2024年5月30日
この法案を出して「共生」という言葉を使わないでください
―永住許可取り消しに反対します―
日本政府は、2024年2月「外国人材の受け入れ・共生に関する関係閣僚会議」で、「育成就労制度」の創設に加えて、永住許可要件を満たさなくなった場合の永住許可取り消しを検討する方針を決定した。これまで何ら議論もなされないなか、突如降って湧いて出てきたものである。しかし、あれよあれよという間にこの方針を盛り込んだ入管法改正案が5月 21日に衆議院を通過した。
Immigration
Asahi Shimbun interviews Tozen Executive about the Permanent Residency Bill
This article was originally hosted on the Asahi Shimbun website. Written by Hirayama Ari.
永住権を持つ外国人の永住資格を取り消せる規定を含む法改正に反対する在日外国人らが19日、東京都内で記者会見し、「不安でたまらない」などと訴えた。
政府は、外国人労働者を受け入れる在留資格「育成就労」の創設を柱とした入管難民法などの改正案を15日に閣議決定した。従来の技能実習制度に代わり、就労1～2年で職場変更（転籍）を可能とする。一方、永住許可を得た外国人が故意に税や社会保険料を納付しない場合に永住者の在留資格を取り消せる規定があり、日本弁護士連合会が撤回を求める会長声明を出すなど懸念の声がある。
19日の記者会見は、法改正に反対する弁護士グループが主催した。指宿昭一弁護士は「急病や失職で税金を払えなくなったり、在留カードの携帯を忘れたりしただけで永住権を剝奪（はくだつ）される事態が起きてはならない」などと指摘し、「永住者を一生不安にし、安定を与えない法律だ」と批判した。制度改正を検討した有識者会議では議論されなかった規定が突如、浮上したとも述べた。
会見に出席した英会話学校講師で英国人のアダム・ブラウンさん（35）は、日本人の妻との間にいる11歳の息子から「パパ、送り返されちゃうの？」と聞かれ、「胸が苦しかった」と語る。「（外国人が）常に家族崩壊や強制送還におびえながら暮らす国を選ぶだろうか」と問いかけた。
To continue reading please check the Asahi Shimbun website.
Foreign workers fear exploitation as Olympic projects gather steam
My first Labor Pains column of the new fiscal year will look at the government’s recent proposal for bringing in foreign workers.
Various proposals on easing immigration restrictions for foreign workers have been bandied about in recent years, but they were inevitably scrapped because “Japan is but a tiny island nation.” (In fact, Japan is the fifth-largest island nation in the world, after Australia, Indonesia, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea.) Incidentally, there are currently 2.03 million foreign residents and more than 700,000 foreign workers in Japan, so the country is already quite multinational and multiethnic in composition.
外国人労働者、５％増の68万人 10月
厚生労働省は27日、2011年10月時点での外国人雇用の届け出状況を発表した。外国人労働者数は68万6246人となり、届け出ベースで前年比5.6％増えた。東日本大震災の復旧需要などを背景に製造業などで短期雇用に就く外国人が増えたとみられる。
外国人労働者を雇っていると届け出た事業所数は前年比7.2％増の11万6561カ所。働く人を国籍別にみると、中国が29万7199人と最も多く全体の43.3％を占めた。産業別では製造業が最も多い26万5330人となり、全体の38.7％だった。
07年に施行した改正雇用対策法に基づき、日本で働く外国人の状況を集計した。同法はすべての事業主が外国人労働者を雇った場合はハローワークに届け出るよう義務付けている。
Japan to start grading skilled foreign workers in spring
The government announced Wednesday that it will start grading skilled foreign workers this spring and granting those with higher marks preferential treatment amid intensifying international competition for human resources.
Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka told a press conference that he hopes an increase in foreign workers with high-level skills will help to complement Japan’s workforce.
Under the new system, the government will classify professions into three categories — academic research, work requiring highly specialized skills, and management and administration.
It will award up to 30 points to people with doctoral or masters degrees, and up to 25 points to specialists based on the length of their working experience.
Those who obtain 70 points will receive preferential treatment, such as securing a permanent visa if they reside in Japan for around five years in principle, shorter than the current 10 years, and their spouses will also be allowed to work in Japan, the ministry said.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111228p2g00m0dm068000c.html
Immigration changes to come as new law takes effect in July
The revised immigration law will take effect next July 9 and the government will start accepting applications for new residence registration cards on Jan. 13, the Cabinet decided Tuesday, paving the way for increased government scrutiny through a centralized immigration control of foreign nationals.
The current alien registration cards, overseen by local municipalities, will be replaced with the cards issued by the central government.
According to the Justice Ministry, foreign residents can apply for the new card at their nearest regional immigration office beginning Jan. 13 but won’t receive it until July. However, valid alien registration certificates will be acceptable until the cardholder’s next application for a visa extension takes place.
At that point, the old card will be replaced with the new residence card, which will have a special embedded IC chip to prevent counterfeiting.
The government claims that centralized management of data on foreign residents will allow easier access to all personal information of the cardholder, such as type of visa, home address and work address, and in return enable officials to more conveniently provide services for legal aliens.
For example, documented foreigners will have their maximum period of stay extended to five years instead of the current three years. Re-entry to Japan will also be allowed without applying for a permit as long as the time away is less than a year, according to the Justice Ministry.
Permanent residents, meanwhile, will have to apply for a new residence card within three years from July 2012. Required materials necessary for an application have not been determined yet.
Schizophrenic Constitution leaves foreigners’ rights mired in confusion
So what rights do foreign residents have under the Constitution? Well, according to the Supreme Court, they are entitled to all the same rights as Japanese people, except for those which by their nature are only to be enjoyed by Japanese people. Does that help?
This Delphic guidance comes from a very important 1978 Supreme Court ruling in what is known as the McLean Case. Ronald McLean came to Japan as an English teacher in 1969 but quickly got involved in the local anti-Vietnam War protest movement. When he sought to renew his visa, the Ministry of Justice refused. He challenged the denial in court, asserting that he was being punished for engaging in lawful political activity, exercising his rights to free speech, assembly and so forth.
He lost (of course), and although the case is supposedly significant because in it the nation’s highest court enunciates the general principle that foreigners enjoy some of the rights enumerated in the Constitution, it does so with a caveat: that even those rights are limited by the scope of the regime of immigration laws which allow them to enter, reside and work in Japan.
Take the case of Kathleen Morikawa, an American resident in Japan who was fined for refusing to be fingerprinted as part of the alien registration process of days gone by. When she applied for a re-entry permit for a short trip to South Korea, her application was denied and she sought recourse in the courts. In 1992 the Supreme Court declared that foreigners had no constitutional right to enter or re-enter Japan, and that the Justice Ministry’s refusal to issue a re-entry permit was an acceptable exercise of administrative discretion in light of her refusal to be fingerprinted.
“Ignore the law and pay the price” is a fair comment here, but what I find noteworthy about the Morikawa case is that it did not seem to matter that she had a Japanese spouse and Japanese children. That the Justice Ministry can punitively strip Japanese nationals of their ability to travel or even live with a family member would seem to be at least as important constitutionally as whatever rights foreigners may or may not have.
The fact that many of us may be willing to live in Japan essentially at the sufferance of the government does not mean that our Japanese spouses, children and other kin should not have their own independent constitutionally protected rights to a family life free from arbitrary bureaucratic caprice. Article 13 of the Constitution refers to a right to the “pursuit of happiness,” but meaningful court precedents tying this provision to a right to family life are thin on the ground.
Recent revelations by a former prosecutor about being taught by his superiors that “foreigners have no human rights” raise further doubts about whether Japan is really up to the legal issues implicit in globalization.
Finally, since Japanese courts often justify their decisions using references to shakai tsūnen (commonly accepted social norms), even constitutional decisions can tend to reflect a distinctly majoritarian bent. In some countries a judiciary committed to defending minorities and unpopular viewpoints combined with clearly defined constitutional protections is expected to function as a bastion of human rights. Whether this can be expected of Japanese courts is debatable.
The fact that many of us expats are still here nonetheless may thus be because of the inherent kindness of the Japanese people rather than any high expectations of their government. At the end of the day, perhaps that is what popular sovereignty is all about.
Japan’s population marks slowest growth in 2010
Japan’s population stood at 128,057,352 as of Oct. 1, 2010, up 0.2 percent from five years earlier, marking the slowest growth since the once-in-five-years census began in 1920, the final results of the survey showed Wednesday.
When non-Japanese residents are excluded, the population dropped by about 371,000, or 0.3 percent, decreasing for the first time since 1975, when it began compiling the population of Japanese citizens separately from non-Japanese, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said.
“While Japan has entered an era of population decline, its total population has been flat because of an increase in foreign nationals,” a ministry official said.
The number of non-Japanese residents rose 5.9 percent, or about 93,000.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111027p2g00m0dm003000c.html
Vietnamese to be trained as nurses
The government plans to allow Vietnamese nationals to work as nurses and caregivers in Japan under a bilateral economic partnership agreement, officials said Wednesday.
The government has already allowed Indonesian and Filipino nationals to work as nurses and caregivers under bilateral free-trade agreements with Jakarta and Manila.
While more than 1,300 candidate nurses and caregivers have traveled to Japan from the two countries, only 19 have passed Japan’s qualification examination for nurses, due largely to language difficulties.
Expats in Japan face hard choices
Oregonians living in Japan like me have taken a hard look at our futures since the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and the unfolding nuclear and economic crises. Radiation leaks, contaminated crops and water, plutonium released into the air and ocean, have made expats in Japan question whether to stay or head back home, especially in the face of pressure from family and loved ones.
Relatively few Americans live in Japan, fewer still from Oregon. Through work, I’ve become friends with a few Oregonians who share the same circumstances and tough choices.
I’m from Portland, 42, and live in Inuyama. I’ve been in Japan for 10 years, mostly teaching English, but also freelancing as a photographer, writer and video producer.
My two friends and I have a number of things in common. We enjoyed our lives in Oregon, but things weren’t panning out as well as we had hoped and we sought a new adventure, which America-friendly Japan provided. Living here has been a series of trade-offs, exchanging one set of headaches and concerns for different ones.
The question is, in the face of health concerns and financial hardship, is it time to trade them back again?
Stay or go?
Keary Doyle of Florence, 57, lives by himself in the rural town of Yamagata. He has been in Japan since 2000, and while he’s mulled a return home in recent years, the unemployment rate stops him. He worked as a logger and in the mills, but those jobs dried up.
“I don’t see the prospects of me going back being very economically viable,” he says.
Even though Japan’s job market is challenging as well, there are always teaching positions for native English speakers like Doyle. But going back to America expecting to teach English, especially without a college degree in education, is almost impossible. Like me, he wonders, “If I went back, what would I do for work?”
Keary lives approximately 300 miles from the reactors, a relatively safe distance, but it’s difficult to feel at ease. Simply because the nuclear crisis isn’t in the daily headlines doesn’t mean the radiation danger is any less real for those living near it.
Jeff Kreuger of Gladstone, 34, has greater reason to worry. He lives in Nagano prefecture, 200 miles from the reactors, and has a wife and 1-year-old daughter.
“A lot of family and friends were saying ‘Get out of there quick,'” he says about the beginning of the crisis. “I wanted solid information on how dangerous it was here in Nagano.”
He found a Japanese website with real-time monitoring of radiation and another showing winds blowing airborne radiation to sea.
“I haven’t found evidence yet that would lead me to think we should evacuate,” he says. “And if we did go to Oregon, how would we live? Would I be able to find a job and support my family?”
He wonders if things would pan out because when he returned to Oregon in 2004, before he was married, he only managed to get a part-time job at a coffee shop, which came without health care and other benefits.
“For me, it was a hardscrabble existence,” he says. “I was living from paycheck to paycheck,” and found it difficult to pay for rent, food, car repairs and general living expenses.
When his previous employer in Nagano wanted him back to continue teaching English at the junior high school, tempting him with a rent-free apartment, car and no taxes on his generous salary, the decision was easy. Three years later, he married his Japanese girlfriend, Miho.
Whether it’s career, love life or vacation and employment benefits, we all have far greater potential to have those things here than in Oregon, which has brought us all to the same conclusion: The relatively minimal danger here while the disaster is brought under control, compounded by the grim economic forecast, is far less risky than a permanent move back to Oregon in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, we all pine for the Northwest: the absence of sweltering summer humidity and the friendliness of everybody everywhere. Instead, we visit our loved ones and friends as often as we can.
We have to settle for the sight of the Cascade Range when flying in, the Columbia River and all those green trees and grass, and wide open spaces.
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2011/08/expats_in_japan_face_hard_choi.html