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Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

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Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#31

Post by shevy-java »

tristanj wrote: post #2

A large number of Airbnb hosts were using this Business Manager Visa as a way to stay in Japan. People in China realized they could just buy/lease a guesthouse in Osaka / any tourist hotspot, and rent it out on Airbnb. Then they become a "business manager" and get a Japanese resident visa within 3 months. All you needed is to invest 5million yen, which is like 31k USD, which isn't much. People wrote entire online gui…

It's not just business related though - Japan has gotten more hostile to foreigners. And no, it is not restricted only to chinese foreigners:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGAmKqTWjxU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLOsYTfl7k

(These two videos are quite recent at the time of writing this here.)

Don't get fooled by the deliberate (but misleading) title(s). This is a narration of more and more restrictions coming. So the article here also taps into this 1:1.

In some ways it reminds me of Nigel Farage in the UK, though in Japan it is not quite as tied to an individual person.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#32

Post by ElProlactin »

eloisant wrote: post #13
ElProlactin wrote: post #6

Many countries are tightening the immigration screws. For example, Thailand just reduced visa exempt stays for most countries from 60 to 30 days and have been going hard after illegal foreign businesses set up under Thai nominees. While there are usually political and economic factors that contribute to these decisions, I've been living overseas for almost two decades and have noticed that rampant abuse is now almost…

That's pretty crazy when you see that in developed countries, Japan in particular, population is aging and declining. Countries should be competing for the best immigrants, not closing their doors.

The problem is that identifying who the "best" immigrants are for your country can be very difficult when thousands upon thousands of people are trying to game the system.

Japan is a very attractive destination for a variety of reasons (highly-developed, safe, relatively "cheap", etc.) so you have lots of people who are willing to jump through some hoops and put up some capital for a chance to live there.

I wouldn't say that the changes to the business manager visa are going to help Japan attract the "best" immigrants. They will definitely hurt some good people who are contributing to Japan. But on the whole they will probably be reasonably effective in weeding out most of the abusers. Not all, but most.

It's a sledgehammer approach because a scalpel is very difficult to use when so many people want to live in your country.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#33

Post by hirako2000 »

tristanj wrote: post #2

A large number of Airbnb hosts were using this Business Manager Visa as a way to stay in Japan. People in China realized they could just buy/lease a guesthouse in Osaka / any tourist hotspot, and rent it out on Airbnb. Then they become a "business manager" and get a Japanese resident visa within 3 months. All you needed is to invest 5million yen, which is like 31k USD, which isn't much. People wrote entire online gui…

And how are they not managerial, entrepreneur, doing business ?

Is there something illegitimate in doing an activity that yield profit when the national is Chinese ? Or when it's a short term let ? Or when it is something that doesn't directly contributed to innovation benefiting the nation ?

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#34

Post by [deleted] »

ElProlactin wrote: post #6

Many countries are tightening the immigration screws. For example, Thailand just reduced visa exempt stays for most countries from 60 to 30 days and have been going hard after illegal foreign businesses set up under Thai nominees. While there are usually political and economic factors that contribute to these decisions, I've been living overseas for almost two decades and have noticed that rampant abuse is now almost…

[deleted]

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#35

Post by cedws »

As a Brit living in Japan (non-resident) I think they should protect themselves at all costs, lest what happened to my country happen to theirs. If the business visa was abused, that abuse should be stopped, not just allowed to happen like we would do.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#36

Post by RaSoJo »

Shank wrote: post #10

> In one case, investigators in Kanagawa Prefecture found that a Sri Lankan national had set up roughly 600 shell companies. He also allegedly submitted business manager visa applications for at least six Sri Lankan nationals by listing them as company presidents on paper, even though they actually worked manual labor jobs. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the government has a problem with this practice. The problem…

He also allegedly submitted business manager visa applications for at least six Sri Lankan nationals by listing them as company presidents on paper, even though they actually worked manual labor jobs.

From Asterix & Cleopatra (1965): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSL0D_ZUAAAvbeM.jpg

Relevant as ever.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#37

Post by mytailorisrich »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #19
Reubachi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The visa requires licensing/registrations and token investments, all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka.

>all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka Which they were almost certainly divvying up. A bunch of people invest $32k each. Some management company buys the home, pays them all a cut of airBNB proceeds, etc. You don't "do" anything beyond put up $32k for your $31k piece of paper.

> Which they were almost certainly divvying up

If I had to guess, I'd say probably not in most cases.

A lot of Chinese are cash rich (perhaps not on average but with 1.3 billion people the absolute number is large compared to other countries) and want to invest abroad, and are buying properties all over the place.

Another piece of evidence is the huge number of Chinese students in UK universities (from my experience) although the tuition fee alone is about £35k ($46k) a year.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#38

Post by embedding-shape »

hirako2000 wrote: post #33
tristanj wrote: post #2

A large number of Airbnb hosts were using this Business Manager Visa as a way to stay in Japan. People in China realized they could just buy/lease a guesthouse in Osaka / any tourist hotspot, and rent it out on Airbnb. Then they become a "business manager" and get a Japanese resident visa within 3 months. All you needed is to invest 5million yen, which is like 31k USD, which isn't much. People wrote entire online gui…

And how are they not managerial, entrepreneur, doing business ? Is there something illegitimate in doing an activity that yield profit when the national is Chinese ? Or when it's a short term let ? Or when it is something that doesn't directly contributed to innovation benefiting the nation ?

I don't think it's "illegitimate" as such, just parasitic behaviour the world probably needs less of. They buy up real estate, then rent it out, living in another country, basically just extracting wealth, and while it's legal, it's still lazy and kind of despicable behaviour from a "we're all humans on this planet" perspective. From the perspective of Japanese people, you see foreigners coming to where you live and strictly making things worse, not better.

But of course if we limit our perspective to an economic one, then it seems like a wise and sound approach to "escaping the hamster wheel" for the average Chinese person, easy money right? I think people in Japan probably don't have that perspective though, but instead look at the tail-effects of allowing that sort of behavior. That's why they changed the rules probably.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#39

Post by trashcan2137 »

Semaphor wrote: post #5

Thought the name seems familiar: Jake Adelstein got his 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice turned into a (fun to watch, apparently very dramatized, though that was already criticized for the memoirs) 2 season HBO series in 2022.

The newspaper he apparently worked in stated that he was never part of the reporting teams for organized crime and had written only a very few articles about the yakuza during his time there.

He got called out several times about his stories so I wouldn't be surprised if he's making stuff up again.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#40

Post by junon »

rwmj wrote: post #26
torben-friis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system That depends of what you're hoping to prevent. If you want to filter out people who can't sustain themselves, petty crime or the like, it works. But it can open the door to a lot of unwanted effects. A foreign national that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large…

> A [person] that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country. Even to their home country.

Genuine question: how so? I'm not familiar with the economics of this.
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