Comment by aikinai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aikinai | Hacker News Reader

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Sure happy to share. I guess most people would be surprised, but Japan has very straightforward and easy immigration if you meet the right conditions, of which Patrick is a shoe-in. He probably already has permanent residency, but if not, he could either be on a work visa or a spousal visa. None of those are going to get rejected because he did some amateur pandemic modeling.

Assuming someone at immigration would take the time to look into his background (not just his paperwork), find out that he wrote a Covid-19 white paper with higher projections than the government at the time and then blacklist him for it is such a mischaracterization of Japanese process, I don't know where to start. It's not like there's a source I can reference, but I also have a lot of knowledge of Japanese immigration through knowing plenty of foreigners on different visas in Japan and have never heard of anyone getting rejected if they meet the conditions.

I can share one interesting anecdotal counter-example to show how easygoing Japanese immigration is. Someone I knew was on a fraudulent work visa "working" for a friend. He was actually creating a startup. By the time immigration found out, he had the necessary scale to sponsor his own work visa, so he wrote an apology letter and then switched to his own work visa even though the foundation of the company was built on a fraudulent visa.

I cofounded a company with Patrick several years ago and have known him for a long time, and in that entire time he has lived full time in Japan. I don't know the particulars of his immigration situation, but if I had to hazard a guess, yes, he's a PR.

I don't know anything in particular about his concerns about his own status. I have, on the other hand, known many LPRs in the US who were extraordinarily careful about their engagement in public matters out of concern about their status.

If your argument is that protection for PRs in Japan is stronger than that of US LPRs, I'm going to go ahead and call that an extraordinary claim. At some point, though, probably rapidly approaching, litigating this point becomes ghoulish. I haven't heard Patrick say he's specifically concerned about his own status, but he's clearly concerned about some of the people he worked with.

known many LPRs in the US who were extraordinarily careful about their engagement in public matters out of concern about their status.

That has to be a function of knowing a particular variety of (however reasonably) paranoid LPR's, though, no? I can't imagine it being a core concern for the vast majority of LPRs.

I assume most LPRs aren't really in a position to have to think about being engaged with public policy, and the LPRs I tend to know work in a field that intersects a bit more with policy.

Maybe I'm misreading something but do you mean their status as a person engaged in public policy? There's obviously a lot one can sensibly worry about while an LPR but I have a hard time seeing how even the most ill-advised engagement in public policy (short of things like fomenting insurrection) would lead to loss of the actual LRP status. Like, what would even the mechanism be?

I think your anecdote only shows how much discretion the immigration department has in enforcing the law. That same discretion could easily go the other way if someone were to embarrass Japanese authorities.

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