How many people drop out midway through the application process?
However, the Ministry of Justice and the Nationality Departments (国籍課) do not publicly publish the amount of people that begin the naturalization process but never get their case officer to submit their paperwork. This is for many reasons. A big reason is that many people don't get to the point where they actually submit anything to a case worker or sign up for an appointment with a case worker, so there is no written record.
The only way to get an idea of how many people actually begin the process then either decide on their own not to finish or have the case worker recommend they not try to proceed with a formal application is to ask immigration lawyer specialists.
According to Japanese immigration lawyers, the odds of somebody casually exploring naturalization then for one reason or another not pursuing to the case worker review and interview stage is:
about 1 in 3 (~33%) for regular applicants
or about 1 in 4 (~25%) for special permanent residents (特別永住者)
The reasons that most people give to the immigration centers for dropping out are:
- They step in the door of the office, have a chat, leave, and think that they've "applied".
- They step in the door, hear the requirements, decide gathering the paperwork is impossible, and give up.
- They have a pre-interview with a case worker, decide they meet all the requirements, but don't follow through and gather all the paperwork.
- The application process requires them to deal with family matters and paperwork that they'd rather not have to deal with.
- The paperwork and requirements are vastly simplified for SPRs, but the motivations for not wanting to finish may be influenced by national pride and historical reasons, as well as one's family. (this is why they are "special" in the first place)
Still, the population of special permanent residents has been shrinking much more rapidly than the rest of the population, and as most of them were raised in Japan and can only speak Japanese, it's unlikely they returned back to their country. Thus, it's reasonable to assume that more and more of them are naturalizing.
If the applicant manages to get past the first stage and collect the paperwork and then makes it to the paperwork review and interview stage, the number of applicants dropping out before the final formal submission is:
about 1 in 5 to 6 people (~15.5%)
The reasons are similar to the above, but additional factors such as the wait for appointments between paperwork checks (usually a few weeks) and getting discouraged when the case worker asks you to revise or redo submissions.
However, it is important to remember that these are unofficial numbers that have been talked about in blog entries advertising naturalization paperwork services. There is a conflict of interest between the immigration paperwork handlers and their information as they obviously want applicants to use for-pay legal services to process their application (it's not necessary for most cases).
Regardless, it is undeniable that many people who start looking into the naturalization never follow through to the final formal submission, and the official statistics do not reflect these sort of applicants.
However, it is important to remember that these are unofficial numbers that have been talked about in blog entries advertising naturalization paperwork services. There is a conflict of interest between the immigration paperwork handlers and their information as they obviously want applicants to use for-pay legal services to process their application (it's not necessary for most cases).
Regardless, it is undeniable that many people who start looking into the naturalization never follow through to the final formal submission, and the official statistics do not reflect these sort of applicants.
