TOKYO: Japan will expand employment opportunities for foreign students who graduated from vocational schools, aiming to keep talented foreigners in the country, the Immigration Services Agency said Thursday.

The government will give foreigners who graduated from certified vocational schools in Japan a residency status equivalent to that given to university graduates.

Currently, foreign students are required to obtain a visa under the category of engineer or specialist in humanities or international services if they wish to do an office job in Japan after graduation.

Also, the courses taken by vocational school graduates from overseas must be relevant to some degree to the jobs they wish to land, a requirement that bars many foreign students from staying in Japan.

The immigration agency said it will flexibly judge the relevance between the majors of foreign students who graduated from vocational schools certified by the education minister and their planned jobs as it does to university graduates.

Vocational school graduates will also become eligible for a residency status for those who graduated from Japanese universities or graduate schools to work in customer services.

The agency estimates that those changes will increase the number of foreign vocational school graduates who land a job in Japan by some 3,000.

JIJI Press