PDA

View Full Version : Japan ousts foreign overstayers



John Lindsey
11th November 2003, 06:13
TOKYO - Japan, increasingly concerned about as many as 250,000 foreign workers who have overstayed their visas, is cracking down. In the month from September 19 to October 17, immigration forces and the Tokyo police caught 1,643 illegal foreign workers, the largest number recorded so far for a single month. Most were caught in Tokyo's 23 wards as well as the suburban areas.

On October 17, Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa announced a joint effort between Tokyo's metropolitan police force and the Immigration Department to attempt to catch and deport as many illegals as possible. Nozawa also vowed to simplify deportation procedures to get them out of the country faster, without handing them to police for deportation.

That Japan has had an uneasy relationship with foreigners goes without saying. It is a society that has been deeply distrustful of gaijin, as foreigners are known, regarding them as culturally inferior. Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan remained a sakoku, a closed country. For centuries, no foreigners were allowed to enter Japan, and Japanese were forbidden from going out until US Commodore Matthew Perry famously forced open the borders in 1853.

This anti-foreign antipathy remains so deeply rooted in Japanese society that gaijin cannot rent a house easily without providing the name of a Japanese guarantor. Indeed, in many areas, landlords won't rent to foreigners even with a guarantor. Some Americans complain that they have been unable to rent apartments for as long as five years.

But as the population ages and the country's needs for labor have grown, it has grudgingly opened its doors to temporary workers - very grudgingly. The United Nations has estimated that because of its aging population, Japan could use as many as 600,000 foreign-born workers as immigrants per year. Nonetheless, only 0.2 percent of its population is foreign-born, compared to as much as 20 percent of Australia's and 18 percent in the US.

This poses endemic problems for Japanese society. The US, for instance, has long cross-fertilized its scientific and industrial communities with the foreign-born. The number of foreign-born winners of American Nobel prizes in the sciences and mathematics provides a dramatic example of such contributions by immigrants. It is arguable that the information technology revolution in Silicon Valley in the 1980s and 1990s would not have been nearly as dramatic without the contributions of Indian, Chinese and other immigrants.

Japan will have none of it. And as unemployment has grown during the country's long economic downturn, suspicion of foreigners has increased, driving foreign-born workers underground, as evidenced by the special campaign started to catch them in Tokyo and its environs. Of the September-October arrests, some 366 were Chinese, 326 Filipinos, 256 Malaysians, 166 Indonesians and the rest other nationalities.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/EK11Dh01.html

Kimpatsu
11th November 2003, 07:22
You know what really bugs me about all such articles is that nowhere do they actually call this practice for what it is: racism. Writers shy away from the "r" word all the time. Why, exactly? Such discrimination is blatantly racist, and should be called as such. Landlords who won't rent to gaijin are racist. Name them and shame them. Is it because they fear being sued for libel? Bring it on: truth is an absolute defence. And if the word "racism" is ugly, then the deed is twice as ugly. Call these people for what they are. racists. Go for it.

Exorcist_Fist
11th November 2003, 11:34
You know its funny, the whole race thing actually worked out for me recently. I am involved in a serious political battle at the company, and one of the VP's gives of the super Yakuza vibe. A number of people went to him to complain about me, specifically about the presence of a foreigner at the company, since they can't fault my work....

Anyway, it worked out for me because it turns out the VP's daughter is married to an Australian, and despite his almost rightist appearance, he hates racists. The people who bad-mouthed me are on the s-list now. ;)

Vapour
11th November 2003, 19:58
Japanese small business association won't allow it. Purely for the show.