Immigration Bureau Notice
According to the notice on the Immigration Services Agency’s website, “To all those who are planning to apply for the status of residence ‘Specified Skilled Worker’ (posted in November 2024)”, in March 2022, entry restrictions due to the spread of COVID-19 were relaxed, and many waiting technical intern trainees (Type 1) entered the country between March and April of that year. As the technical intern trainees who entered Japan during this period will be completing their Technical Intern Training No. 2 status, the number of applications for permission to change their status of residence from “Technical Intern Training No. 2″ to ” Specified Skilled Worker s No. 1″ will increase from January to April 2025. The counters will be crowded and the results will be notified much slower than usual.
By the way, in order to obtain Specified Skilled Worker No. 1, there are two routes: one that does not involve technical intern training (taking and passing the exams (skill exam and Japanese language test)) and one that successfully completes technical intern training No. 2 (exemption from the exam).
The latest standard processing period announced for Specified Skills No. 1 is 66.9 days, but it will probably take even more days.
Recommended online application
By the way, the above notice also states, “If you apply online, you can check the progress of the examination yourself on the online residence application system, so please use the online application.”
Regardless of the progress of the review, once the application is accepted, it will remain in the “under review” status for a long time. From the Immigration Agency’s point of view, even if you asked about the status of examination over the phone, they will only tell you whether the screening process is ongoing or not (they won’t give you any further details), so by having them check online, they can avoid being interrupted by phone calls. (As a result, the overall examination can be carried out even slightly more efficiently.)
Will online application speed up the examination time?
However, compared to paper applications, online applications are should be far more efficient in screening. (Same as electronic medical record system in medical institutions)
Therefore, I expected that the examination time would be shorter if I applied online, and I contacted the Immigration Services Agency. I was told that this was not the case, unfortunately.
In my personal experience as well, I don’t feel that online application is faster. The number of days for examination may be directly affected simply by how crowded the immigration bureau is. (There are cases that results can be obtained very quickly at local immigration offices.)
So, what are the benefits of “online application”? I would like to discuss that next time.