Following the passage of the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law on Saturday, the government is working on specifying relevant systems prior to the law's enforcement on April 1 next year. To begin with, a basic policy for accepting foreign workers will be adopted at a Cabinet meeting later this month.
The basic policy will include measures to encourage businesses to directly hire foreign workers and to eliminate malicious middlemen. Those measures have been incorporated into the basic policy after the Diet deliberations on the law brought up the topic of the poor working environment of foreign technical interns.
The policy will also specify the responsibilities of companies that hire foreign workers so they can receive support in Japan, such as through teaching them Japanese and offering salaries of equal to or higher than those of Japanese workers.
The government plans to accept up to 345,150 workers in 14 fields of work, including agricultural and nursing care, over a five-year period starting fiscal 2019, which begins April 1. Based on the basic policy, the government will create an operational policy for each industry before the end of this year and decide on specific businesses that can accept foreign workers, as well as the number of workers to be accepted. The number of workers stipulated in this policy will become the maximum number that each industry can accept.
Separately, a so-called comprehensive plan to live with foreign residents will be compiled. The plan will demand local governments to set up consultation desks for foreign residents as well as include support measures to help foreign residents secure housing because there are many cases where they are rejected from renting a place to live.
The government will discuss contents of the basic and operational policies as well as the comprehensive plan with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, before putting them before the relevant ministerial meetings.
The main pillar of the revision is the creation of new residence statuses for foreign workers with specific skills and the acceptance foreign workers hired in industries that require relatively simple labor. The revision created the category 1 status for workers engaging in relatively simple labor and the category 2 status for workers with advanced skills.
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