With its own population both aging and declining, Japan needs migrant workers to sustain its economy. But the government?s failure to formulate an accommodative policy was evident at a rally in the capital on Sunday attended by some 300 foreign workers.
Waving banners and shouting slogans such as “stop discrimination against foreign workers” and “Japanese look at us like we?re terrorists,?? workers from different parts of the globe marched through the capital?s Shibuya district.
Protestors from the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa heard angry speeches over a variety of grouses and frustrations, such as a trend towards hiring the cheapest available foreign labour and exploit it to the maximum.
Immigration
Foreign workers rally in Tokyo for equal rights, job security
Angry and frustrated, nearly 300 foreign residents of Japan rallied in the streets of central Tokyo Sunday to demand equal rights and job security. At the fourth annual demonstration, workers from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas spoke about unfair treatment they received on the job in Japan. South Korea’s song for democracy, “Great China” and “Venceremos” echoed in a park in the trendy Tokyo district of Shibuya, where demonstrators gathered before they took to the streets.
“We must take matters in our own hands and raise awareness of the problems foreign workers face in Japan,” said Satoshi Murayama of the Kanagawa City Union, whose members come mostly from Latin America.
While Japan has accepted an increasing number of foreign workers, many employment problems have been reported.
“In Japan, companies hire foreign workers as cheap labour, and that has to stop,” Zentoitsu unionist Ippei Torii said. Torii has received many phone calls from trainees who were brought from China to work at farms or factories in the outskirts of Tokyo for 300 yen (2.9 dollars) to 500 yen an hour.
Zentoitsu has 2,600 of its total 3,600 members from outside of Japan.
Ali Nusrat from Pakistan is currently asking his company to pay worker’s compensation for burns on his hands. He was working at a bread-making company after he retired from a factory filling lunch boxes for five years for 750 yen per hour.
Tony Dolan said he was on strike for two weeks demanding social security benefits from a company where he worked for 12 years as a full-time teacher. The US citizen holds a permanent visa and has lived in Japan for 13 years.
Last year, Japan’s largest English school went bankrupt and hundreds of teachers, mostly from Australia, were laid off.
A Japanese onlooker agreed with the foreign workers’ demand for equal rights because he said they are forced to bear worse working conditions than most Japanese people.
“Some Japanese people try to ignore the problems faced by foreign residents, but we should all know about the issue and think about it,” he said.
Foreign workers rally in Shibuya for equal rights
JOB SECURITY, SOCIAL INSURANCE DEMANDED
Foreign workers staged a rally in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday as part of their annual spring labor offensive, calling for proper and equal treatment on par with Japanese working conditions.
Hundreds of people from various countries gathered in Miyashita Park for the afternoon “March in March” event.
“Employers must begin to treat foreigners as equal as Japanese and give them job security and equality,” said Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, which jointly organized the rally with Japanese labor unions.
Before the march, music and sports performances were staged at Miyashita Park, and keynote speeches were given by representatives from various labor unions.
Around 3 p.m., the participants, foreign and Japanese, left the park and began marching down the middle of Meiji Boulevard, chanting demands for improved working conditions and saying “no” to discrimination, including mandatory fingerprinting for foreigners upon entering Japan.
The props for the rally included not only signs and flags, but also a casket to draw attention to the failure of Nova Corp., the giant language-school chain that went bust last year, leaving thousands of teachers jobless.
Japan to Extend Visa Limit to Five Years From Three, NHK Says
Japan plans to extend long-term visa permits to five years from the current three when it changes the registration system for foreigners living in Japan, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The Justice Ministry also plans to simplify the re-entry process for returning foreign residents, NHK reported on its English-language Web site, without saying where it obtained the information.
The government plans a new registration system for foreign residents that requires them to report a change of address to local government offices and requires schools and organizations that sponsor foreigners to update their information.
Legislation for the changes is expected by the end of March to be submitted to parliament next year, NHK said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a8kewymPpSIg
Japanese fluency could ease visa conditions
SKILLED FOREIGN WORKERS TARGETED
Conditions for resident visa status of skilled foreign workers such as engineers may be relaxed if they attain a certain level of proficiency in Japanese, government sources said Monday.
The measures, including shortening the required number of years of work experience required, are being considered both to increase the variety of foreign workers being accepted in Japan and to encourage more foreigners to study Japanese, the sources said.
The relaxed conditions would be applicable to foreigners who want to enter Japan for specialist or technical jobs, they said.
Wage row erupts between strawberry farms, sacked Chinese apprentices
A dispute has erupted between a group of Chinese apprentices and strawberry farms in Japan after one farm sacked a group of students and tried to force them to leave the country.A total of 15 apprentices have fled from the farm operators and are demanding a total of about 52.25 million yen in unpaid wages for the past three years.Sources close to the case said that the 15 male apprentices, from China’s Shandong and Heilongjiang provinces, came to Japan in the spring of 2005 as farm trainees. After one year of training, they got work at seven strawberry farms and expected to continue their jobs until this spring.
However, in December last year the Choboen strawberry farm in Tsuga informed five of the apprentices that they were being dismissed due to a poor harvest. The farm had a guard accompany them and put them on a bus to Narita Airport and tried to make them return to China, which caused a scuffle to break out.
The five apprentices contacted the Tokyo-based Zentoitsu Workers Union [an ally of NUGW Tokyo Nambu], which supports foreign trainees and skilled apprentices, and 10 foreign workers from six other farms joined up with them afterwards.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080129p2a00m0na022000c.html
Shaping the future as an immigrant nation
JAPAN’S POPULATION DECLINE
“By 2050, Japan’s population will have shrunk from the current 127 million to about 90 million, and to about 40 million by the end of the century. By my calculations, we need 10 million new immigrants by midcentury to survive as a nation,” Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, said at a recent symposium in Osaka on Japan’s future as an immigrant nation.?
Over the past few years, as the reality of the combination of a declining birthrate and rapidly aging population set in, politicians, the Justice Ministry, and powerful business lobbies like the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) have offered various proposals on how certain numbers of skilled foreign workers might be admitted.
Estimates by the government, the United Nations and various human rights groups have shown that, in order to maintain current living standards and economic output, Japan will need up to 30 million foreigners by 2050.
But over the past few years, most government proposals for bringing in foreign laborers have emphasized limiting their numbers and the length of time they are allowed to stay.
Sakanaka and other immigration experts worry such thinking will lead to policies that will discourage ? rather than encourage ? foreign workers from coming to Japan.
Foreigner registration system to be revised
May lead to better services, more control
Under the new system, long-term foreign residents will get registration cards at airports and local immigration offices, which will then be used to register their information at local governments.
The data will be controlled in a similar manner as for Japanese citizens, and used to compile information for taxation, health insurance programs and census-taking. Special permanent residents, including those in Japan before the war and their descendants, are also expected to be listed in the new registry system.
Makoto Miyaguchi, an official of Minokamo, Gifu Prefecture, which has a large Brazilian population, said the current law is not sufficient to provide administrative services for foreigners in his city.
“Since the current system does not gather detailed information, we have often been unable to give adequate services for foreigners in the area,” including school guidance for parents and information on welfare services, he said.
Approximately 10 percent, or 50,000 residents, in Minokamo are registered foreigners.
Miyaguchi said that both his city and its foreign population will benefit from the overall detailed management, since it will be able to better track locations and the status of foreign individuals and households.
But while some suggest that the new system will view foreigners as legitimate residents instead of objects of supervision, others say it will only strengthen government control over foreigners while providing minimal improvement in their lives.
Japan to adopt new register system for foreigners
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Ministry of Justice have decided to abolish the Alien Registration Act’s system of residence administration, and adopt a register system similar to the basic resident register system for Japanese, it has been learned.Registration of foreigners under the act, which formerly involved fingerprinting, will end and certificates of alien registration for special permanent residents such as North and South Koreans residing in Japan will be done away with, though it is yet undecided whether new certificates will be issued in their place.
Both ministries plan to establish a framework plan for the new system by the end of March, and submit related bills to regular Diet sessions next year.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080125p2a00m0na004000c.html
Japanese gov’t looks at tighter controls on foreigners
Japan is looking to tighten controls on foreign residents to crack down on undocumented aliens and ensure that all households receive public services, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said Friday.
Japan largely sees itself as ethnically homogeneous and has consistently rejected wide-scale immigration despite having one of the world’s lowest birth rates.
It requires foreign residents to carry registration cards which are issued by municipal offices.
The system is often criticized as ineffective as foreigners do not need to re-register when moving and local offices often do not check with the central Immigration Bureau on applicants’ legal status.
“It doesn’t make sense that the foreign registration card is issued to people the Immigration Bureau considers illegal stayers,” Hatoyama told reporters.
He said the ministry is looking at “integrating administration concerning immigration control and registration of foreign residents.”
Specifically, the government is considering a new identification card issued by the central government and requiring residents to register every change of address, a ministry official said.
But the official said the government will likely exempt Koreans and Chinese whose families have resided in Japan for generations and currently still have to carry foreigners’ cards.
Some 700,000 Koreans live in Japan, mostly a legacy of those who immigrated or were enslaved during colonial rule, forming the largest minority group.
Human rights groups have long argued that the registration system prevents people of foreign origin from integrating in Japan.
Local authorities used to collect fingerprints of all foreign residents, even if their families lived in Japan for generations, under a system abolished in 2000.
But Japan last year started fingerprinting foreigners when they enter the country under a US-inspired system to prevent terrorists from entering.