Japan's draft second basic plan for immigration and residence management is built around a clear trade-off: faster processing for legitimate travellers and workers, tighter checks on everyone else. The measures that matter most for business are the planned introduction of the electronic travel authorisation system JESTA, greater use of digital tools at the border, more digitalised residence management, and a review of landing-permission criteria for the residence status covering business management.
The document is responding to scale. In reference material attached to the consultation, the agency says foreign arrivals in 2025 topped 40mn, a record, while the resident foreign population reached about 4.13mn, or 3.35% of Japan's total population. New arrivals on work-oriented residence statuses were about 220,000, including roughly 76,000 in the specified skilled worker category and 62,000 in the engineer, humanities and international services category. Those figures sit in reference material rather than the section formally open for comment, but they show why the draft is pairing facilitation with tighter administration.
Four policy buckets
The draft groups its response into four areas. On border control, it calls for stronger information gathering and analysis, closer coordination with related agencies, the introduction of JESTA and wider use of digital technology. On residence management, it promises more DX, stronger fact-finding, tighter handling of permanent residence, review of landing-permission criteria for business management, preparations for the launch of the new worker-development system, and the start of operations for special residence cards.
A third pillar is softer, but still commercially relevant: more information and consultation support for foreign residents, plus efforts to improve understanding of social customs and Japanese-language ability. A fourth is not soft at all. The draft keeps enforcement squarely in view, including deportation procedures and related measures under the government's "Zero Overstayers" package.
What business should watch
The headline point is not that Japan is simply opening up or closing down. It is trying to build a more scalable immigration system, one that can process bigger travel and labour flows digitally while retaining more control over residence status and compliance. That matters for airlines, tourism, employers hiring from overseas, and anyone using Japan as a regional base for staff mobility.
The caveat is that this is still a draft, and the packet does not give launch dates or operational detail for JESTA, residence-management DX or the review of business-management criteria. Comments are due by July 9, with the e-Gov portal page displaying a July 10 00:00 cutoff, so the policy direction is clearer than the eventual rulebook.