa system in the world, the country said it would hasten the issuance of Japanese permanent residency to talented foreign professionals.

The new scheme will cut down the duration for talented people from the present five years to one year to apply for permanent residence if the individuals procure the necessary number of points.

This measure has also been necessitated as the East Asian country is witnessing a decline in the population of native Japanese.

Shigeki Maeda, the Executive Vice President of the JETRO (Japan External Trade Organisation), a government organisation of Japan that promotes trade and investment with other countries, was quoted by the Hindu as saying that the government of Japan is mulling cutting down the time period for the permanent residency if the applicants satisfy the qualification criteria.

According to Maeda, there currently exists an investment imbalance between India and Japan as the Japanese investments in India at the end of 2015 were $14.1 billion as against Indian investments in Japan of only $0.074 billion.

Citing the FDI inflows for the year 2015, he said that India had invested $5.27 billion in Singapore, $3 billion in the US and $779 million in the UK, which was far higher than investments worth $27 million in Japan.

Maeda said that Japan was pitching itself to India to attract investments from companies in the South Asian country in sectors such as IT, tourism and pharmaceuticals.

With an intention of announcing to the world that they were open to welcoming immigrants, the Japanese government had said that it would tweak the Points-based System for talented foreigners by making it more proactive by amending requirements.

Among the other steps that are being taken by the country is the improvement of infrastructure in Japan for foreigners. Maeda said that there were massive opportunities in Japan for Indian companies in the tourism sector to set up offices and invest there while citing that the number of Indian visitors to Japan had increased to 123,000 in 2016 from 70,000 in 2012.

If you are planning to migrate to Japan, contact Y-Axis, a premier immigration consultancy firm of India, to apply for wok visas from one of its several offices located in the country’s largest cities.