The Government of Japan will make changes on the criteria of investment Visa acquisitions. If a business person plans on starting a business, the current criteria requires company registration in order to acquire an investment visa. In connection, company registration requests for a resident card, which can only be secured after the person acquired a Visa. In fact, such condition makes visa application quite difficult. (If the founder has a co-operator or a proxy service, he can register the company and can get a resident card. However, in most cases, small business owner don’t have a co-operator and that makes it quite challenging difficult for foreigners to start the business in this country.
With the new criteria, the company owner can already acquire an investment visa as long as the incorporate documents are provided (e.g. article of incorporation). Moreover, it is important to show the Japanese government the owner’s concrete plans of starting a business in the country.
In addition, the Japanese government is planning to create a new short-term Visa for foreigners in order to get a temporary pass using the incorporate documents. Currently, a short-term visa is only valid for 3 months and it usually takes another 3 months to get a resident card. In this case, a short term visa will expire before one can register the company. To make the process easier, the government will soon extend the validity of the short-term visa to 4 months.
Once the short-term visa is acquired, the company registration may already be processed. With an investment visa, the business owner can get a validity either for a year, 3, or 5 years and that will depend on the situation.
With such action, the Japanese government aims to increase direct investment from foreign countries by 35 trillion (300 billion USD) Japanese yen with this deregulation until the year 2020.
