Baseball legend Alex Ramírez becomes legally Japanese
Ramírez started in the American minors (earning a player of the year award), then progressing to the MLB's Cleveland Indians and Pittsburgh Pirates before going to the Tokyo's Yakult Swallows then the Yomiuri Giants, where he became the first player to get 2,000 career hits in 2013. This led him to being the first and only foreign player to be invited to the 日本プロ野球名球会 (Golden Players Club), one of the two hall of fame organizations for Japanese baseball.
Having played for the NPB in Japan for more than eight seasons, he achieved free agent status and was no longer counted as a "foreign player" for the purposes of roster handicaps and quotas.
He became the coach of the Baystars in 2016.
Although Ramírez is best known for being a baseball superstar both first in the United States and then in Japan, he is also an entrepreneur that has been involved in managing his brand and image with goods and promotions.
Like many elite athletes who have competed for Japan, a big motivation for Ramírez to acquire Japanese nationality is so he can represent Samurai Japan as a baseball coach for the national team.
His admitted that he has been working on his application for some time (he revealed publicly that he began the process over a year ago in January of 2018), and was delayed in getting the supporting paperwork for his application. Japan places more emphasis on the "family" compared to the "individual" when comparing to western countries, which is why the 戸籍 (Japanese family register) exists. When a person becomes legally Japanese, the government needs to construct a brand new Japanese family register for the newly minted Japanese national. To do this, they need accurate vital records from foreign countries: marriage certificates, divorce certificates, birth certificates, of not just the individual in question but their immediate family members as well.
Ramírez is a devout family man and Christian, and has a wife and two children. His wife grew up in Puerto Rico (and the two of them briefly operated a wonderful Puerto Rican cuisine restaurant in Tokyo) but already had Japanese nationality, thus his wife and children did not need to naturalize with him. The Japanese naturalization process allows non-Japanese families to naturalize together simultaneously if they wish — in order to eliminate the problem of an immigration issue where a non-Japanese family member loses the right to adobe.
In some cases, especially if the home country of the naturalizing individual is in a state of flux, obtaining accurate records, if they exist at all, can be time consuming, difficult, and sometimes impossible. It's for this reason that some people who naturalize who come from some African countries have a hard time ascertaining their birth date: their birth was not properly recorded by their government.
Unfortunately, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been in a state of political upheaval for some time, thus it is understandable how obtaining official vital records from the local governments from Japan could be problematic. Over 2.3 million people or 7% of its population has emigrated due to economic crisis in recent years, usually to neighboring South American countries, especially neighboring Colombia.
