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Comment by shiroiushi | Hacker News Reader

Very stupid of the UK, but I guess it shows that the UK really doesn't want any immigrants unless they're very rich. I do wonder, however, why the companies that want to hire these top scientists, aren't paying all these fees for them. If they really want to recruit these people, then paying all necessary visa costs should be part of the job offer.

By way of comparison, getting a job like this here in Japan costs 3000 yen (about USD $19 right now) for the visa fee. Perhaps that's why this country is one of the "leading scientific nations" (according to the article): it's really, really easy to bring qualified professionals here, at least as far as immigration procedures and fees are concerned.

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It's not especially easy to bring people to Japan because of all the other administrative barriers around housing, bank accounts, etc., as well as the language requirement. As can be seen from the low immigration rate.

>It's not especially easy to bring people to Japan because of all the other administrative barriers around housing, bank accounts, etc., as well as the language requirement. As can be seen from the low immigration rate.

Wrong. It was really easy for me. The low immigration rate is because it's not a terribly popular place to live, and because of the language barrier. It's also historically been not very immigration-friendly (legally, the immigration laws were strict), but that's changed radically in the last decade or so. Now if you have in-demand skills and a company wants to hire you, you're in.

Housing and bank accounts aren't a problem. I got multiple bank accounts pretty quickly after moving here. Housing is pretty easy: some (individual) landlords won't look at you if you don't speak Japanese, but the corporate landlords don't care, as long as you have a guarantor and a job that pays enough for the rent.

The language is the biggest barrier, but that depends on your job. Companies that try to recruit skilled foreign professionals have strong English-language support.

Having been tempted in the past but put off by Japanese work culture tropes, would you say that that has also changed radically?

it has, but not a lot. industry and location also matter, but chances are you're not being recruited abroad to be a fisherman or noodle-maker in a 2nd tier city.

It depends on where you work, like any place. If you work in a western (or westernized) company that uses English internally and where all your coworkers are expats, it's probably not too different from a typical US tech company.

Your own comment kind of proves the fact that it's only easy if you have corporate sponsorship though. Getting housing and bank accounts is essentially impossible without it, that's not really something that happens in western nations.

Huh? How exactly do you propose to emigrate anywhere (such as the US) without a job? You can't just show up in some country, get a bank account and an apartment, and start living life there. If you want to move to the US, you need corporate sponsorship there too, to get a work visa, which is the same in pretty much every developed nation. There are some ways around it, such as "investor's visas" (for very rich people), and spousal visas, but we're not talking about those kind of people. (Also, unlike the US with its EB5 investor visa, Japan doesn't have any such thing. There is a new "digital nomad" visa I think though, but it's very new and I don't know anything about it.)

You might need a company to sponsor the job in the US, depending on your visa, but you don't need them to help you deal with basic contracts and services like renting an apartment or opening a bank account. That's just comparing to the US. People move all around Europe without needing a company to help them get an apartment and setup basic accounts for utilities and bank accounts.

You don't need a company to sponsor you for a bank account in Japan either, but if you just moved into the country, they do want to know who your employer is. Same for landlords: why would anyone rent you an apartment if you don't have an income?

Where did you get the idea that you need your company to help you set up a bank account? I was able to do it easily at 2 banks all by myself.

I don't think the fee is a problem unless the 'top scientists' are actually juniors grinding mundane lab tasks.

The real issue is the symbolism where people don't feel welcome I guess.

You don't think a fee of USD $27000 (fee for family of 4 from article) is a problem for a scientist? Just how much money do you think scientists make anyway? Even for a well-paid software engineer, that's easily enough money to make them not bother looking at jobs in that country, and the UK isn't known for high salaries either so it's even worse.

Ye 27000USD is a no go for like most or almost all prospective scientists if they have to pay it themself.

I think I misunderstood the article.

>I think I misunderstood the article.

That's understandable, I think: This policy in the UK is so shockingly and bone-headedly stupid that it probably seems completely unbelievable, so your brain tries to interpret it in some other way that makes more sense.

>You don't think a fee of USD $27000 (fee for family of 4 from article) is a problem for a scientist?

Presumably the companies that really need to import talent would cover those fees for them if imported talent is actually necessary. Companies in the US pay similar fees to sponsor imported employees and no one complains about the costs.

I won't deal with a company covering those kinds of fees or even a headhunter in the UK for a European job. There's a lot of room there for problems and anyone who is worth paying $27k on top of generous relocation has a lot of choices that are better than the UK in terms of actually delivered compensation.

>There's a lot of room there for problems and anyone who is worth paying $27k on top of generous relocation has a lot of choices that are better than the UK in terms of actually delivered compensation.

That seems like an argument in favor of UK businesses paying these fees. It's an employee's market for top talent and employers bear the burden of paying any sorts of fees necessary to get top talent. The alternative is for that sort of industry to just not be viable in the UK.

A Post-doc at a prestigious research institute will probably be earning around £40,000, almost certainly in a HCOL area where rent for a 1 bed flat is £1,500+ a month. The fee is a legitimate financial concern for them.

'top scientists' in the uk make less than interns at google.

Top scientist anywhere make less than interns at the world's richest AD delivery company.

how much rent does that internship salary pay?

my buddy was paying around $5k/month USD for his rent when he was doing FAANG work in SF.

Yeah, it's not just the UK. Scientists in the US make lousy money too. They're actually a lot better off taking their science degree, quitting science work, and going into patent law to work on patents that the underpaid scientists create. You don't even need a law degree; you can work under a patent attorney. (Obviously the pay isn't as good as someone with a JD or LLM, but it's better than the people doing the actual science work.)

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