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The story
On the 13th, the government held an expert panel on the “Specified Skilled Worker” residence status for foreign workers and on sector-specific operational guidelines for “Employment for Skill Development,” which launches in April 2027, confirming a plan to move food service work at hospitals and welfare facilities into the “food and beverage manufacturing” sector and resume accepting workers starting next April. The food service industry sector itself remains closed to new intake for now, so this amounts to carving out just one part of it. On 5ch threads, opinions split over how the system works, the cap on the number of workers accepted, and the future path toward permanent settlement.
On the 13th, the government held an expert panel on the “Specified Skilled Worker” residence status for foreign workers and on “Employment for Skill Development,” which replaces the Technical Intern Training Program starting in April 2027.
The panel confirmed that the proposed revisions to the sector-specific operational guidelines will be reported to a ministerial meeting scheduled for December. The government aims to finalize this with a Cabinet decision by the end of the year.
Under the revision, food service work at hospitals and welfare facilities — part of the Specified Skilled Worker Type 1 “food service industry” sector, where intake is currently suspended — will resume accepting workers starting next April. This food service work will be reclassified under the “food and beverage manufacturing” sector.
Source: jiji.com / Original article here
What people said
The LDP is the pro-immigration party.
Are there really idiots who don't even know that?
Takaichi's different.
Supposedly she's fighting the pro-immigration faction within her own party.
Guess that just proves healthcare and welfare can't run without foreign workers.
Seriously, keep them away from anything that goes in people's mouths — must be rough on the Japanese staff working alongside them too.
Meat-processing plants and frozen vegetable factories are already almost all foreign workers.
If the media wants to bring Takaichi down, reporting stuff like this would tank her approval ratings too.
Did you take "review from a zero base" at face value?
It's political boilerplate that really means: "We'll review it with a clean slate… and have decided to keep going with the same policy as before!"
Is that too hard to understand?
After 3 years as an Employment for Skill Development trainee, pass the Level 1 exam and work as a Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1) for up to 5 years total (8 years combined). After that, pass the Level 2 exam and work as a Specified Skilled Worker (Type 2) with no time limit at all.
Stage: ① Employment for Skill Development
Duration: 3 years in principle
Details: The stage where inexperienced workers are trained up from unskilled status.
Stage: ② Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1)
Duration: up to 5 years total
Details: Move up by passing an exam at the end of training (or the Type 1 exam) plus a Japanese-language test.
Stage: ③ Specified Skilled Worker (Type 2)
Duration: no upper limit (renewable)
Details: Move up by passing a skilled-worker exam combined with practical experience. Opens the door to bringing family over and applying for permanent residency.
About that Specified Skilled Worker Type 2 —
it's not really "highly skilled," more like "part-time shift leader" level.
You've got a huge misunderstanding there.
Isn't it you who's got the huge misunderstanding?
Most foreign workers don't necessarily even want to settle in Japan permanently,
and it's not an easy system to climb either.
As proof, only about 20,000 foreigners have reached Specified Skilled Worker Type 2 in the several years since the system began.
If anything, it's the Japanese employers who are the ones lobbying politicians, saying "They've finally become skilled — let them stay in Japan longer!"
If there's no cap on Type 2, the whole cap thing is meaningless.
Caps are meaningless to begin with, since a cap can always be raised later anyway.
If anything, they set a cap precisely on the assumption that large numbers will come in.
Also, the debate happening right now isn't about abolishing Type 2 — it's about abolishing Type 1.
In other words, the idea is to just funnel everyone into Type 2.
The numbers through the end of FY2028 are already fixed, so it's going to increase no matter what until then. They'll decide the FY2029 numbers at some point, but if nobody speaks up it'll just increase even more.
The "Engineer/Specialist in Humanities and International Services" visa has no cap at all, you know.
The ones still sticking with it in the end have a dream — they say they'll do it for a few years and then go chase it. They've got real grit.
His wife's Japanese, so I wish she'd tell him to cut it out — but then again, she's the type who married a foreigner.
It's a day off tomorrow — go play kick-the-can with him.
Can't even post images from history anymore, 5ch's dead too, and no matter what we do this country's getting flooded with foreigners anyway.
My workplace doesn't have any foreigners though, so whatever, I'm fine with it.
Don't say that.
It's just that the old-school posters got older and can't stay up through the night anymore — there's still plenty of people around during the day.
Trump lost too, you know.
Old folks left behind by the times.
But while the UK and France each have around 7 million people aged 75 and older, Japan has 22 million.
No wonder the government feels a sense of crisis.
Background and key points of this discussion
The Specified Skilled Worker system began in 2019 and originally covered the food service industry as well, but intake there was suspended at one point following cases of fraud and other abuses. This latest revision isn’t a full reopening of the food service sector — it’s a limited measure that carves out only food service work at hospitals and welfare facilities and reclassifies it under a separate “food and beverage manufacturing” sector, a distinction that’s easy to miss. The thread also laid out the staged system running from Employment for Skill Development (starting April 2027) up through Specified Skilled Worker Type 1 and Type 2, along with the point that only around 20,000 people have reached Type 2 status — which allows bringing over family and settling long-term — in the several years since the system launched. Opinions split between those who read the expanded intake as the administration pushing a pro-immigration agenda and those who see it as a practical fix for labor shortages in medical and welfare settings, with the same set of facts notably leading commenters to opposite conclusions.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[Foreign Workers] Sector Review for Specified Skills and Employment for Skill Development — “Food Service Work at Hospitals and Welfare Facilities” to Resume Intake under the “Food and Beverage Manufacturing” Sector.”
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