Why This Topic Landed in Japan
The permanent-residence figure alone would have travelled: ten thousand yen to two hundred thousand is a twentyfold jump. What turned it into an argument was who objected. Jenya works in Japanese and is in her 21st year in Japan on a spouse visa, so the complaint came from inside the audience rather than from outside it, and the thread moved quickly from whether the fee is reasonable to who has standing to talk about carrying Japan's costs. Foreign labour and admissions policy have been recurring subjects on these boards for months, so a fee schedule was read as a proxy for the whole question. The new fees apply to applications from 1 October, so the "from tomorrow" in the post is how it felt rather than how it works.
Key Reaction Themes
- Counting the years of tax — The most common reply measured her claim against time: a few years of paying tax is not the same as generations of it, and that gap was used to dismiss the comparison with Japanese taxpayers.
- The sovereignty answer — Close behind was the position that screening costs money and the receiving country sets the price, stated bluntly as pay it or leave.
- Wrong target — A smaller group agreed the burden is unfair but aimed it elsewhere, arguing that rule-breakers are why the system tightened and that people who follow the rules absorb the cost.
- Why not naturalise — Several posts noted that with a Japanese spouse and children the route exists, and read her not taking it as a choice that answers her own complaint.
- We're squeezed too — Others folded the fee into their own bills, pointing at residence tax and social insurance rising while pay does not.
What Japanese Netizens Are Saying
The fee increase and the voice actor's post
A voice actor born in Russia wrote on X that being told to pay a large sum or go home is painful when you work and pay taxes in Japan like everyone else.
在留資格更新料や永住許可が上がってもまだ安いって言っている人... 日本人と同じように働いて保険年金税金を払って、日本語も覚えて何年も住んで家庭を築いて、いきなり明日から高額金を払え、まだ安い、嫌なら国に帰れってって言われたら、外国人ってだけで人格を否定されて、ただただ悲しいです。 Show more
Sources: Yahoo! news, 2ch
Comments:
- "She says she pays taxes just like Japanese people, but that's only a few years. Our lot have been paying taxes for hundreds of years, generation after generation."
- "Your ancestors aren't something to overrate like that."
- "She takes the opinions of online idiots way too seriously."
- "If all migrants were good people there'd be no problem. The bad ones are the migrants who created the scary image."
- "Her husband is Japanese and she has kids, so naturalising should be easy if she wanted to (her Japanese is fluent). Maybe she deliberately doesn't because she values her Russian identity?"
- "Then just pay it. If you can live safely in a country you have a territorial dispute with for that kind of money, that's a pretty good deal."
- "Administration costs money too, obviously."
- "Well, our residence tax and social insurance go up every year while our pay doesn't, so it's rough for us too. Japan is just that kind of country."
- "'Just like Japanese people' - you're a foreigner, so it stands to reason you pay more than Japanese people, not the same."
- "It is a shame, but she'll have to give up on it."
