The Immigration Services Agency has fixed staffing floors and caseload ceilings for the people who deliver support to Specified Skilled Worker (i) holders, and they take effect on 1 April 2027. From that date one support staffer may be responsible for fewer than 50 Specified Skilled Worker (i) workers, and at a registered support organisation for fewer than 10 client employers.
The requirements sit in amendments to the Regulation for Enforcement of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act and to the ministerial ordinance setting standards for Specified Skilled Worker employment contracts and Specified Skilled Worker (i) support plans. They are not yet in force, and no support obligation changes before 1 April 2027.
What the amended ordinances require
Every site that carries out support must appoint at least one full-time officer or employee as a support manager and at least one as a support staffer. For a registered support organisation the count is per office doing support work. One person may hold both roles.
Only the people appointed to those roles may carry out support work. That closes off the arrangement where support is passed to whoever is free, or to a subcontractor who appears nowhere in the paperwork.
Support managers are also to complete a training course covering immigration law and labour law. The Agency says managers will not have to take it for the time being, even after 1 April 2027, making it the one element of the package with no working deadline.
The two caseload ceilings
Both limits are strict inequalities rather than maxima. Fewer than 10 Specified Skilled Worker employers per staffer applies to registered support organisations only; fewer than 50 Specified Skilled Worker (i) workers per staffer applies wherever support is delivered. In the Agency's worked examples, an organisation serving 25 employers needs three support staffers, and one supporting 120 workers also needs three.
The scale is what makes that arithmetic bite. The Agency's register dated 8 October 2026 lists 11,660 registered support organisations, many of them small, against 432,016 Specified Skilled Worker (i) residents at the end of July 2026 on preliminary figures. An organisation running thin staffing across hundreds of workers has to hire or shed clients.
If you hold Specified Skilled Worker (i)
The support plan is your employer's legal obligation, not yours, and you cannot breach it. The risk is your employer losing the body that discharges it: an employer meets the support-capacity requirement either by running support in-house or by outsourcing the whole plan to a registered support organisation. If that organisation fails the new staffing test and drops off the register, the gap surfaces at your next application to extend your period of stay.
Two things to establish before 1 April 2027. Ask who your named support manager and support staffer are, because after that date support delivered by anyone else does not count. And ask whether support comes from your employer directly or from a registered support organisation, since the 10-employer ceiling reaches only the second case.
This does not touch Specified Skilled Worker (ii), which carries no support plan, and it does not reach Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services or other work statuses, which have never had one.
The deadline that falls before 1 April 2027
Support organisations, not workers, face the earlier date. A registration application filed before 1 April 2027 is judged under the current requirements, but any later renewal must meet the new ones. An organisation whose registration expires on or before 31 July 2027 can renew under the current requirements only if it files that renewal before 1 April 2027 — otherwise its renewal is assessed against the new staffing ratios.
Employment for Skill Development uses different bodies
Employment for Skill Development begins on the same day, 1 April 2027, and its intermediaries are supervising support organisations, registered separately under that programme's own law. They are not registered support organisations and this amendment does not govern them. Anyone reading two sets of 1 April 2027 rules at once should keep the two registers apart.
Where to check the register
The register of support organisations is public, published as a spreadsheet in Japanese and English, with the 8 October 2026 edition the latest. Details of the status itself sit on the Specified Skilled Worker page: Specified Skilled Worker visa.
Look up the organisation named in your support plan and note when its registration expires. If that date falls between 1 April and 31 July 2027, ask which set of requirements it intends to renew under.
Sources: Immigration Services Agency — Revision of requirements for the support system for Specified Skilled Worker (i), effective 1 April 2027, Immigration Services Agency — Main points of the revision (PDF), Immigration Services Agency — Registered Support Organizations, Immigration Services Agency — Projected intake and resident numbers for Specified Skilled Worker (i), end of July 2026 (PDF)