Permanent residence in Taiwan and/or Japan

APRC…
I think to get permanent residence one has to have an ARC for 5 years…that’t it?

It would be nice to have permanent residence in a 2nd country.

When I taught in China I definitely had no desire to pursue permanent residence in the place. In Korea I felt pretty much the same.

Taiwan is a place that I may be interested in having permanent residence in.

Japan is another country that I would consider permanent residence in.

Is Japan as simple as working 5 years and that’s it?

Yes, essentially.

Japan can actually be as quick as 1 year, depending on your qualifications.

I don’t know all the rules but I’d recommend for Japanese info to go to the subreddit on Reddit called Japanlife and do a search for PR, and there are a ton of articles about it. One theme I noticed though is that Japanese PR is very much up to the whims of the immigration officer you see, and they can deny for any reason such as they think you got too many traffic tickets, your boss lied and said you didn’t need to pay into the pension plan and they find out, forgot to pay a specific tax you didn’t know about, etc. They are a stickler for rules and if you break a few its PR denied in some cases. Taiwan gives you more of a straight path and you either qualify or you don’t before you even apply

Also, if you qualify for Taiwanese APRC (PR) under the professional category, you can leave Taiwan up to 5 years without notifying immigration as long as you enter before 5 years, but in Japan you need to apply for a reentry certificate and let them know when you will be back or you have to turn in the PR card to be revoked if you are leaving indefinitely.

That said if you learn Japanese to a good level the jobs there are much more numerous for foreigners than Taiwan and pays a hell of a lot more too. All sorts of stuff like advertising, finance, design, marketing, programming, animation; a lot of companies need foreigners there and are willing to pay you for it.

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