Highly-skilled Professional Visa is for foreign workers with advanced and specialized skills.
It has three main categories:
- Advanced academic research activities
- those who have engaged in activities under Researcher or Professor visa
- Advanced specialized/technical activities
- those who have engaged in activities under Engineer, Specialist in Humanities, or Intra-company transferee visa
- Advanced business management activities
- those who have engaged in activities under Business Manager visa
Advantages of holding a highly-skilled professional visa:
- Permission for multiple activities
- HSPV holder may engage in multiple activities simultaneously
- Grant of the 5-year period of stay
- the longest period of stay legally permitted is 5 years, which is granted to highly-skilled professionals
- Easier to acquire a permanent residency
- those who scored at least 70 points may apply for permanent residency after 3 years as HSPV holder
- those who scored at least 80 points may apply for permanent resident after 1 year as HSPV holder
- Your spouse will have permission to work
- Your spouse can engage in activities such as Engineer, Specialist in Humanities/International Services, or Instructor without the academic background or work experience
- You can bring your parent(s) to Japan under certain conditions
- Your parents need to take care of your child 7 years old and below
- Your parents need to take care of you or your spouse when pregnant
- Household annual salary must be at least 8 million yen (HSPV holder + spouse)
- Your parents must live with highly skilled professional
- Limited to the parents of HSPV holder and parents of his/her spouse
- You can bring a domestic worker to Japan under certain conditions
- Household annual salary must be at least 10 million yen
- Limited to only one (1) domestic worker
- Must pay the domestic worker at least 200,000 yen
- Domestic worker must have been employed by the HSPV holder for at least 1 year before entering Japan
- Domestic worker is expected to leave Japan with the highly-skilled professional
- Preferential processing of entry and residence procedures
- Faster application process
Applicants will be evaluated based on point-system. To be eligible for Highly-skilled professional visa, one must score at least 70 points in this Point Calculation Table.
When applying, one must submit proof of documents for the criteria they satisfy in order for the points to count. For example, if you claim you have 10 years of work experience – you will need employment certificate from all your previous employers to prove so.
To know more about the process of applying Highly-skilled professional visa, check out this page.
