Ok so:
I have been working at the same international preschool for over two years now. I’m a good teacher. the kids love me and I love them.
I have always assumed that residence of Japan have to apply for their visas themselves, but the first time I applied for renewal through this company my boss told me that he will actually apply online on behalf of all foreign employees.
We have done it this way twice now, so I have no reason to believe he wouldn’t be able to do it this time. Now let’s get to the timeline and borderline illegal shit that has been happening to me.
The date of expiry for my visa was June 6th. I informed him in early May that we needed to prepare for the renewal process as usual, and at that point had already submitted the necessary tax documents to him. He told me to leave it to him so I did. Fast-forward to June 6 the day my visa expired. I had gone to my shift that day as usual. It finished at two and he kept me after because he said there is “a problem with my Visa application“. I asked him what the problem is. he wouldn’t tell me. I asked him if he had actually submitted the application. He said he did. I asked him to send me the receipt as when you apply online for a Visa renewal. You immediately get a receipt for your application he refused. I asked him if he had even been in contact with immigration about this “problem“ and he claims that he had. I said “OK what did they tell you “he wouldn’t tell me anything. He simply gave me all the documents and said I have to go to immigration immediately and do it myself at this point it was already 3 PM and there was no way I would make it to Shinagawa in time.
I sent him a message after saying that there’s no way I would make it in time and that I’m officially overstaying my visa and he left me on read for three days. I sent him an angry message that I will include in a screenshot asking him to send me the receipt for the application so that I can go to immigration myself and figure out what’s going on. He finally sent it and when I saw the date of the application, turns out he had submitted it on June 6th the day my visa expired, likely after we had that conversation. So ultimately it seems like he forgot to submit it, and then lied about it to cover his Ass.
I didn’t trust him at this point so I tried to call immigration multiple times, but couldn’t get through. At this point, he claimed everything was fine and all I had to do was wait so I did. I waited for over a month when my visa didn’t come by July I started to get really concerned.
Sometime around late June or early July (you can check the exact date in the screenshots). he sent me some form out of nowhere saying I needed to take it to immigration immediately or else my Visa application would be denied. He didn’t tell me what it was. I asked him to explain what it was and he refused. I asked him to just forward the email to me directly so that I could look it over and see what the form was for so that I could better know what I needed to do with it but he refused to send me any email that he received from immigration. I waited for days for him to respond, but he didn’t so I ended up taking the form and showing it to my friends who told me it was an application to change details on the application. I asked him why I needed it and he wouldn’t tell me anything. He actually wouldn’t respond at all leaving me on read again. So I took the form, went to immigration, got a number at the W counter and waited there for five hours just for them to look really confused, ask me why I was there and why I had the form and ultimately. I told them I didn’t know because my boss wouldn’t tell me anything. Ultimately they sent me home and told me to just wait. note at this point they had told me they had not called my company directly which my boss had said they did. He said that he spoke to them on the phone. The immigration officer there said that they have no record of ever calling my company for any reason.
Following this, as you can see in the screenshots, I told him what had happened at immigration and he responded basically saying that my visa was going to be denied and would not tell me why. We ended up having a phone call in which we fought pretty heavily. I do wanna say one thing, though during this phone call I asked him if he had called immigration as he keeps claiming to have spoken to them directly on the phone and this is why he has no emails to send me he said “yes I spoke to them on the phone“ I said “OK what did they say“ he said “well I don’t know because they probably called the office“ so I said “OK so you’re telling me then. If I call the office, I can ask who spoke to immigration and I can talk to them directly“ he said with a long pause “yes“ I said “OK I guess I’ll do that then“ he said “well actually I don’t know I think I talk to them on the phone, but I can’t remember“. you can’t remember? what does he mean? He can’t remember how would he magically? Forget if he had a phone call with immigration regarding the status of one of his employees resident status?
At this point, the argument got pretty heated and I said some things I probably shouldn’t have oops. I basically called him out for lying and whether intentional or not sabotaging my visa. He clearly lied about having submitted it before the deadline, he lied about their being a “problem” as, as we’ll see later, the problem was that you cannot submit online applications the day of visa expiry (i did not know this at the time) which he very much aware of. I called him out for lying about having spoken on the phone with immigration, and I called him out for being generally incompetent and withholding vital information that will determine have a visa in the future. After this, I asked him “what would happen if I quit “to which he responded “you work for me and if you wanna quit then I’ll remove your visa application and you can figure it out yourself“
After this, I contacted a lawyer who informed me that he can’t do that and that my best move would be to wait for the visa to come if it comes and quit after I get the visa. So I waited.
Fast-forward to last week when I noticed that I couldn’t use my bank card anymore, which had my salary on it, which I need access to for rent bills and food. I went to the bank with the application receipt from June 6 to show them that I’m being processed and they basically told me they couldn’t do anything and that until I have a physical copy of my visa I will no longer have access to my bank card. This is obviously really, really really bad so I sent a message to him and HR so that we could all be in a chat together this time explaining what was going on.
After this, he responded, saying that he received an email from immigration saying that I need to go there in person to do some things. I asked him to clarify and he finally for the first time ever sent me screenshots of the email. Do note that the screenshots had the date that the email was sent erased. He sent a really poorly translated version of the email that omitted any information that made him look bad so I responded with a properly translated version.
You can see what the email said in the screenshots, but it essentially said that they have been trying to contact me and that you cannot send Visa renewal applications online on the day your Visa expires. The email said I needed to go to immigration and instead of getting a number at any counter I need to go to the W counter and ask for a specific person in order to get this issue resolved. Oh my God. so clearly they have been telling him this for a while now, he failed to tell me any of it. I had no idea I needed to do any of this and as a consequence, I have been without a visa now for almost 2 months. What’s more the deadline for me to go to immigration and do all of this was apparently July 25 last Thursday I asked him about this and asked him on the email was sent. He claims that immigration made a mistake and that they probably meant the 29th. I asked him to forward the email to me so that I could see when they actually sent it to make sure he wasn’t lying and he refused. So I sent the message that you can see the screenshots calling him out for all of this.
I am so beyond angry at The, the lack of communication the blatant lies and misinformation that I have been given by this boss. i’m going to go to immigration first thing tomorrow and explain my situation and plead my case but is there anything more I can do? Does anyone know of any labor unions? I can talk to literally anything I’m so tired.
by smallbuckbucky