The Education, Science and Technology Ministry will launch a program to help the increasing number of foreign students at public primary, middle and high schools to acquire Japanese language skills.
Currently, local governments handle Japanese language education for foreign students at public schools.
The ministry plans to provide financial and other support to the local governments to employ part-time instructors, who are proficient both in Japanese and a foreign language, with the goal of enhancing students’ understanding in classes and Japanese lessons.
According to the ministry, foreign nationals at public primary, middle and high schools throughout the country numbered 70,936 as of May 2006.
Of those students, 22,413 at a total of 5,475 schools did not understand Japanese sufficiently to absorb their lessons.
The number of these students increased by 8.3 percent from the previous year, and had been increasing annually.
Since the Immigration Control Law was revised to permit the employment of ethnic-Japanese foreign nationals for unskilled jobs in 1990, a growing number of people have come to Japan from South America.
Portuguese, spoken in Brazil, is the most common language among foreign students at 38 percent, followed by Chinese at 20 percent and Spanish at 15 percent.
Because these students do not speak Japanese, some have had trouble fitting in with classmates, which has led to behavior problems or even crimes.
The ministry is taking the increase in problems associated with Japanese language ability seriously and decided the central government needs to support local governments in this concern.
It has included 1.96 billion yen in its budget request for the next fiscal year for hiring about 1,600 bilingual instructors around the country by the end of that year.
Immigration
Activists blast Japan’s plan to fingerprint foreign visitors
Japan’s plan to fingerprint and photograph all foreigners entering the country ages 16 or over to guard against terrorism is a serious violation of human rights, activists said Monday.
Only some permanent residents, diplomatic visitors and children will be exempt from Japan’s new entry controls, which take effect Nov. 20.
“The introduction of this system is a violation of basic human rights, especially the right to privacy,” said Makoto Teranaka, secretary-general of the human rights group Amnesty International Japan. He said it unfairly targets foreigners since Japanese could also be terrorists.
Under the new regulations, all adults will be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in Japan, according to the country’s Immigration Bureau. Incoming aircraft and ship operators also will be obliged to provide passenger and crew lists before they arrive.
Resident foreigners will be required to go through the procedure every time they re-enter Japan, the bureau said. Immigration officials will compare the images and data with a database of international terror and crime suspects as well as domestic crime records. People matching the data on file will be denied entry and deported.
“I know this may cause a lot of inconvenience, but it’s very necessary to fight terror,” Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama told reporters Monday.
“We are facing a terrorist threat as a reality today, and Japan may also become a victim of a terrorist attack,” Hatoyama said.
Similar measures have been introduced in the United States.
Tokyo’s support of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and dispatch of forces to each region have raised concerns that Japan could become a target of terror attacks.
Japan previously fingerprinted foreign residents in Japan, but that system was abolished in 1999 following civil rights campaigns involving Japan’s large Korean and Chinese communities.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071029p2a00m0na052000c.html
Japan to fingerprint, photograph visiting foreigners from Nov. as anti-terror measure
Japan hopes to thwart potential terrorists from entering the country by fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners aged 16 or over on entry starting next month, an official said Friday.
Only some permanent residents, diplomatic visitors, and children under 16 will be exempt from the measures after the system goes into effect Nov. 20, Immigration Bureau official Takumi Sato said.
Under the new system, all adults will be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in Japan. Incoming aircraft and ship operators also will be obliged to provide passenger and crew lists before they arrive.
Immigration officials will run the images and data through a database of international terror and crime suspects as well as against domestic crime records.
People matching the data on file will be denied entry and deported.
“We hope the system will help keep terrorists out of the country, and also put at ease the minds of both the Japanese people and the foreigners who come here,” Sato said.
The bureau plans to store the data for “a long time,” Sato said, while refusing to disclose how long due to security concerns.
Human rights survey stinks
Government effort riddled with bias, bad science
On Aug. 25, the Japanese government released findings from a Cabinet poll conducted every four years.
First, why is the government even asking whether non-Japanese deserve equal rights? Are human rights optional, a matter of opinion polls? And if a majority says foreigners deserve fewer rights, does that justify the current policy of resisting introducing laws against racial discrimination?
When a human rights survey from even the highest levels of government allows for the possibility of human rights being optional (or worse yet, justifiably deniable based on nationality), we have a deep and profound problem.
New immigration law to go into effect Nov. 20
The government decided at a Cabinet meeting Friday to implement the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law from Nov. 20, requiring all foreign visitors aged 16 or older to be fingerprinted and photographed when they enter the country.
Under the law, if foreigners refuse to have their fingerprints taken or supply other information, the government may deport them.
Diplomat rues Tokyo’s ‘lack of humanity’ to asylum-seekers
What are the prospects for Japan accepting more refugees?
Prolonged recession has undermined the context for reception of foreigners, and Japan has a poor record on integrating foreign workers properly. It is hard for the public, media and government to differentiate between the mixture of refugees, economic migrants and criminals seeking entry. And very often there are those who blame crime on illegal foreign people. There are plenty of Japanese committing crimes but foreigners are easy targets. And we have more than 300,000 Brazilians of Japanese origin and their situation has not been very good. The problem is that Japan has had an open approach to receiving many foreigners, for example “entertainers,” rather than refugees . . . but keeping people out doesn’t always assure your security.
Groups try to level playing field by limiting foreign players
The slogan of high school sport associations could be: If you can’t beat ’em, ban ’em.
The associations have introduced tough restrictions on foreign students because they are trouncing the Japanese athletes in sports such as the ekiden relay marathon, basketball and table tennis.
The restrictions followed protests from Japanese fans who say the superior ability of the foreign students is making the sporting events dull.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200706290152.html
Racism surfaces over bid by foreigner to buy land, settle
FUKUROI, Shizuoka Prefecture– Fearful that they would be inviting crime to their neighborhood, residents blocked an attempt by a Japanese-Brazilian man to buy land on which to build a house.
The local regional legal affairs bureau said their actions constituted a “violation of human rights” and told the parties involved that if a similar situation occurred in the future they should handle it better.
In the end, the man was forced to purchase property elsewhere.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200706290148.html
Competing foreign-worker plans face off
Justice chief’s proposal to open doors, briefly, for all sectors causes stir
“Putting a three-year limit on a foreign worker’s stay in Japan does not give the company doing the hiring any incentive to take the time to train them for specialized work. Of course, there is also the question of how many skilled workers would want to come to Japan if they are forced to leave after three years,” [Hidenori] Sakanaka [director of the NGO Japan Immigration Policy Institute and former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau] said.
Education Minister Slammed For Comparing Human Rights To Fatty Butter
[Amnesty International] slammed Japan’s education minister on Tuesday for comparing human rights to fatty butter and saying too much would give Japan “human rights metabolic syndrome.”
“No matter how nutritious it is, if one ate only butter every single day, one would get metabolic syndrome,” Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki reportedly said at a speech in south Japan on Sunday. “Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome.”
The offending remarks “ignore the human rights of citizens,” Amnesty International said in a letter sent Tuesday to Ibuki and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The group demanded Ibuki retract his remarks.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070227p2a00m0na029000c.html