visa/no sponsor to spouse visa... problem?

@JapanCustomTours

My situation is not like that laid out in the article... Frankly, I don't have much sympathy for someone who overstays the expiration date printed on a 5 year visa by 2 weeks. That's just flaunting your host country's laws. If you want to tour around or hang out with friends after you've finished your university course, you do a visa run to South Korea or Hong Kong and come back as a tourist. I've done visa runs all over Asia. It can be expensive, but it goes with the territory. The fact that they're complaining about being treated as criminals when they are in fact criminals just means they're spoiled Americans.

@ yllwsmrf

If I can't find a full-time employer, but I find part-time employers, do you think I should try--try!--submitting notification documents with a part-time employer listed, or could that trigger the revocation process?

If I can only find part-time employers, would it be better to try to switch to different visa category?

Thanks for the followup. A few more comments. Sorry for the length.

the important thing is following the procedures, so there is no contradiction between telling you that you can stay in the country legally for 2 more years and telling you that your residence status is going to be revoked.

I'm not sure there's a contradiction here. Your status will always be valid presuming you meet the requirements. You currently are not meeting the requirements, so it is in danger of being revoked.

According to the immigration officer, you have 3 months to find a job after your contract stops*. After 3 months, theoretically, you can have your residency status revoked and you can be deported at any time, but it is very unlikely that immigration will start the revocation procedure unless you have failed to send them a notification of new contract after 6 months.

That is inline with what has been reported before.

So, basically, the system is just non-transparent. Possibly you can be deported after 3 months, but probably not, but you don't know. He told me not to worry about anything for 3 more months.

Transparency is always an issue when working with a bureaucracy, but luckily in cases such as yours, the enforcement of the law works out basically in your favor. They could be more strict and deport you exactly on day 90.

The place where the immigration officer differed from yllwsmrf's post above is in what happens after they start the revocation process. I asked him specifically, "if I get a call from Tokyo telling me that they are starting the visa revocation process, and I then sign a contract with a company, will the process be halted and my visa be back in good standing?" He said no. He said once the visa revocation process is started, it becomes very difficult to stay in the country. Basically, it sounded like once they decide to revoke your visa, they're set against you, and you probably have to get legal representation and fight them.

Sorry if I was unclear in my explanation, as I didn't mean to imply that getting a job would automatically end the revocation process. I meant that you should have plenty of time to find work and avoid the process altogether. Once the revocation process is started you will need to fight it legally, which is possible at many steps along the way but probably will not be easy or cheap.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask him about the issue of finding full-time vs. part-time work. But I suspect yllwsmrf is correct and that a part-time job does not satisfy the requirements. I say this because (1) I have never seen a company offer to sponsor a visa for someone in a part-time position even though it doesn't really cost them to sponsor someone, and (2) the first SHIS visa I was sponsored for, I was actually working something like 36 hours per week, but my employer fudged the numbers when he submitted the visa application paperwork. Why would these both be true unless you need a full time job to meet the requirements of the visa? Also, if you could fulfill the visa requirements with part-time jobs, there wouldn't effectively be much difference between a regular SHIS visa and a self-sponsored visa. So, I suspect yllwsmrf is correct.

Sorry I can't find the source, but I recall seeing that only yearly contracts and a minimum remuneration (around 3 million yen?) were eligible for status. I guess that doesn't necessarily preclude part-time work, but you'd probably need an overly generous employer to get that approved. That may just be one of those unwritten rules that immigration uses so often in judging applications.

If I can't find a full-time employer, but I find part-time employers, do you think I should try--try!--submitting notification documents with a part-time employer listed, or could that trigger the revocation process?

If you can find enough part time work to make up full time, then you can self-sponsor like your friend. That is basically why that visa category was created.

If I can't find a full-time employer, but I find part-time employers, do you think I should try--try!--submitting notification documents with a part-time employer listed, or could that trigger the revocation process?

You must notify any employment you get, period. I see nothing indicating that "full-time" or "part-time" (whatever that means) makes a difference.

Sorry I can't find the source, but I recall seeing that only yearly contracts and a minimum remuneration (around 3 million yen?) were eligible for status.

If I remember correctly, the document the employer has to fill out when you apply for a visa originally includes a copy of a contract and a place where they declare your estimated monthly earnings.

I was making about 160,000-180,000 monthly, but I think my employer told immigration I would make 200,000. But he might have written 250,000 (which would be 3,000,000 yearly)... I don't remember.

Anyhow, it is true that you have to declare any work contract, so maybe part-time is okay... I don't know... Then there is the example of Gaba corporation. Gaba doesn't have employees: they have "independent contractors" who can work as much or as little as they like. But somehow a Gaba contract can work to sponsor a visa (another neighbor is in that situation). So I don't know.

You know, I was just looking at the notification of the contracting organization, which you have to send in when you get a new employer, and it doesn't have any place on it for hours, wages, salary, etc...

So maybe you don't need to have a full-time job....?