Immigration points system

Hi all!

I’m thinking about migrating to Japan to work in IT.

I have been reading about the points system and I have got a few questions.

  1. Is there a list of accepted universities when trying to use a bachelor’s degree to get points?

  2. If my 4 years degree is from an university in Brazil and therefore not in English but in Portuguese, will it be accepted? Do I need to translate it to English?

  3. About proof of work, do they accept payslips (or maybe the contract) in Portuguese from a Brazilian company? What if I translate it to English?

Thank you very much to anyone who can help me with these questions!

For 1, it has to be a top 300 university in 2 of the 3 global rankings systems considered by the japanese government: QS Rankings, THE Rankings, Shanghai Rankings.

Thanks freebiesoft!

My degree won’t help me then…

So I found these links:
https://en.an-japan.com/2019/08/31/hsp-univ/
https://www.tn-office.jp/14863473933236
https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/comments/qou3rj/immigration_points_relating_to_degrees_from_top/

It seems that you get EXTRA 10 points if your university is in the top 300.

As there’s nothing saying about universities not being qualified for the initial 10 points we can probably assume that they will accept any degree… It would still be great if someone could confirm that though.

As far as I understand, there isn’t any public list of this. Immigration may maintain one themselves. I’ve never heard of someone getting there application rejected because of their university, so I suspect any legitimate one will have it.

I suspect this is also a case-by-case basis thing. If you’re applying via the Brazilian consulate, I’d expect them to be able to confirm your Portuguese degree.

For proof of employment, I’ve heard it’s whatever you have. It could be a contract or pay slips. It’s evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

If it wasn’t clear though, even if you go the points based route, you still need to have a company sponsor you. If you have a bachelor’s degree, it’s easy enough to just get the normal engineering visa, so there might not be a strong reason to go with the extra documentation for the points based route (unless you plan to go for permanent residency early). I’d personally be more focused on finding a company that’s willing to hire me - once you’ve done that, the formality of getting a visa should be relatively easy.

Thanks for the reply Paul!

Sorry, I should had added some context.
I currently live in the UK and would be applying from here.
I would probably need to translate my degree to English, correct?

Right, so it’s basically trying my best to make they accept it.
My years of experience are divided between work in Brazil and here in the UK.
For the UK work it’s easy to get documents in English (letter from company confirming I worked there from date to date and what was my occupation, contract and payslips), but for the Brazilian work I’m planning to only get the company letter in English and the rest in Portuguese.

That should be enough, right?

I’d just ask the consulate directly about what format/language they’re looking for when you apply for the visa.

This document is an upload on the official Japanese immigration services website: https://www.isa.go.jp/common/uploads/pub-291_02.pdf

Question 18 tells you which universities give you that bonus 10 points.