alt Hacker NewsKey detail:
> Immigration authorities say the move is aimed at preventing cases in which foreign workers obtain visas under one category, but then engage in unrelated or lower-skilled work.
The claim appears to be that people were using up visa slots for things like interpreters or other jobs where clearly you'd need good language skills to actually do the job, including in Japanese, with the intent all along of doing some other job instead. An up-front test should let through almost all of the legitimate claimants of these visas, and stop almost all the fraudsters. Probably a lot cheaper than a similarly-effective level of after-the-fact auditing, or more-extensive checks into applicants' work situation.
[EDIT] I mean, in the framing provided by the government, the above appears to be what's going on. Governments may lie, of course.
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Company founder in Japan here. This is largely how I read this specific news--its narrowly scoped to prevent patterns of abuse, which there have indeed been isolated cases tantamount to human trafficking.
That being said, there is a broader trend, that Japan's immigration authorities are becoming more foreigner-hostile, reflecting a broader political view shift in Japanese society (see: Sanseito political party) and one could argue in the US and globally.
One data point: a few months back we had one of our employees denied a Permanent Resident Visa due to a clerical error where our company forgot to notify the immigration bureau of an address change--we literally moved our office across the street, same city block. Our lawyer said such a case was unheard of a few years ago; these were always handled as simple corrections, instead the poor chap had to go to the back of the 9+ month waiting queue.
Our lawyer says the news is too new to know what concrete ramifications it will actually have on us, a tech company which uses English as the main language for engineering roles.
Its not shocking, I see it implemented ie in Switzerland, where half of the world tries to get in. Since each part has their own language and none of that is english, its pretty important to exist in society for anything but brief visitors.
Its not restrictive as this (B2 is pretty high level in any language, here its weak B1) and resefved for 'higher' permits like C, for which you anyway need 10 years of residency in normal circumstances.
But japan is japan and one of most closed societies globally, nobody should be surprised by this.
There's also the issue of people going to Japan to buy out several properties to then rent them out.