Permanent Residency in Japan After One Year

The Ginza Wako Clock, Tokyo, Japan, Jordy Meow

There's a strong competition amongst countries to attract highly skilled labor, particularly those in STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) fields. Japan has made an interesting move in this game: highly skilled workers may be eligible for permanent residency in Japan after only one year.

How to Move to Europe (or elsewhere)

It's that time again when people are upset at the results of the US presidential election and traffic to this blog spikes. I've written for years on different ways to move abroad, but I've let the blog go fallow as other priorities presented themselves. So here's a quick primer for those new to the topic.

Who Am I?

Your author at the São Jorge Castle in Lisbon, Portugal

I'm an American who's lived in the US, Japan, the UK, the Netherlands, and now France. My wife and I have considered other options, such as moving to Spain or Malta, but in all honesty, we'll probably stay here in France. Despite some problems, France is a pretty awesome place to live.

I started this blog simply because people kept emailing me to find out how to move abroad and other sites were too niche (how to move to Belize!), or scams (pay us money to move to this deserted island and be free!), or were light on details in an attempt to sell you something (buy my e-book on how to get a new passport!). So my emails got longer and longer and I learned more and more and eventually decided it would be easier to start a blog and point people at it than cut-n-paste from older emails all the time.

So let's consider why and how to move abroad.

Trump!

If you want to move abroad because Trump is the president-elect, slow down. Moving abroad is a very tough decision, it can be very emotionally difficult, and the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side of the fence. In fact, surveys conducted by Dr. von Koppenfels, myself, and others all tend to indicate that few Americans living abroad are doing so for political reasons (the number seems to be less than 5% of the 6 to 9 million Americans abroad). Also, while many migrants move abroad for push factors (war, famine, unemployment, etc.), those factors honestly aren't that serious in the US. Instead, if you're considering moving abroad because of Trump, I would strongly recommend asking yourself the following question.

Would I want to move abroad if my favorite candidate was elected president?

If the answer to that is a sincere "yes", you're good to go. Why? Because that's a pull factor. You want to move abroad for adventure, love, or work, not because you're running from something. In the long run, you're more less likely to be disappointed living abroad.

That being said, if you still want to move abroad because of Trump ...

The Basics

My friend Paul, hamming it up on top the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Next, be aware that other countries probably don't want you. That's harsh, but consider that I live in France, the most popular tourist destination in the world. If France were to suddenly let everyone move here, without restriction, our basic services would be flooded. We have what is arguably the best health care in the world, virtually free university education, and a fantastic social safety net, along with mind-boggling bureaucracy. That's expensive, so France, like every other country on the planet, usually tries to limit immigrants to those who are likely to pay more into the system than they receive. This means that you typically can't just buy a plane ticket and move. You'll usually need to apply for a work permit or a residence permit and most countries (not all!) are very picky about who gets those.

Second, you'll want to read why you'll say "no" to moving abroad. It sounds paradoxical given that you're here, but for most people, moving abroad is a fantasy. Were they to be hit with the reality, they'd be woefully unprepared. They don't have a passport, or they're in a long-term lease, or their partner says "no", or they don't want to leave their family, and so on. So if you want to move abroad, read that link and get your affairs in order. You can't leave if you aren't ready to leave. And for goodness' sake, get your papers in order.

Getting Out

So now that you've made the commitment, how do you get out? Mostly people leave via one of three routes:

1. Marriage/Civil Partnership
2. Citizenship
3. Work/residence permit or the equivalent

First, let's be honest: maintaining a relationship is hard, a long-distance relationship is even harder. Doing so merely for the opportunity to move abroad generally doesn't work. Believe me, I've followed this topic for years. Maybe you'll travel abroad and meet the love of your life, but that's the exception, not the rule, and some countries are trying to even limit that. Unless you are very lucky, that's an unrealistic expectation. I have a French wife, but I met her while living in London. I didn't leave the US for her.

Second, you probably don't have citizenship in another country and can't get it. However, there may be options. If you have Italian ancestors, you might be able to claim citizenship in Italy. If one of your parents or grandparents was born in Ireland and had Irish citizenship, you might be able to get an Irish passport. Jewish ancestry might get you into Israel. In short, trace your ancestry and if you find a (relatively) recent ancestor with foreign citizenship, explore that country's laws. Many countries offer citizenship to their citizen's descendants.

Your author and his wife, getting married in the Tower Bridge, London

But you probably don't have that route, either, so you're looking at a work or residence permit (or the legal equivalent thereof). If you're lucky enough to have high demand skills, particularly in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) field, read my five part "how to get a work permit" series. That will explain the basics that most people go through (and it's the route I took), aside from those who transferred with their work.

If you're young, or poor, or have little work experience, then you're probably looking for the young person's guide to living abroad. That covers a variety of options you likely didn't know about.

If you have a remote income (i.e., you work from home and can do your work from anywhere), there are a number of countries which will let you live there with a remote job if you can demonstrate financial self-sufficiency.

It's a big world and there's a lot more I could say, but that covers the the most important points. There is plenty of other information in this blog, including opportunities to buy residency or citizenship (usually requires a lot of money), what to do if you have a felony conviction, emotional considerations, legal implications, and more. I can't even begin to cover it all. So I'll just finish with my list of the top 10 expat myths.

Top 10 Expat Myths

1. Expats are rich
2. Expats hate America
3. You need a college degree
4. Everyone speaks English
5. I'll learn the local language
6. The world is dangerous!
7. People in country X are rude/friendly/some other stereotype
8. It's like a 24/7 holiday
9. Life is better/worse in country X
10. My kids will love it!

Explaining all of those would be a blog entry for each, but many of them are covered in this blog, somewhere. Use the search box and explore!

US Trying to Prevent Americans Giving Up Their Citizenship

Certification of Loss of Nationality (Wikipedia)

I haven't written in this blog for a while, but this story is too important to ignore. The US is trying to solve its public relation disaster of the massive increase in the number of Americans giving up their citizenship by throwing up as many obstacles to renunciation as possible.

The Background
First, Americans back in the US frequently have a distorted view of Americans abroad. In fact, we know from extensive expat research (my own polling, the research of Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, and many others), that most Americans move abroad for love, work, study, or adventure. We're not rich, we're just average folks who happen to live in different countries.

Many Americans back home think we're ungrateful, rich sods who've turned our backs on the US. As previously mentioned, most of us aren't rich, polls show that few of us moved abroad for political reasons and we don't hate America. We get up, go to work, hang out with our friends, mow the lawn, love our children, and so on. Not much different from back in the US, except that the food's different, the language is different, the culture is different, etc.

So why are so many Americans abroad giving up their citizenship? Most of them will tell you the same thing: FATCA, a law designed to force international banks to report US customers to the IRS. Thanks to this law:

• Americans abroad are often being denied bank accounts
• Americans abroad are being denied business opportunities (happened to me)
• Some overseas companies have simply stopped hiring Americans
• FATCA is breaking up marriages
• Americans abroad are now going into hiding
• People who didn't know they were Americans are being hunted by the IRS
• US Congressman have been trying to bankrupt US expats
• And so on ...

There are, at the present time, only two countries in the world who tax their citizens abroad: the brutal dictatorship of Eritrea and the US. Taxing Americans abroad was an old law instituted during the US civil war to punish Americans fleeing abroad to avoid the war (and paying for it via taxes). However, the law remained on the books but was largely ignored. Americans abroad were not told about it and they lived, retired, and died in blissful ignorance of this Civil War era law.

In 1970, the Bank Secrecy Act was passed and it contained the Foreign Bank Account Reporting provision (tell the IRS if you have a foreign bank about with more than $10,000), but this was a money laundering measure, not an attempt to enforce the Civil War law.

It was after the Great Recession of 2008 that the US government started searching for other sources of income that it realized it had largely been ignoring this old law on the books. Despite the complete lack of evidence that enforcing this law will work (the US Census Bureau doesn't count Americans abroad, despite repeatedly losing lawsuits over this), law makers are painting expats as billionaire tax dodgers living abroad to avoid paying taxes. Honestly, anyone who thinks I live in France to dodge taxes is an idiot, and as mentioned above, surveys repeatedly show that we're just a bunch of ordinary Americans — not wealthy tax dodgers.

Ironically, this move has been championed by many politicians who are themselves famous for dodging taxes. 

The Government's Solution

All of the above has led to the problem of record numbers of Americans trying to renounce their citizenship. Previously, it had always been free to renounce your US citizenship. Go to a consulate abroad, fill out your paperwork, and wait for your CLN (Certificate of Loss of Nationality). In 2010, the US started charging $450 for allowing Americans to renounce. However, US renunciations continued to skyrocket, though the numbers appear to be seriously underreported. There have been reports of increased waiting times for various countries as a result.

Rather than address the root issues, the US attempted to contain the damage by raising the renunciation fee by 422% to $2,350! This puts it out of the price range of many Americans abroad, particularly those in lesser-developed nations, or those living paycheck-to-paycheck. However, this still didn't work. In 2015, there was a 20% increase in the number of Americans giving up their citizenship. From 2008 to 2015, the number of Americans renouncing has increased 18-fold and, as mentioned earlier, this is probably severely unreported.

So again, instead of fixing the problem, the US government has found yet another "solution." You can't legally renounce without an appointment, so since January 2016, the US embassies in Canada are simply not scheduling renunciation appointments. People are reporting delays of over a year to get an appointment. In Germany, renunciations are now restricted to the US Consulate General in Frankfurt, despite there being an embassy in Berlin and five consulates around the country. Here in France, they've restricted this to Paris and Marseille, despite an embassy and six consulates. If you've ever had the misfortune of wading through the consulate lines in Paris or trying to get an appointment, you know what a high bar they've set for letting Americans abroad renounce.

You would think that a politician might ask the obvious question: why are so many Americans giving up their citizenship? But no, no one cares. Americans abroad overwhelmingly say they don't want to do this, even as they're filling out the forms to renounce. Something has to change.