Foreigners get nod to skip social insurance

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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.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100304a1.html

Average wages mark 1st rise in 20 months

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Average monthly wages including overtime pay at companies with more than five employees rose to 273,142 yen in January, up 0.1 percent from a year earlier, marking the first yearly increase in 20 months, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, average hours worked, including overtime and worked holidays, reached 136.7 hours per month, up 0.3 percent, marking the first yearly increase in 18 months, supporting the view that the economy is picking up, according to a preliminary report produced by the ministry.

In particular, overtime worked by those in the manufacturing sector–a key barometer in assessing changes in economic trends–rose 30.1 percent to 12.1 hours.

Overtime working hours rose 3.4 percent from a year earlier to 9.4 hours.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T100303007611.htm

Health insurance nixed as visa renewal condition

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The Immigration Bureau has effectively scrapped a guideline that compelled foreign residents to present health insurance cards when applying to extend visa status, it has been learned.

The new guideline, due to be enforced on April 1, states it would have requested non-Japanese to enroll in the social insurance system and present health insurance cards at the application window when reporting changes in their status of residence or when renewing visas.

But the newly revised immigration guideline also states that failing to present health insurance cards would not adversely affect decisions by the bureau on the issues of changing residence status or renewing visas. [Japanese as well as] non-Japanese are required by law to enroll in the social insurance system.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100304TDY02308.htm

Police crack down on legal workers who help foreigners illegally work in Japan

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Law enforcers are stepping up their crackdown on administrative scriveners who help foreigners illegally work or get falsely married in Japan, officials said.

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has set up a liaison council with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Justice Ministry’s Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau to deal with the matter.

Since 2006, the MPD has arrested at least five administrative scriveners for helping foreigners illegally obtain work visas in Japan in violation of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.

However, a senior investigator with the MPD admits that it has been forced to abandon forming a case against many others suspected of filing false applications for work visas on behalf of foreigners, because they denied that their clients were seeking false applications.

To deal with the situation, the MPD is trying to invoke a law to regulate the work of administrative scriveners.

Many administrative scriveners who are suspected of involvement in false applications fail to preserve documents recording the names and addresses of their clients and the amounts of fees they receive from their clients, even though the law requires them to do so. Violators face a fine of up to 1 million yen.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100302p2a00m0na006000c.html

Security for dispatch workers

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The labor ministry last month asked an advisory body to discuss possible revisions to the law governing the dispatch of temporary contract workers. The Hatoyama administration hopes to improve the stability of dispatch workers’ employment situation, and plans to send a bill containing revisions to the Diet in March.

According to a ministry draft of the revision bill, the current temp system, which sees registered workers go without pay when there is no work to occupy them, will be banned in principle. Exceptions will be made for 26 fields of work that require specialized skills, such as interpreting. The draft proposes that the ban be phased in over a period of up to five years.

The draft also calls for dispatch on assignments lasting two months or less to be prohibited in principle, and for temp agencies to be obliged to make their commission margins public.

Dispatch of workers to manufacturing firms will also be banned in principle. Again, there will be a phasing-in period of up to three years before the ban is enforced. However, dispatch of registered workers to manufacturing firms will still be allowed if the workers receive pay continuously for more than one year, even if there is no actual work available.

The labor side says that the revisions will not prevent workers being dispatched to manufacturing firms on short-term, renewable contracts. Labor also questions why unskilled work such as filing and office machine operation is covered in the 26 “specialized” fields.

[The advisory body’s] main objective should be to prevent a situation in which dispatched workers can be easily and suddenly laid off in times of economic downturn. Legislation aside, management should realize that continuing to rely heavily on dispatch workers inhibits the accumulation of skills and know-how among staff, thus weakening a firm’s ability to compete in the long term.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20100302a1.html

DPJ postpones bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents

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The government has abandoned proposing a bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents in Japan during the current Diet session, in the face of intense opposition from coalition partner People’s New Party (PNP).

“It’s extremely difficult for the government to sponsor such a bill due to differences over the issue between the ruling coalition partners,” said Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi.

Now, the attention is focused on whether ruling and opposition parties will launch a campaign to pass the bill as legislator-initiated legislation.

The suffrage bill was expected to be based on a draft that the DPJ prepared before it took over the reins of government, and it proposes to grant local suffrage to foreign residents from countries with which Japan has diplomatic ties. The DPJ’s proposal will cover some 420,000 Korean and other special permanent residents — both those who arrived in Japan before World War II and their offspring — as well as about 490,000 foreign residents from other countries.

The campaign to enact legislation on foreign suffrage in local elections dates back to 15 years ago.

Encouraged by the 1995 Supreme Court ruling that “foreign suffrage is not banned by the Constitution,” over 1,500 local assemblies adopted a resolution to support and promote legislation to grant local suffrage to permanent foreign residents in Japan — some 910,000 people as of the end of 2008.

However, as the passage of the bill becomes a real possibility along with the change of government, various views have emerged.

The National Association of Chairpersons of Prefectural Assemblies held an interparty discussion meeting on local suffrage for permanent foreign residents on Feb. 9 in Tokyo.

“It’s not the time for national isolation,” said Azuma Konno, a House of Councillors member of the DPJ, as he explained the party’s policy on the legislation at the meeting, raising massive jeers and objections from participants.

“We can introduce legislation which will make it easier for foreigners to be naturalized,” said Kazuyoshi Hatakeyama, speaker of the Miyagi Prefectural Assembly, while Kochi Prefectural Assembly Vice Speaker Eiji Morita countered, saying: “The DPJ excluded the suffrage bill from its manifesto for last summer’s election.”

The Mie Prefectural Assembly, in which DPJ members form the largest political group, was the only chapter to support the granting of local suffrage to permanent foreign residents.

“The argument against suffrage rings of ethnic nationalism,” said Speaker Tetsuo Mitani.

The fact that the DPJ’s legislation plan met with strong opposition during the meeting highlighted the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s strong sway over local assemblies, where its members manage to remain as the largest political group.

Opponents of the bill argue that it is unreasonable for the central government to make decisions on regional electoral systems while pledging to promote decentralization of authority. Furthermore, the national association of chairpersons adopted a special resolution calling on the government to focus more on the opinions of local assemblies on Jan. 21.

During the LDP Policy Research Council’s national meeting on Feb. 10, LDP lawmakers instructed its prefectural chapters to promote resolutions opposing foreign suffrage at respective local assemblies, in a bid to undermine the Hatoyama administration and the DPJ in cooperation with regional politics.

According to the chairpersons’ association, before the change of government last summer, a total of 34 prefectures supported the granting of local suffrage to foreign residents; however, eight reversed their positions after the DPJ came into power. The trend is expected to accelerate further, pointing to antagonism between the nation’s two largest political parties, as well as the conflicts between the DPJ-led national government and local governments.

The Chiba Prefectural Assembly, which adopted the resolution supporting foreign suffrage in 1999, reversed its position in December last year.

“We cannot believe they overturned their own decision,” said an official at Mindan’s Chiba Prefecture branch. The branch, which has a close relationship with LDP lawmakers, had owed the prefecture’s previous decision to support the suffrage bill to the efforts of LDP members in the prefectural assembly.

The Ibaraki Prefectural Assembly, too, is one of the eight local assemblies that went from for to against suffrage. Mindan’s Ibaraki branch has also expressed its disappointment, saying: “Assembly members are using the issue as part of their campaign strategy for the coming election.”

According to the National Diet Library, foreign residents are granted local suffrage in most major developed countries.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100227p2a00m0na009000c.html

Business lobby to end donation drive

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Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) plans to stop soliciting political donations from its members starting this year, in part because of the ascendancy of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which opposes such fund raising, sources said Wednesday.

The move by the nation’s most influential business lobby, with a membership of 1,600 companies and organizations, could result in a sharp drop in political donations, the sources said.

In 2008, it raised about 3 billion yen ($33 million) in donations from its members. Nearly 2.7 billion yen went to the Liberal Democratic Party, which was toppled from power in the Lower House election last August after more than five decades of almost uninterrupted rule.

But Nippon Keidanren leaders concluded that its orchestration of donations was incompatible with the DPJ’s political platform and growing public outrage at scandals involving political donations.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201002250444.html

900 axed JNR unionists may get ¥29.5 million each

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A 23-year-old dispute over the dismissal of unionized workers at the Japanese National Railways may finally be heading toward a resolution now that the ruling bloc and an opposition party have drafted a ¥27 billion settlement plan.

The package, hammered out Tuesday by the three coalition partners and New Komeito, calls for a payment of ¥29.5 million each to about 900 former JNR workers who have sued over their dismissal and asks the current Japan Railway companies to hire about 230 of them who are 55 years old or younger, according to sources.

In exchange, the workers will drop their lawsuits.

The proposed ¥27 billion payout would be undertaken by the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, an independent administrative agency that inherited JNR’s debts after it was privatized and split up in 1987.

Representatives of the railway agency and the National Railway Workers Union, known as Kokuro, are expected to sign a compromise deal based on the package, the sources said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100225a2.html

No one-size-fits-all for foreign suffrage

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How the rest of the world deals with aliens at the ballot box

Support has been surprisingly muted for the Hatoyama administration’s push toward suffrage for foreign permanent residents, even among the constituencies such a law would enfranchise. The debate is definitely a hot one, sparking a number of protests against the plan around Tokyo, with opposition logic ranging from the rational (“They should nationalize”) to xenophobic (“Foreigners who hate Japan will take over the country”).

Giving voting rights to noncitizens is of course a controversial move, with implications in terms of sovereignty, democracy, integration and discrimination. But it is an issue many countries have been dealing with for generations as they grappled with the legacy of colonization and mass migration. While still generally an exception to the rule, over 40 countries around the world give legal aliens the right to vote in some capacity, employing a wide range of systems to address equally varied concerns.

Laws range from the plain (any permanent residents having resided in Iceland continuously for at least five years may vote) to complex (in Switzerland, foreigners may not vote on the national level, but may vote, and even run for office, in some cantons and/or municipalities). A few countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, have over the years taken away suffrage for foreign residents

Within Asia, the South Korean government made two big leaps simultaneously in 2005 by lowering the voting age to 19 and ushering in foreign suffrage in local elections for those who have been permanent residents for three years or more. According to the National Election Commission, at the time of local polls in May 2006 there were only 6,579, mostly Taiwanese, residents that benefited from the new legislation on noncitizen voting rights.

“Korea is now the first nation in Asia to grant voting rights to foreign residents,” The Herald newspaper quoted Kim Cheol, deputy director of public relations at the Nation Election Commission, as declaring. “We hope this will accelerate a move to integrate foreign communities into the homogenous society.”

The issues of foreign suffrage in South Korea and Japan are deeply interlinked due to the legacy of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and the end of the war. There is speculation that one of the reasons the move was made in Seoul was in the hope that Japan would give similar rights to its foreign residents, particularly the nearly 600,000 Koreans who live here. South Korean foreign and trade minister Yu Myung Hwan hinted as much during a meeting earlier this month with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and again called on Japan to grant local-level suffrage to permanent residents, a measure Okada said the government was “considering.”

“I think enfranchising immigrants is the logical next step in the fulfillment of the practice of democracy,” says Ron Hayduk, political science professor at the City University of New York, author of “Democracy For All” and vocal supporter of immigrant suffrage. Proponents of noncitizen voting such as Hayduk believe that while citizenship is a viable solution for some, for those such as Japan’s Zainichi Koreans, the decision to renounce citizenship of their home country is not only an issue of loyalty, but also of familial ties and material investments, particularly as Japan does not permit dual citizenship.

But while municipalities around the globe buy into foreigner suffrage under the principles of “No taxation without representation” and immigrant involvement, there is no one-size-fits-all policy for giving noncitizens the right to have a say in what many strongly feel is an arena where only naturalized or native-born citizens have a role to play.

“What works in one jurisdiction isn’t going to necessarily work in another,” Hayduk admits, “but precluding the option to vote for long-term residents creates opportunities for continued inequality and discriminatory policies.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100223zg.html

Chinese students cautioned after GEOS English schools in Australia collapse

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China’s Education Ministry on Sunday warned students considering studying overseas against Australian schools run by the GEOS group after more than 40 Chinese students were left stranded with the group’s collapse.

More than 2,300 students in GEOS group schools across Australia were affected after the college closures. The schools were scattered across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Cairns.

GEOS is a Japanese company which owns hundreds of colleges around the world. The GEOS group has run out of money for its Australian colleges,according to Australian media reports.

Chinese embassies and consulates in Australia are negotiating with local authorities to settle the issue to safeguard students’ legitimate rights.

The Education Ministry has drawn up a recommendation list of nearly 15,000 schools in 33 countries worldwide on its website. The recommended schools are relatively trustworthy and reliable.

Australia has been a preferred destination for overseas education for Indian and Chinese students.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the number of Chinese student enrollments was 146,000 by June 2009, up an average annual 16 percent over the past six years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-02/22/c_13182360.htm