Is it true that Japan still does not legally recognize "immigration" as such, and instead
simply treats all immigrants as so called RESIDENTS with different status?

I somehow cannot find any info on this online..
(I mean that the term "immigration" and "immigrant" is not existant in Japan)
Do you have any info on this?

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/12...kxUyHwrLVh

Well, you can become a citizen, so immigration should exist I think. And I believe permanent residence is considered a form of immigration, which is also possible.

More information on the Residency System: http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_1/en/

I do know that when you go around switching visa stuff, you are generally switching around Status of Residency, which can make some fun little twists in the official language of it.

Finally, it is called the "Immigration Bureau" of Japan, so the concept exists in some form, although the number of people that go for permanent residence in Japan might be lower than other countries

It's not surprising that the legal-status parts of the process focus on the points where control can be exerted: do you have a right to enter the country, do you have permission to remain in the country (and for how long), are you allowed to do certain things (work, study, etc) while you're there? As an individual going through various stages of this you might be doing it with the intent of immigrating permanently (by moving through to eventually get to "permitted to remain indefinitely"), but the bureaucracy is I think more concerned with the immediate situation at any one point in time rather than your intentions (which can change anyway). I don't think this is going to be very different from country to country.

Gaining permanent residency, ie: citizenship with right to vote and all, is a pretty involved process and from what I understand is only something that can be done after having held visas for a number of years; usually back to back. Its considerably easier to receive the long term resident visa as you just have to check off boxes generally to receive it. Citizenship however is more dependent on convincing bureaucrats that you are "committed to Japan" so its not as cut and dry.

I expect immigration in general (visas and citizenship) to get easier in the next 10-15 years as the population crisis slowly reaches critical-crisis in policies. Technically its already critical, but politics are too conservative right now in Japan and everyone still thinks it can be solved by fixing a handful of problems.

(2015-11-18, 7:47 am)vix86 Wrote: Gaining permanent residency, ie: citizenship with right to vote and all

Why conflate the two? Permanent residency (永住) and naturalization (帰化) are two very different things. They do both have Japan residency requirements though, so everyone has to start with some other kind visa before they qualify for either.

EDIT:

Ah, I finally realized that you did mention "long term resident visa" meaning permanent residency. In any case the immigration department translates one into Permanent Resident and the other into naturalization so it's probably best to use those two terms.

Neither of them are that difficult honestly. Japan makes the process relatively easy as long as you live there for the required amount of time.

Debito has good information on it.

Thank you very much, everyone, for the detailed information you have shared with me!
That was really helpful and now I can work with something.