Immigration

Inmates on hunger strike in Japan immigration centre

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Scores of foreigners in a Japanese immigration detention centre have been on hunger strike for more than a week, demanding to be released and protesting the mysterious death of an African deportee.

Some 70 detainees — many of them Sri Lankans and Pakistanis — have refused food since May 10, also seeking to highlight suicides there by a Brazilian and a South Korean inmate, say their outside supporters.

The protest comes after UN rights envoy Jorge Bustamante in March raised concerns about Japan’s often years-long detentions of illegal migrants, including parents with children as well as rejected asylum seekers.

“Those in the centre suffer such mental stress from being confined for so long,” said Kimiko Tanaka, a member of a local rights group, about the East Japan Immigration Centre in Ushiku, northeast of Tokyo.

Japan keeps tight control on immigration and last year, despite generous overseas aid for refugees, granted political asylum to just 30 people.

Human rights activists, lawyers and foreign communities have complained for years about conditions at Ushiku and Japan’s two other such facilities, in the western prefecture of Osaka and in southwestern Nagasaki prefecture.

At Ushiku, about 380 people are detained, with eight or nine inmates living in rooms that measure about 20 square metres (215 square feet), said Tanaka, a member of the Ushiku Detention Centre Problem Study Group.

“They are crammed into tiny segmented rooms that are not very clean, and many contract skin diseases,” she told AFP.

The hunger strike protesters said in a statement that “foreigners are the same human beings as Japanese” and claimed that conditions are severe and their freedom to practise their religions is being curtailed.

“The Immigration Bureau has forced asylum seekers to leave voluntarily by confining them for a long time, making them give up on their religion, weakening their will and torturing their body and soul,” they said.

“Japan, a democratic country, must not do such a thing, no matter what.”

The protest erupted weeks after a Ghanaian man, Abubakar Awudu Suraj, died in unexplained circumstances in March as Japanese immigration officials escorted the restrained man onto an aircraft bound for Cairo.

“Police conducted an autopsy but could not find out the cause of his death,” a Narita Airport police spokesman told AFP about the 45-year-old, whose Japanese widow has challenged authorities to explain.

Rights activists believe he was gagged with a towel, recalling a similar but non-fatal case in 2004 when a female Vietnamese deportee was handcuffed, had her mouth sealed with tape and was rolled up in blankets.

The protesters on hunger strike argue two recent suicides by hanging — a 25-year-old Brazilian, and a 47-year-old South Korean — also illustrate Japan’s harsh treatment of inmates.

“Those were very unfortunate incidents,” said an official at the Ushiku immigration centre who declined to be named.

“We recognise the largest problem is that an increasing number of foreigners here refuse to be deported, despite legal orders,” he said.

The official also said the number of asylum seekers had doubled since 2008 mostly because of turmoil in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Last year 1,388 people, including 568 Myanmar and 234 Sri Lankan nationals, sought refuge in Japan.

Japan’s immigration authorities have faced protests before. Two months ago, 73 foreigners at the Osaka centre staged a two-week hunger strike.

“We would have seen suicides like in Tokyo if they had waited longer,” said Toru Sekimoto, who leads the local support group TRY, which successfully won the temporary release of most of the protesters.

Hiroka Shoji of Amnesty International Japan said: “The immigration facilities are supposed to be places where authorities keep foreigners for a short period before deportation.

“But some people have been confined for over two years as a result. The government must introduce a limit to detentions.”

A Justice Ministry official who asked not to be named said: “The government will interview protesters at the centre and take appropriate measures.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jf1HRDmVvn_yJNlK6g94oQVTwDCg

Is Japan becoming more insular?

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With so much talk of globalization, it might seem counterintuitive to suggest that Japan is turning inward, but that’s what some have concluded.

Take Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, where the local government last year made what seemed like a coldhearted offer to Latin American immigrants: It would pay them to go back home — as long as they agreed not to look for work here again. Some had invested 20 years in this country and had children who knew nothing about Brazil or Peru.

I’ve written about immigration a lot because Japan is still an anomaly in the developed world. Despite a string of signals from the business and political worlds that a population crisis will force immigration policy past its tipping point, the government shows no sign of taking the padlocks off “fortress Japan.”

Roughly 2 percent of the population here is foreign, far below most OECD countries. And the Hamamatsu case, while isolated, seemed to show that the state might take away the welcome mat when the economy darkens.

It’s not that I don’t understand how Japan feels. In my native Ireland, the foreign population went from almost zero to about 10 percent in the 15 or so years since I left. That’s a major adjustment for native Irish people. And there have been tensions: When I was at home in April, racist thugs murdered a young black boy in the capital, Dublin.

But immigration is in my view changing Ireland immeasurably for the better, bringing in new influences, cultures and food, broadening our perspectives on the world and contributing to our economy. And immigration is payback: the Irish, after all, have gone all over the world. Why shouldn’t we give something back?

I wonder if Japan will ever feel the same?

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20100521p2a00m0na003000c.html

Nihongo teaching guidelines drafted

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A Cultural Affairs Agency council has accepted a draft of the first-ever language guidelines on how to teach foreigners living in Japan the minimum Japanese language skills required to function in society.

The subcommittee of the Council for Cultural Affairs drew up a curriculum for national language education, which was accepted Wednesday by the council’s Subdivision on National Language. The guideline will be applied at Japanese language schools run by local governments.

According to the agency, it is estimated that about 1 million foreigners living in the country need to study Japanese, such as Brazilians of Japanese descent who came to the country to work, as well as their children.

However, there is no widely agreed upon specific method of teaching the language for daily conversation. As a result, many Japanese language schools are playing it by ear.

The draft shows model conversations at a medical facility, with lessons based on scenes at a reception desk, a medical examination room and a pharmacy counter. It also shows key grammar and vocabulary to encourage learners not to simply memorize conversations but to apply them to their own situations and build conversations.

The subcommittee will soon compile textbooks based on the guidelines, and discuss standards to objectively measure foreigners’ Japanese language abilities.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100520TDY02T08.htm

Gov’t eyes more Japanese language teachers to improve education for foreign children

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The government finalized a plan Tuesday to make it easier for children of foreign residents to get a public school education in Japan, including a possible expansion in Japanese language teacher numbers to improve foreign children’s communication skills.

According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, there were 18,585 foreign children registered at public primary, junior high and high schools for the 1999 school year. By the 2008 school year, the number stood at 28,575 children.

In response to this rise schools have been increasing teaching staff over the standard complement to provide improved instruction to the children. Fifty such teachers were brought on for the 2009 school year and 250 more for 2010, bringing the national total to 1,285. However, local bodies with many foreign residents continue to request central government support for more teaching staff every year.

The Education Ministry is looking to revise the basic guideline for student numbers per class, now at 40, for the first time in about 30 years by this August. At the same time, the ministry also plans to improve the distribution of teaching staff at each school, including the possible increase in Japanese language instructors. In addition, in order to make it easier for foreign children to enter public schools, those past primary school age will be allowed to register at primary schools if necessary, among other measures.

The ministry held a policy conference on education for children of foreign residents in December last year to sound out experts on the issue.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100519p2a00m0na008000c.html

Nursing candidates get online help

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A website that assists foreign students studying Japanese has been updated to help nurse and caregiver candidates from Indonesia and the Philippines learn to read kanji Chinese characters and what Japanese medical and care terms mean.

A group led by Yoshiko Kawamura, a professor of Japanese language teaching at Tokyo International University, has added Indonesian and Tagalog versions and about 2,000 nursing care terms to its Reading Tutor Web Dictionary (http://chuta.jp).

When a Japanese sentence including the kanji for kaigo is input and the dictionary button clicked, the Indonesian version produces merawat for the word, while the Tagalog version shows pag-aalaga. The English version gives “nursing care.”

Hundreds of Indonesians and Filipinos are working as trainees under Japan’s economic partnership agreements with their countries. Nurses must pass the Japanese state exam in three years and caregivers in four years to continue working in this country, but the Japanese language stands in their way.

The program started with Indonesia in 2008 and the Philippines in 2009. Only three nurses have passed the state exam so far.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201005170298.html

Japanese immigration policy: A nation’s bouncers

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A suspicious death in police custody

Abubakar Awudu Suraj was already unconscious when the cabin crew of EgyptAir MS965 saw him on board, before the Tokyo-to-Cairo flight. Shortly later he was dead. A Ghanaian who had lived illegally in Japan, Mr Suraj was being deported on March 22nd, when he was lifted and forced onto the plane in handcuffs with a towel gagging him and knotted in the back to restrain him. An autopsy failed to determine a cause of death, yet his widow saw facial injuries when she identified the body. Three days later an Immigration Bureau official admitted: “It is a sorry thing that we have done.”

The death is putting Japan’s controversial immigration policy under a sharper spotlight. The country has long eschewed immigration. In recent months, however, its resistance has become even tougher. Families have been broken apart as parents of children born in Japan have been detained and deported. People who seemed to qualify for a special residency permit (SRP), designed for those who overstay their visa but wish to remain, have been denied. Forced deportations have become more frequent and rougher, according to the Asian People’s Friendship Society, a Japanese immigrant-support group. Japan’s Immigration Control Centres, where many illegal residents are detained, have faced special criticism. This year alone, two detainees have committed suicide, one has publicly complained of abuse, and 70 inmates staged a hunger strike demanding better treatment.

Around 2m foreigners live legally in Japan, which has a population of 128m; the justice ministry counted 91,778 illegal residents as of January. But the number, boosted by cheap Chinese labourers, may well be much higher. After a nine-day research trip last month, Jorge Bustamante, the UN’s special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, complained that legal and illegal migrants in Japan face “racism and discrimination, exploitation [and] a tendency by the judiciary and police to ignore their rights”.

The SRP system is an example of the problem. No criteria for eligibility are specified. Instead, published “guidelines” are applied arbitrarily. And people cannot apply directly for an SRP: illegal residents can only request it once in detention, or turn themselves in and try their luck while deportation proceedings are under way. So most illegal residents just stay mum. Mr Suraj fell into the SRP abyss after he was arrested for overstaying his visa. Although he had lived in Japan for 22 years, was fluent in the language and married to a Japanese citizen, his SRP request was denied.

Why the tougher policy now? Koichi Kodama, an immigration lawyer assisting Mr Suraj’s widow, believes it is a reaction to the appointment last year as justice minister of Keiko Chiba, a pro-immigration reformer; the old guard is clamping down. The police are investigating the incident and the ten immigration officers in whose custody Mr Suraj died, though no charges have been brought. As for Mr Suraj’s widow, she has yet to receive details about her husband’s death or an official apology. The topic is one Japanese society would rather avoid. The press barely reported it. Still, when her name appeared online, she was fired from her job lest the incident sully her firm’s name.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16113280

Hunger strike at immigration center

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About 60 detainees at the East Japan Immigration Control Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, have been on hunger strike since Monday to seek better treatment, a Tokyo-based volunteer group member said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, center spokesman Hiroki Shimizu confirmed to The Japan Times that about 30 detainees, rather than 60, have refused to eat since Monday.

“The living conditions at immigration detention centers are really bad. We have been asking for improvement, but nothing has happened,” Mitsuru Miyasako of Bond, a group supporting foreign workers in Japan, told The Japan Times.

According to a press statement from Bond, the detainees are demanding the detention period be shortened to at most six months, bail for temporary release be no more than ¥200,000 and those younger than 18 not be confined.

Currently, bail ranges from ¥500,000 to ¥800,000 even for refugees, the group said.

Those participating in the hunger strike are from Sri Lanka, China, Uganda, Pakistan and Brazil, according to Miyasako. Kurds from Turkey are also refusing to eat, he said.

Many of the approximately 380 detainees in the center have valid reasons for not returning to their home countries, since some face persecution at home and others have family members in Japan, Miyasako claimed.

Among many complaints, medical services are insufficient in the center, he added.

“The center has just one doctor on the premises. Persuading immigration officers to let detainees go to a hospital for symptoms the doctor is unable to treat is really hard. If they allow it, detainees are cuffed and escorted by immigration officers,” Miyasako said.

About 200 in the Ushiku center have been detained there for at least six months in awful living conditions, Bond said.

Two detainees committed suicide this year, the group said in the statement, a fact the center’s Shimizu confirmed.

Meanwhile, Shimizu said the center is “constantly trying its best to accommodate detainees’ requests” and he does not consider their treatment to be lacking. The center has one doctor who works four days a week and who sometimes comes to the center in an emergency, he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100513a1.html

Language sets high hurdle for caregiver candidates

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FOREIGN NURSES

Since the first batch of Indonesian nurses and caregivers arrived in 2008 under a new bilateral economic partnership agreement, 570 have come to Japan, as have 310 Filipinos under another EPA that took effect two years ago.
But just two Indonesians and one Filipino — out of 254 applicants — passed Japan’s nursing qualification exam in February, becoming the first successful candidates to receive the right to work in this country indefinitely.

While 89.5 percent of all exam-takers passed this year, the corresponding number for Indonesians and Filipinos was only 1.2 percent.

In response to the results as well as burdens on their employers, the number of accepting hospitals and welfare facilities in fiscal 2010 dropped by one-third for Indonesians and by half for Filipinos.

As the second batch of Filipino candidates arrived in Japan on Sunday and Indonesia is now selecting the third batch, the government has started to take measures to increase the examination pass rate.

Following are basic questions and answers about foreign nurse and caregiver applicants entering Japan under the EPAs:

Why did Japan start accepting nurse and caregiver candidates from Indonesia and the Philippines?

The acceptance is part of bilateral EPAs, one with Indonesia that took effect on July 1, 2008, and another with the Philippines that started on Dec. 11 the same year.

Under the accords, Japan can benefit from the reduction or removal of tariffs on Japanese goods. In return, Japan agreed to accept nurses and caregivers from the two countries as candidates for certification to work here.

Although the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has denied that accepting foreign caregivers is part of efforts to resolve the manpower shortage in health care, about 60 percent of hospitals and about 50 percent of welfare facilities that have accepted Indonesian candidates said they offered them jobs hoping to improve staff levels, according to a survey conducted by the health ministry.

What is required to become a qualified nurse or caregiver in Japan under the EPAs?

Both Indonesians and Filipinos must be qualified nurses in their home countries. Plus, Indonesian nurses must have more than two years of experience. Filipino nurses should have three years of experience.

For caregivers, Indonesians must be graduates of nursing universities or schools that require at least three years of study. Filipinos must be graduates of four-year universities or nursing colleges.

All are required to take six months of Japanese-language training before working for care facilities.

Nurses must pass the annual exam within three years, while caregivers get four years. To be qualified to take the exam, caregiver applicants must have three years of on-the-job training in Japan, which means they have only one shot to pass the exam before they are asked to return to their countries.

What other options for qualifying are available?

Filipino candidates can undergo a caregiver-trainee program that doesn’t require them to pass the national exam.

To qualify for the program, one must be a graduate of a four-year-university in the Philippines.

After completing the six-month Japanese-language course, they are required to graduate from Japanese caregiver schools, a process that takes two to four years.

Under this program, candidates automatically become qualified caregivers upon graduation.

How much are the nurses and caregivers paid?

Both EPAs guarantee the Indonesians and Filipinos will be paid salaries equivalent to their Japanese counterparts.

On average, this would amount to between ¥150,000 and ¥160,000 a month, according to Hiroya Yaguchi, a manager of Japan International Corp. of Welfare Services, an affiliate of and the only placement organization appointed by the health ministry.

Because pay levels differ among hospitals and welfare facilities, there is no set pay standard, Yaguchi said.

Some people are receiving around ¥200,000 per month, while the lowest salary among the accepting facilities is around ¥120,000, according to JICWELS.

However, because living costs vary by region, salaries can’t be compared simply by their amount, Yaguchi noted.

Do the accepting institutions provide accommodations?

Some hospital and care facilities provide free dormitories for employees. There are also institutions that rent out living quarters, and in some cases employees receive housing subsidies, according to JICWELS.

Do candidates get any support to prepare for the national exam?

The accepting institutions are responsible for teaching the candidates Japanese and helping them to prepare for the national exam, but the extent of such support varies between facilities.

According to a health ministry survey in February, about 76 percent of employers said Japanese nurses are helping candidates to prepare for the national exam, and about 30 percent said they are hiring teachers from outside.

Why has the number of hospitals and welfare institutions accepting Indonesian and Filipino candidates sharply dropped for fiscal 2010?

Experts attribute the decline to the employers’ financial and manpower burdens.

Employers pay an initial cost of about ¥600,000 per candidate.

The cost includes part of the six-month Japanese training fees and living expenses, as well as commission and placement fees to pay for JICWELS and its counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In addition, employers must pay ¥21,000 per person per year to JICWELS as a management fee.

Also, in many cases Japanese staff are helping candidates to study for the national exam. This has become a burden for facilities already suffering manpower shortages.

What are the candidates’ main linguistic problems?

Experts say kanji and technical terms used in the national exam pose a high hurdle for Indonesians and Filipinos. The health ministry is considering using simpler terms in the nursing exam.

Is the government doing anything to improve the situation?

Starting in fiscal 2010, the government will pay a yearly ¥295,000 subsidy for each hospital that accepts one or more nurse candidates and ¥117,000 per candidate a year to cover training expenses, according to the labor ministry.

Facilities that accept caregivers will receive a ¥235,000 government subsidy per person each year.

Also, JICWELS is providing so-called e-learning at all the hospitals that have accepted nurse candidates. The Internet learning system provides exercise books and past national tests in Japanese, English and Indonesian.

In addition, JICWELS is distributing Japanese-language textbooks to hospitals with nurse candidates this fiscal year.

However, these support measures are currently available only to nursing candidates.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100511i1.html

Fresh batch of Filipino nurses, caregivers to leave for Japan

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A fresh batch of over 100 candidate nurses and caregivers will leave the Philippines for Japan this weekend to begin free language and skills training, officials said Saturday.

A total of 46 nurses and 70 caregivers, the third group of Filipino health workers to be sent to Japan, will depart Sunday to undergo a six-month Japanese language and cultural course before beginning work in Japanese health care institutions, said Jennifer Manalili, head of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

Two other caregivers already fluent in Japanese will leave in June.

Manalili said the screening for this year’s batch of health workers under the bilateral program, now still in its second year, was “more rigorous to ensure an excellent and well prepared corps of candidates.”

Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura led a sendoff ceremony for the candidates on Friday, calling the opening up Japan to more Filipino nurses and care workers under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement that came into effect in December 2008 a “testimony to the deepening relations” between the two countries.

He said the scheme will be instrumental in changing not just the lives of Filipino health workers “but the cooperative landscape of our two nations as well.”

The envoy told the candidates they will face various challenges as they work in an entirely different environment and interact with people with a different culture and language, but should “stay focused on the objectives you have set for yourself.”

“But do not let the unfamiliar faze you. Let it be your motivation to develop your skills and further improve yourselves in your respective fields,” he said.

Katsura extended his congratulations to Ever Lalin of the first batch of Filipino health workers for having cleared the language barrier and passed the Japanese Nursing Licensure Examination a mere 10 months after she arrived in Japan last year.

“I hope (Lalin’s) achievement will inspire all of you,” he said, urging them “to dedicate yourselves to your studies and remaining steadfast to your goals.”

The latest deployment of Filipino health workers comes amid a fresh Philippine proposal to conduct the six-month language and skills- training here in the Philippines so that they could remain close to their families.

The entry of Filipino nurses and caregivers to Japan is one of the main highlights of the bilateral economic partnership agreement concluded in 2006. Japan has also been accepting health workers from Indonesia.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FIHS4G0&show_article=1

Chinese taking 2 different routes to Japan

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The two Chinese are about the same age and both plan to improve their future prospects by living in Japan. But the similarities end there.

The pair reflect the stark differences among Chinese heading to Japan from the booming coastal areas and the poorer inland regions that have yet to be swept up in the country’s economic growth.

A Yuncai, 19, is from the latter. She lives with her parents and two sisters in one of the houses that line the mountain slopes in the Maanshan district, more than an hour’s drive from Dali in Yunnan province, southwestern China.

The farming family earns about 10,000 yuan (about 140,000 yen) a year, an amount insufficient for their medical and education fees.

Yuncai plans to work as a trainee at a Japanese farm to help her family survive.

“Even if I land a job here, I can earn only 800 yuan a month. In Japan, I will be able to earn more and acquire advanced knowledge. I will remit my earnings to my family, except for living expenses,” she said.

Jin Shaohua, 20, comes from a much different background. Born into a wealthy family, Jin grew up in the coastal city of Suzhou in Jiangsu province near Shanghai.

His reason for going to Japan? He didn’t gain admission to Suzhou University.

Instead, he went to the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, but his low scores denied him entry into the faculty of economics, as he desired.

His friend who was studying in Japan told Jin through the Internet, “Tokyo is convenient and beautiful.”

Unhappy at school and uncertain about his future goals, Jin decided to study Japanese for one or two years in Fukui Prefecture and then enroll at a Japanese university.

“I’m a little bit excited,” Jin said in early April at Shanghai Pudong International Airport waiting for a flight to Ishikawa Prefecture.

Yuncai’s parents were also a bit excited about sending their daughter to Japan, much to the surprise of Masaichi Tanaka, a 61-year-old farmer in Kamiita, Tokushima Prefecture, who interviewed the teen as a prospective trainee.

Tanaka visited their home in fall last year and asked the parents, “Don’t you have any anxieties about your daughter going to Japan alone?”

One of the parents replied, “We have no anxieties because Japan is a developed and safe country.”

Tanaka said he felt that Yuncai’s experience in the mountains had made her physically strong.

“Because her parents have such a (serious) manner, she must be a serious person, too,” said Tanaka, who chose Yuncai from among 20 people interviewed at a worker dispatch company in Dali.

After Yuncai graduated from a vocational school last year, she worked on the family’s farm. After being chosen as a trainee, she borrowed money to pay 40,000 yuan to the worker dispatch company, Dali Prefecture International Techno-Economic Cooperation Co., for procedural and other fees.

She underwent the company’s training sessions, which last for three to four months and can be likened to boot camp. Trainees wake up at 6:30 am. for a run and get no holidays. Between classes on Japanese and other subjects, they must follow stringent rules, such as how to fold futon mattresses and where to place their cups and socks.

If the company sends a trainee to Japan, it can receive a total of 900 yuan from the central, provincial and local governments.

China has eased its departure and screening procedures since 2004 because exports of workers have become a big source of income.

According to the Japanese Immigration Bureau, about 102,000 people came to Japan in 2008 as trainees in farming, manufacturing and other sectors. About 69,000, or nearly 70 percent, were Chinese, compared with about 28,000 in 2000.

Jin’s “training” for Japan consisted mainly of taking Japanese lessons in China.

He estimates he will need 2 million yen a year for tuition and living expenses in Japan. However, his father, who runs his own company, said, “I will pay all the money.”

Weng Danjie, also 20, left for Japan with Jin for the same reason: She failed to advance to the nursing department of a vocational school.

Weng, who met Jin at the same language school, also has an advantage in her plans.

Although her mother lives in Jiangsu province, her father is a Japanese living in Fukui Prefecture, who often travels to China on business.

Weng said she will live in her father’s house in Japan during her studies.

“If I succeeded in advancing to my favorite school (in China), I would not have decided to go to Japan,” she said.

Wei Haibo, who runs a Japanese-language school in Shanghai, said, “An increasing number of people are thinking about going abroad for studies because they failed to gain entry to their favorite universities or land good jobs.”

Thirty to 40 percent of the students in Wei’s school are considering a trip to Japan for such reasons, he said.

According to the Japan Student Services Organization, about 79,000 Chinese came to Japan in 2009 to study, accounting for 60 percent of all such students.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004260338.html