In the good old days, very few Japanese knew about Alien Registration Cards ? you know, those wallet-size documents all non-Japanese residents must carry 24/7 or face arrest and incarceration.
Back then, a “gaijin card” was only something you had to show a bored cop doing random racial profiling on the street.
Legally, in fact, it still is. According to the Foreign Registry Law (Article 13), only officials granted police powers by the Justice Ministry can demand to see one.
But in its quest to make Japan “the world’s safest country again” (without similarly targeting Japanese crime) and to stem hordes of “illegal foreigners” (even though figures for overstayers have been falling since 1993), the government has recently deputized the entire nation. From now on, foreigners must endure frequent “gaijin-carding” at work. Not to mention passport checks and copying of personal ID documents.
This open season on gaijin, as well as on terrorists and carriers of contagious diseases (which somehow also means the gaijin), has gone beyond fomenting the image that non-Japanese are merely untrustworthy. It has created policy creep. Gaijin-hunters in their zeal are stretching or breaking established laws.
Backtrack: After years of alleging heinous foreign crime and terror (Zeit Gist, Feb. 20, 2007), the government first deputized the public in 2005 (ZG, March 8, 2005). Laws regarding hotels were revised to require passport numbers and photocopies from all “foreign tourists” (i.e. people without addresses in Japan).
However, police immediately stretched the law, telling hotels to demand passports from all foreigners. Some hotels threaten refusals if the gaijin doesn’t cough up his card (www.debito.org/olafongaijincarding.html).
Now ? as of Oct. 1 ? the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has chipped in, deputizing workplaces. Under the Employment Policy Law (“Koyo Taisaku Ho” ? see the MHLW Web site ), all employers (“jigyo nushi”) hiring, firing, or currently employing non-Japanese (except Special Permanent Residents and diplomats) must check their visa status, verifying that they are neither overstaying nor working outside their visa parameters.
This means filing a report at Hello Work, the MHLW’s unemployment agency. Information on all foreign staff, including name, date of birth, gender, nationality, visa status and expiration date, confirmation that all work is permitted under the visa, and employer’s name and address, must be provided ? on pain of penalties up to ¥300,000.
Proponents of the law, claiming it will “support the rehiring and better administration of foreign workers,” might well deter employers exploiting overstayers under the table. But in practice, the policy stretch has already begun.
For example, Regular Permanent Resident immigrants ? who have no visa restrictions placed on their employment and cannot possibly “overstay” ? must also be reported.
Another issue is that the law merely requires employers “check” the visa status of their foreign staff. There is no requirement for foreigners to physically hand over any personal documents. Yet several people have contacted me to say employers have demanded both their gaijin card (which for ID purposes works the same as a passport) and their passport for photocopying.
Furthermore, these “checks” are already not limited to your main employer or visa sponsor. I have received reports that any gaijin payment requires photocopied visa verification. In one case for a sum as low as ¥500! Yet my legal counsel confirmed with the MHLW that checking isn’t required for part-time work.
Conclusion: If hunting foreigners means tracking every yen they earn, this new and improved “gaijin card checkpoint” system goes far beyond the cop on the corner. It even voids the gaijin card. What’s the point of its existence if “verification” necessitates passports too?
The justifications for this new system are these: You’ve got to make sure foreigners aren’t working outside of their official Status of Residence. As we have reported (ZG June 28, 2005), even taking a quick part-time job can be a visa violation in certain cases.
Photocopies are apparently necessary because employers need proof on file if they get nobbled by the cops. (As if the police won’t ask the foreign staff for their original documents if a raid actually happens.)
Moreover, sometimes gaijin cards and passports differ in detail, like when the visa status changes in the passport, but the bearer neglects to report it to the Ward Office.
But if all these loopholes needed closing, they should have been encoded in the law. They weren’t, so demanding anything beyond a visual display of your gaijin card is policy overreach.
Now the floodgates are open: Unrelated places, such as banks, cell phone companies, sports clubs and video stores now illegally require gaijin cards for any service, even when other forms of ID ? such as driver’s license or health insurance booklet ? would suffice for Japanese.
What’s next, fingerprinting?
Japan needs more lawyers, or at least more lawyerly types. Anyone who reads the actual laws will in fact find natural checks and balances. For example, even if the cops issue their classic demand for your gaijin card on the street, under the Foreign Registry Law (Article 13), you are not required to display it unless the officer shows you his ID first. Ask for it. And write it down.
And believe it or not, under the Police Execution of Duties Law (Article 2), cops aren’t allowed to ask anyone for ID without probable cause for suspicion of a crime. Just being a foreigner doesn’t count. Point that out.
As for gaijin-carding at hotels, all you have to do is say you have an address in Japan and you are in the clear. Neither foreign residents nor Japanese have to show any ID. The hotels cannot refuse you service, as legally they cannot deny anyone lodging under the Hotel Management Law (Article 5), without threat to public morals, possibility of contagion, or full rooms.
And as for gaijin-carding by employers, under the new law (Article 28) you are under no obligation to say anything more than what your visa status is, and that it is valid. Say you’ll present visual proof in the form of the gaijin card, since nothing more is required.
If your main employer forces you to have your IDs photocopied, point out that the Personal Information Protection Law (“Kojin Joho Hokan Ho”) governs any situation when private information is demanded. Under Article 16, you must be told the purpose of gathering this information, and under Article 26 you may make requests to correct or delete data that are no longer necessary. That means that once your visa status has been reported to Hello Work, your company no longer needs it, and you should request your info be returned for your disposal.
Those are the laws, and they exist for a reason: to protect everyone ? including non-Japanese ? from stretches of the law and abuses of power by state or society.
Even if the Foreign Registry Law has long made foreigners legally targetable in the eyes of the police, the rest of Japanese society still has to treat foreigners ? be they laborer, customer, neighbor or complete stranger ? with appropriate respect and dignity.
Sure, policymakers are treating non-Japanese residents as criminals, terrorists, and filth columnists of disease and disorder ? through fingerprinting on arrival, gaijin-house ID checkpoints, anonymous “snitch sites” (ZG, March 30, 2004), DNA databases (ZG, Jan. 13, 2004), IC chips in gaijin cards (ZG, Nov. 22, 2005) and now dragnets through hotels and paychecks.
But there are still vestiges of civil liberties guaranteed by law here. Know about them, and have them enforced. Or else non-Japanese will never be acknowledged or respected as real residents of Japan, almost always governed by the same laws as everyone else.
Immigration
Foreigners still dogged by housing barriers
Having arrived in Tokyo from Seoul about a year ago, Il Yeong Eun, like many foreigners who come to Japan, soon encountered a major difficulty ? housing discrimination.
Il, 25, together with two South Korean friends who also came to Japan around that time, visited three real estate agencies to rent an apartment in Shinjuku Ward. But the agencies turned them away because they were foreigners.
“I never expected to be refused,” said Il, who goes to a Japanese language school in the ward. “I felt like I was treated like a criminal.”
Fortunately, she found a one-bedroom flat through a real estate agency that one of her friends introduced her to. The firm’s South Korean employee takes care of foreign customers by teaching them Japanese customs related to living in rental apartments.
Japan’s foreign population is steadily increasing. Government data show the number of registered foreign residents stood at 2.08 million in 2006, up from 1.48 million a decade ago. Nonetheless, housing discrimination against foreigners is surprisingly strong even in Tokyo.
According to a 2006 survey conducted by Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Information Center for Foreigners in Japan, 94 percent, or 220 respondents, out of 234 foreigners in Tokyo who visited real estate agents said they were refused by at least one agent.
To ease the discrimination, the public and private sectors have gradually come to offer various services to help foreigners find properties.
The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry launched the Web site Anshin Chintai (safe rental housing) in June to provide rental housing information and lists of real estate agents and NPOs that can support foreign apartment-seekers.
“We hear that some foreign residents have been refused (by landlords or rental agents),” said Eiji Tanaka, a ministry official in charge of the project. “The system is to network local governments, rental agents and nonprofit organizations” to effectively help such foreigners as well as the aged and the disabled.
So far, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Osaka and Miyagi prefectures and Kawasaki have joined the project. For example, 237 real estate agents in Tokyo are listed as supportive firms.
The site ? www.anshin-chintai.jp ? is available in Japanese only, but foreigners who have difficulties with the language can ask local governments to explain the information on the site to them, according to the ministry.
The ministry is trying to have other local governments join the system and is considering offering the content in other languages as well, the official said.
The Japan Property Management Association, involving about 1,000 real estate agencies, also launched the Web site Welcome Chintai ? www.jpm.jp/welcome/ ? in September to introduce rental properties in six languages ? Chinese, English, Korean, Mongolian, Spanish and Russian.
Information about properties and procedures and customs to rent rooms are put up by rental agents on the site’s six blogs ? one blog in each of the six languages.
“The Web site is a tool for us to smoothly accept foreign customers,” said Masao Ogino, chairman of the association’s international exchange committee that runs Ichii Co., the real estate agent in Shinjuku Ward.
As real estate agents that registered with the site write about their experiences of dealing with foreign customers, other member companies can gain knowhow, he said.
But opening such Web sites is not enough to help foreigners, said Toshinori Kawada, a Meiji University student who set up The-You Inc., a rental housing consulting firm, in Shinjuku Ward last year.
“(Foreigners) often find apartments through word of mouth. Distributing fliers at places where they gather is more effective” than offering information online, he said, noting his company’s site showing properties for foreigners, launched in July, has failed to draw many viewers.
A key to solving the housing problem faced by foreigners is to ease landlords’ anxieties about accepting them as tenants, Kawada said.
Landlords and rental agents often say they are concerned that foreign tenants might not have proper guarantors and might cause trouble with neighbors.
To ease such anxieties, his firm gives rental agents and landlords consultations on foreign tenant management, such as teaching them rules of everyday life here and collecting rents, by utilizing the expertise he gained by working at a foreign customers-only real estate agency for a year.
These private-sector moves have come as real estate companies and landlords think the rental housing market targeting foreigners has potential as Japan struggles with a declining birthrate.
“An oversupply (of rental apartments) makes it difficult (for landlords) to manage their properties. So they reluctantly turn to foreign customers,” Kawada said.
Ogino of the association said more and more real estate agents would enter the market as the association is trying to enlighten them and pass along knowhow to handle foreign customers through its new site.
“Our industry is finally moving toward internationalization as some agents now hire foreign employees,” Ogino said. “If real estate agencies can obtain knowhow to deal with foreign customers, they could gain more benefits and make foreign residents happy.”
Govt to help foreign students learn Japanese
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.
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