Japan lifts the permanent residency fee to 200,000 yen and adds an above-average income test

From Thursday, a foreign resident who wants permanent status in Japan must pay 200,000 yen, about 1,275 dollars, to file. The old fee was 10,000 yen. The same package requires a stable income at or above the Japanese household average, and from April 2027 a basic Japanese-language test and a pension record that matches 30 years in the employee scheme.

The fee change is already in force. Status changes and extensions, which used to cost a flat 6,000 yen, now scale with the length of stay: 10,000 yen for three months or less, up to 75,000 yen for five years or more. People the government treats as facing severe hardship, including some humanitarian cases, pay a reduced rate: 10,000 yen for a change or renewal, and 20,000 yen for permanent residency. The Justice Ministry has tied the rise to the cost of screening and to a revision of the immigration and refugee law passed in May.

What the income and pension tests actually ask

Previous guidelines did not set a number for income, pension or language. The new income rule uses the average household figure published in July: 5.75 million yen for 2024. An applicant has to show stable earnings at or above that level. That is a household average, not a single-earner wage, so a person supporting a family on one salary can fall short even if the job is full time. The pension test asks for expected benefits equal to someone who has paid into the employee pension for 30 years. If the pension falls short, the ministry can count financial assets instead. The language rule, delayed until April 2027, asks for enough Japanese to hold an ordinary conversation. Schools and the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test have already reported a rise in enrolments, according to local coverage of the announcement.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has made the foreign-resident file a priority since she took office in October 2025. In a post on X she said some members of the public feel concern or unfairness as the foreign population grows, and that the government is trying to keep policy orderly so citizens and foreign residents can live securely. The opposition to higher immigration has grown even as employers in care, construction and manufacturing report shortages, and even as the birth rate stays low. The new rules do not cap visas. They raise the price and the proof required to stay for good.

The queue before the price changed

The jump produced a last-minute rush. At the Osaka Regional Immigration Services Bureau on Tuesday, about 350 people were waiting when the doors opened at 9 a.m., and the line ran outside the building. Tokyo's main bureau reported waits of more than seven hours. The online system slowed under the traffic. AFP found hundreds queued at a central Tokyo office. Yujie Chono, a 22-year-old American-born university student, told AFP he had waited five hours. He said he understood the worry that a large intake could thin out Japanese culture, and he also said a country with a low birth rate and an ageing population has to take foreigners. He spoke to the agency in fluent Japanese, which is the standard the April 2027 rule will start to demand of people who do not already have it.

Micaiah Stevens, quoted by the BBC, put the complaint from the other side of the counter: applicants are being asked to earn more than the average Japanese household and to pay a much higher fee in order to work and pay tax. That is the design. The fee is no longer a stamp charge. At 200,000 yen it is large enough to change who files, and the hardship discount, at a tenth of the full price, is the only formal relief.

Who feels it first

The people most exposed are those renewing a short status on a low wage, and asylum seekers already in the humanitarian track who do not qualify for the discount. A five-year extension at 75,000 yen is more than twelve times the old 6,000 yen charge. Permanent residency at 200,000 yen is twenty times the old 10,000 yen. Employers who have been sponsoring mid-skill workers will have to decide whether to fund the filing or let the worker stay on a renewable status that is now also more expensive. The language rule does not bite until April, so the immediate filter is money: the fee, and the 5.75 million yen income line.

Japan has not published a forecast of how many applications will drop. The queues this week are a backlog of people trying to beat the clock, not a measure of future demand. The test comes in the next quarter, when the 200,000 yen charge is the only price on the form and the income screen is applied to files that would previously have been judged without a number.