Two nurses from Indonesia and one from the Philippines cleared Japanese-language requirements and passed the national nursing exam in February, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Friday.
The three, who are among 257 people in Japan under free-trade agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines, will be allowed to stay in Japan indefinitely.
The three were the first applicants to pass Japan’s nursing qualification exam among hundreds of foreign nurses in the country under FTAs.
The two Indonesians, who have been in Japan since 2008, are working at a hospital in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture.
The Filipino nurse has been working at a hospital in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, since arriving in Japan last year.
Japan, a rapidly aging society, began accepting foreign nurses and caregivers in 2008 due to domestic labor shortages in medical and nursing service fields.
Foreign nurses are required to return to their home countries if they fail to pass the nurses exam within three years. Caregivers also need to clear Japan’s qualifying exam within four years.
None of the foreign nurses passed last year’s national exams held in February 2009 because, it is thought, kanji and technical terms used in the exam pose a major challenge for foreign nurses.
In talks with Indonesian and Philippine government officials in January, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada promised to consider addressing the language barriers for foreign nurses.
The health ministry is currently studying using simpler terms in the exam and helping foreign nurses study the Japanese language, ministry officials said.
In the 2008 and 2009 fiscal years through this month, Japan accepted 570 health care workers from Indonesia — 277 nurses and 293 caregivers.
Immigration
3 foreigners pass tough nursing exam
Two Indonesians and one Filipina have become the first among hundreds of applicants from their countries to pass Japan’s state nursing examination, the health ministry said Friday.
Yared Febrian Fernandes and Ria Agustina, both 26 from Indonesia, and Lalin Ever Gammed, 34, from the Philippines, were among 47,340 people, including Japanese, to pass this year.
The three are the first successful applicants from Indonesia and the Philippines since Japan began accepting nursing applicants in 2008 and 2009 under economic partnership agreements (EPAs).
The examination is conducted in Japanese, and 251 other would-be nurses from Indonesia and the Philippines failed this year’s test.
There were 82 applicants from Indonesia last year. None were successful.
Indonesians and Filipinos who are qualified as nurses in their home countries can only work in Japan in limited trainee nurse roles and must pass the state exam within three years. Failure means they have to return to their home countries.
The two Indonesians are training at Sannocho Hospital in Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture. They told a news conference that they were relieved and happy to pass.
Gammed is at Ashikaga Red Cross Hospital in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture.
Fewer foreign trainees at hospitals
The number of Japanese medical institutions and other entities accepting Indonesians and Filipinos training to qualify as nurses or caregivers in fiscal 2010 will fall sharply compared with the current fiscal year.
Language problems apparently proved to be an insurmountable barrier for some.
According to the Japan International Corp. of Welfare Services, only 62 entities plan to accept 142 Indonesians from April 1, the start of fiscal 2010.
In fiscal 2009, 194 entities accepted 467 Indonesians.
As for Filipinos, 82 entities plan to accept 179 workers in fiscal 2010. That compares with 444 Filipinos at 175 entities in fiscal 2009.
Personnel at hospitals and other facilities say that training foreign nationals with a limited command of Japanese is difficult and takes up too much time.
The system to accept Indonesian and Filipino would-be nurses and caregivers was introduced in fiscal 2008, with a total of 850 trainees arriving.
Local suffrage for foreigners in sight, but opposition grows stronger
For Chang Yooka, there is hardly a moment in her daily life that she feels she is a third-generation Korean.
But the 27-year-old faces that reality every time an election takes place in her hometown because she does not have the right to vote in any election.
Chang was born to Korean parents in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture. She hardly speaks Korean and most of her friends from school or work are Japanese.
Unlike her parents or grandparents who all suffered bullying and various forms of discrimination in Japanese society because of their nationality, Chang spent her childhood without facing such problems and had no trouble finding a job.
“I’ve had few bad experiences as a result of being Korean,” said Chang, who now lives in Tokyo’s Taito Ward and works at Japanese game software developer Konami Corp. She even started studying Korean at college in the hope of learning more about her ethnic identity.
“The only thing that still differentiates us from Japanese people is local suffrage,” she said.
But she and others like her may be granted the right to vote in elections for local governments and assembly members soon, or in a couple of years at the latest, as the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is eager to enact a law to extend local suffrage to permanent foreign residents.
It remains not clear, however, whether the government will submit legislation on the matter to parliament or if it would be passed during the current Diet session through June 16 because of an increasingly fierce backlash from conservative lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition camps.
Kim Jong Soo, an active advocate of granting local suffrage to foreigners and a third-generation Korean who headed the Korean Youth Association in Japan until very recently, said Koreans and other permanent foreign residents in Japan deserve the right to vote in view of the fact that they have long fulfilled their duty to pay taxes.
“We’re talking about local elections not national elections,” said the 33-year-old who now serves as a supervisor for the Tokyo-based organization. “We’re certainly interested in how our residential areas are managed and we should have the right to take part in local politics.”
“If Japan makes this come true, it will be a strong message to the international community that the country does not ignore foreign residents, whose number already exceeds 2.2 million,” he said.
The issue first drew attention in 1995 when the Supreme Court declared that the Constitution does not prohibit granting permanent foreign residents the right to vote in local elections in order to have their views reflected in local administration.
Since 1998, Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan and a few other parties, including the New Komeito party and the Japanese Communist Party, have submitted related bills in vain to the Diet.
Hatoyama and DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa, the kingmaker in the ruling party, are among those strongly advocating the legislation.
Hatoyama expressed his eagerness to submit a bill to extend local suffrage to foreigners earlier this year, noting that this year marks the centenary of Japan’s annexation of the Korean Peninsula in 1910.
Opposition lawmakers claim, however, that Ozawa, who is in charge of the DPJ’s election strategy, has the ulterior motive of capturing the support of permanent foreign residents in Japan, who numbered over 910,000 as of 2008.
Of the total, 490,000 foreigners hold regular permanent residency status, with Chinese constituting the largest group followed by Brazilians and Filipinos.
The remaining 420,000 have special permanent residency, which is granted to those from the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan who have lived in Japan since before the end of World War II and lost Japanese nationality through the San Francisco Peace Treaty, as well as their descendants. Of those special permanent residents, 99 percent are Koreans.
The planned legislation faces a major stumbling block in Shizuka Kamei, leader of the minor conservative People’s New Party, one of the DPJ’s two coalition partners.
Kamei, an outspoken political bigwig, has said the envisioned law could fan ethnic sentiment among Koreans and lead to conflict with Japanese, and that anyone seeking the right to vote should apply for naturalization.
In Japan, nationality is based on parentage not location of birth and those who obtain foreign nationality automatically lose Japanese citizenship.
But Chang, who greatly values her ethnic roots and identity, and does not hesitate to use her real name, has no intention of renouncing her Korean citizenship in exchange for local suffrage.
Some members of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party have also stepped up their opposition to hamper the enactment of such a law.
“We are strongly concerned that the results of local elections, especially in a major city or prefecture such as Osaka, could influence national politics,” said Seiichiro Murakami, a senior LDP lawmaker who heads a party group opposed to such legislation.
Murakami and other opponents have expressed concern that Korean voters could sway the course of long-standing territorial disputes between Japan and South Korea over islands such as Tsushima and Takeshima.
Some opponents argue that if Koreans gain voting rights, they could move to Japan-controlled Tsushima, for example, and elect local assembly members claiming that the island is South Korean territory.
“That’s such an extreme assumption,” Kim said, arguing that it is based on the prejudiced idea that foreigners are some sort of menace to Japanese society.
The National Association of Chairpersons of Prefectural Assemblies has also adopted a cautious stance on granting local suffrage to foreign residents.
It adopted a resolution in January calling on the government to listen to the organization’s views on the issue, which it claims “concerns the foundation of democracy” and has “a significant bearing on the administration of local municipalities.”
Supporters maintain that many countries in Europe have introduced some form of local suffrage for foreigners.
Murakami of the LDP said, however, “Europe has historically functioned in a different framework and that should not be applied to Japan.”
Advocates also maintain that South Korea adopted a legal amendment in 2005 to allow permanent foreign residents aged 19 or older to vote in local elections.
Although opponents counter that the amendment affects only around 100 Japanese residents living in South Korea, Kim said it signifies a radical shift for a country often described as “nationalistic.”
“Japan will not be able to buck the growing international trend,” he said, suggesting that the time may come soon for Japan to eventually allow dual citizenship.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20100317p2g00m0dm015000c.html
Gov’t picks 39 groups for free language lessons for needy foreigners
The education ministry has picked 39 groups and organizations across the country to hold free Japanese-language classes for foreign children who cannot afford to attend international schools due to financial difficulties, ministry officials said Monday.
The groups, including nonprofit organizations, in 14 prefectures will hold a total of 42 Japanese-language classes at local community centers and other public facilities in fiscal 2010 from next month with the aim of helping such children go to public schools where tuition is much cheaper.
The state will provide 20 million yen to each of the organizations named by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
The program was launched as part of the ministry’s efforts to extend language support for students who have been hit hard by the economic downturn, including Brazilians of Japanese ancestry, between fiscal 2009 and 2011. In fiscal 2009, 32 organizations were picked for 34 classes.
Even as population shrinks, Japan remains wary of immigration
Much of what you need to know about Japan’s long-standing attitude toward immigrants is summed up in the logo of the nation’s official immigration agency: It depicts a plane departing, rather than arriving.
But today the country faces a demographic crisis, one that some here believe will finally compel a traditionally homogeneous Japan to turn that plane around and let foreign workers come. The population is aging and shrinking — a formula for economic calamity and social stagnation. Over time, there will be too few workers to care for the millions of elderly citizens, grow food on farms or fill the manufacturing jobs that drive this export-led economy.
Given the forces of history and culture, the notion of a multiethnic Japan may seem impossible, a tautology in a country where nationality and ethnicity are fused to the point of being nearly indistinguishable. Yet a multiethnic Japan is what the country needs to become if it is to survive among the top tier of the world’s powers.
Japanese leaders have tried other options, and failed. For two decades, Japan’s stubbornly low birth rate has barely budged, despite many government incentives for couples to have more children. The new left-leaning government’s recent move to boost per-child monthly cash payments to families will be cripplingly expensive and probably unsustainable. (It’s also unlikely to convince women, who are marrying later or not at all, to have more children with Japanese husbands who remain allergic to sharing child-rearing duties.) The result could be a working-age population cut nearly in half by midcentury.
So, can the Japanese shed their traditions and allow more foreigners in their midst? On a recent trip, I was struck by the range of people I encountered — government officials, politicians, bureaucrats, business representatives, demographers and others — who argued that the nation has little choice but to do just that. Unfortunately for the Japanese, it appears unlikely that they will do so in time, or at the pace needed, to reverse the population declines.
To some extent, the notion of Japan as ethnically homogenous is not exactly right. For years, the country has admitted increasing numbers of foreign workers, without fanfare, as officials have tried to plug holes in the workforce. The number of nonethnic Japanese residents has crept upward in the past few decades and now stands officially at 2.2 million — about 1.7 percent of the population.
Starting with more than 650,000 Koreans, a legacy of Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1905 to 1945, the country has also taken hundreds of thousands of Chinese, as well as tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees, Filipino and Indonesian nurses, African workers, and others. In addition, about 500,000 Brazilians and Peruvians of Japanese ancestry have been allowed into the country since 1990, many of them to work in manufacturing plants.
The presence of these immigrants could be seen as the beginning of a revolution, or at least evolution, in Japanese attitudes toward foreigners. In Yokohama, Japan’s second-biggest city, I spoke to the director of a nursing home who recruited a pair of Indonesian nurses two years ago. The Indonesians — bright, able, outgoing and full of laughter — were among the most popular members of the facility’s caregiving staff and had set an example for what the director called their “standoffish” Japanese colleagues. The director shook her head in sorrow at the likelihood that the Indonesians would be unable to remain in the country unless they passed a tough licensing exam, given only in Japanese. “They have injected new life into this place,” she said.
At city hall, officials proudly displayed brochures with instructions for garbage separation and recycling — available in Japanese, English, Vietnamese, Chinese and Portuguese. “The big inflow of foreigners, Chinese and others, has changed the mind-set of Japanese here,” said Osamu Yamamoto, who oversees interethnic policy in the city of 3.7 million people.
However, a 2001 U.N. report found that just to maintain its population of about 125 million, Japan would have to permit average annual net migration of 381,000 people for 50 years — more than 17 million immigrants in that span. And to keep its working–age population at 1995 levels, the country would need 609,000 migrants annually, also for 50 years, or more than 33 million immigrants in all.
That’s not going to happen; Japan may be changing, but at nowhere near the rate necessary to save itself. The country, which is likely to be overtaken this year by China as the world’s second-largest economy, seems to have made its choice.
The Democratic Party of Japan, which won last summer’s elections, has plenty to say about population decline, but the word “immigration” appears nowhere in its manifesto. And the government has taken an enforcement-only approach toward immigrants and foreign workers, rounding up undocumented workers for deportation but making no attempt to develop a coherent vision of whom to admit and how to accommodate them. “The biggest crisis,” an official at the Japan Business Federation told me, “is that the government has no sense of crisis.”
In public, the habit of describing a racially homogeneous Japan is deeply ingrained. In 2005, then-Foreign Minister Taro Aso hailed the country as “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture and one race.” A senior official in Tokyo put it to me more simply: “This isn’t America. When we go to the hospital to have a baby, we know what we’ll get: black hair, dark eyes, skin more or less the color of mine.”
Indeed, Japan has hardly offered a welcoming environment to its imported workers, with treatment ranging from shameful to barely tolerant. Koreans, brought to Japan decades ago and often against their will, were granted citizenship, only to see it revoked after World War II. Although several generations have been born and have died in Japan, most are not naturalized citizens, nor can they vote. Vietnamese, thousands of whom began coming to Japan as refugees after the Vietnam War, remain scarcely assimilated; even if they grew up here and speak Japanese, intermarriage is rare.
Truong Thi Thuy Trang, 39, came to Japan from Vietnam as a boat person at age 12 and has spent much of her life in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. An interpreter for a district office of the city government, she earns a decent living and has the confident air of a refugee who has made it. But her greatest aspiration for her 11-year-old daughter is that she leave Japan, preferably for Chicago or New York, where she has relatives.
“What troubles me a lot, and what I talk to my daughter about, is how she can be proud that she’s Vietnamese and enjoy a standard of living on a par with her Japanese peers,” she said. “I don’t think it’s possible here.”
Mention the Brazilians, and Japanese complain about parties (too loud) and clothing (too skimpy). Mention foreign students, and you hear the story of a provincial university that, facing complaints from neighboring farmers who feared the newcomers would steal their crops, built a separate dorm for the students and surrounded it with barbed wire.
Mention Vietnamese or Chinese, and you get an indictment of their alleged failure to respect rules governing trash removal and recycling (those multilingual brochures notwithstanding). In Yokohama, where the foreign population has more than doubled over 20 years, to 80,000, a municipal official gave me chapter and verse on the local garbage wars. “I need to take someone else’s trash into my home to sort it!” Noryoshi Sato complained.
Some Japanese seem embarrassed by their country’s hostility to foreigners. At a news conference in Tokyo last month, officials presented plans to resettle Burmese refugees now living at U.N. camps in Thailand; they will be among the first refugees Japan accepts in years. The officials described language and vocational training to help assimilate the first 30 refugees. Then a Japanese television reporter stood and asked to be recognized.
“The more they know about Japan, the more these refugees might not want to resettle here,” he said. It sounded more like a statement than a question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031201790_pf.html
Detainees staging hunger strike
A hunger strike staged by inmates at the West Japan Immigration Center [in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture] entered its fifth day Friday with protesters demanding improved living conditions and protection of their rights, sources said.
The 70 inmates, nearly all the men held at the facility, began fasting on Monday, center officials and supporters of inmates said.
Their main demand was the provisional release of an ill inmate who was not receiving proper treatment within the facility, supporters said.
Applications for provisional release, usually granted out of humanitarian considerations, have often gone unanswered at the center since last year, they said.
An official at the center said the immigration bureau had not changed the way it grants provisional releases.
70 immigration detainees on hunger strike
Fast in Osaka tied to denial of release: activists
At least 70 detainees at the West Japan Immigration Control Center, which has long been criticized by human rights groups and Diet members, have been on a hunger strike since Monday, center officials and volunteers helping them confirmed Thursday.
“Around 70 foreigners began a hunger strike Monday night because they want to be released on a temporary basis,” Norifumi Kishida, an official at the center, said Thursday morning. The center, in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, is providing food but they are refusing to eat, he said.
Hiromi Sano, a human rights activist involved with immigration issues who has been meeting with detainees over the past few days, said some hunger strikers have applied for refugee status.
“They are demanding to know why their applications for release from the center were rejected, even though their refugee claims are being reviewed administratively or judicially, with support from lawyers and legal assistance workers,” she said.
Reports of detainee abuse and harsh conditions at the West Japan Immigration Control Center go back at least a decade. According to an investigation by Kyodo News, 23 detainees at the center had attempted suicide between 2000 and 2004.
Foreigners rally over job security
Hundreds of foreign and Japanese people staged a rally Sunday in Tokyo demanding better working conditions and employment benefits for foreign residents.
At the annual “March in March” event at Hibiya Park in Chiyoda Ward, Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, said foreign workers have a great need for job security and health care.
“It’s difficult to be a foreigner in any country. But it’s much more difficult when you don’t have job security, when you don’t have health care,” said Carlet, whose union jointly hosted the event with other groups lobbying for improved labor conditions.
One of the biggest problems is that most foreigners are being employed as nonregular workers, and more and more Japanese are being used the same way, he said.
Participants at the rally included people from many different ethnic backgrounds as well as various unions. Organizers said around 400 people took part.
Romsun Pramudito from Indonesia, who chairs the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Indonesia Youth Association, said more job security should be given to foreigner workers.
“We are working very hard and really contributing to the country,” he said, adding he hopes foreigners receive better treatment. He also said foreigners and Japanese should collaborate to find a solution.
Buddhika Weerasinghe, a Fukui-based freelance photojournalist from Sri Lanka, came to the event because he is interested in the problems foreign workers face in Japan.
Weerasinghe said he has heard from foreign workers in the city of Fukui — many of them Chinese working in garment factories — that some received salary cuts without explanation and even experienced physical harassment. “I feel foreigners working in Japan are facing a lot of problems.”
While hopeful that improvement will accompany the change in government last September, little progress has been made, Carlet said.
“We want the new government to take this issue very seriously and make serious change,” he said.
The event also featured a live music by musicians from various countries, including Senegalese drum sessions and Ainu dancing from Hokkaido.
A march planned after the gathering, however, was called off because of the chilly rain, organizers said.
Foreigners get nod to skip social insurance
The Immigration Bureau announced Wednesday new guidelines for foreign residents, stating that joining the social insurance system is not a requirement for renewing or changing one’s visa status.
The bureau told The Japan Times on Feb. 1 that it had decided to change the wording of the new guidelines — which were originally drawn up last March and scheduled to take effect April 1 — to ease concerns that those without social insurance would be forced to choose between losing their visa and joining the insurance system.
The original version of the guidelines said foreign residents must present their health insurance card when reporting changes to or renewing their residential status.
The wording has now been revised to read:”In order to promote signing up for social insurance, we will ask (foreign residents) to present their health insurance card starting April 1. We will not reject renewal or change of visa status for failing to present the card.”
Immigration Bureau official Aiko Oumi said, “We just want to persuade foreigners to join the social insurance, but we heard from many people that the original version sounded like having social insurance is a requirement.”
In some cases, employers [violate the law by not enrolling] their foreign employees [in] the social insurance system to cut costs.