Calls to make naturalization more difficult emerge in parliament talks

19 comments

1. “Our population is declining, what should we do?”

   “Make naturalization much harder!”

   “Great idea!”

2. I would be interested in seeing how many have to wait the 10 years compared to those who get PR via points or Spouse Visa much faster than the 5 years for Naturalization.

3. Makes sense since it should really be the other way around

4. >There were more than 8,800 foreign nationals — mostly Chinese nationals (35%) and Koreans (25%) — who naturalized in 2024, out of some 12,000 applicants, according to the Justice Ministry’s Civil Affairs Bureau.

   This is so insanely low. I knew it was a small number of people, but not THAT small. My home country naturalized 818,500 new citizens last year. Granted, it has more than double the population of Japan, but that’s still nearly 100 times more people. They’re worried about such a tiny number of people in a country with declining population.

5. [removed]

6. Oh look, Japan being xenophobic again.

7. My wife and I decided to leave Japan to have kids back home, one of the reasons is that since we’re both foreigners, our kids won’t have citizenship and we feel like it’s an unnecessary difficulty we would be putting them through their life.

8. This really feels like an entity in its last leg, desperately trying to cling to an imaginary past of glorious domination.

9. Of fucking course right as I’m about to become eligible.

10. Naturalization is more attractive to people from lower tier countries.

    As a European, getting a Japanese passport to replace my own would be a massive step down.

    Despite the benefits over PR, PR is overall much more attractive.

11. Same country that brought its Brazilian-Japanese cousins back to the country and made zero effort to teach them the language or customs, segregated them into Brazilian schools and just used them to work factory jobs and once they couldn’t handle the cultural differences tried to pay them to leave lol.

12. “We have an aging population, a decline in birth rates, and lack of skilled workers. What should we do?”

    “Make it more difficult for people to live here, that’ll fix it.”

13. Because it’s already so easy now. 🙄

14. I couldn’t care less. Do what they wanna do

15. They will be begging for people in a decade…..

16. Well my dream of getting Japanese citizenship and returning to the US as an illegal alien is really being crushed to smithereens!

17. This Yanagase guy sounds super racist lol. It’s not about if you are in Japan long enough to “understand” it, whatever that means, it’s about whether or not you want to make this place your new home and the rights to participate politically that should come with that. Also the idea that I would renounce the citizenship of my home country just to not be allowed to vote is also insane.

18. Return to age of isolation imminent.

19. Why not just revers the requirements if that going to be the case. The requirements for PR changed for Natural and vice versa.