Should Japan Allow Dual Citizenship?

by Satoshi Tanaka

Through  globalization, a lot of companies have an office and a factory in foreign country, and people have many opportunities to work overseas. However, Japanese government allows people to have citizenship of only one country. As a result, Japanese people who work in a foreign country cannot get a service as citizen of the country without resigning their Japanese citizenship. However, getting other citizenship makes people difficult to come back and live in Japan. In some countries, government allows people to have dual citizenship, and it helps people to work in other country, but I think that dual citizenship has also some disadvantages.

Dual citizenship has both advantage and disadvantage. Firstly, getting dual citizenship makes people feel more comfortable to work in foreign country. For example, people have no right to vote for the person who governs the country where they live if they have only Japanese citizenship. Moreover, people cannot get service without citizenship there such as a support of a fee for medical care and education. Therefore, dual citizenship gives people a support to live in the country. However, it also has demerits. Dual citizenship makes the tax system much more confused. Which government do people have to pay tax to? Which government do people get pension from? Now, tax and pension are already very complex problem which the government has. By introducing dual citizenship, the government must manage people who work all over the world.

Then, I suggest that people have two types of citizenship, main citizenship and sub citizenship. This system has the advantage of dual citizenship and solves the disadvantage which it has. First, this system gives people services such as medical care support and education in the country where they work like dual citizenship. Moreover, this system solves the problem of tax and pension. By dividing two citizenships into main and sub, it is easy to divide tax into the tax for home country and the tax for the country where people work. Moreover, this system makes people more flexible to change the second citizenship because they have the main citizenship.

In conclusion, following the globalization, the opportunity to work overseas is increasing. The current system of citizenship cannot support people to work in foreign country. I think that Japan should suit the change of the society by introducing dual citizenship. However, dual citizenship has still disadvantages. Then, allowing two types of citizenship, main and sub, makes up for the weakness of dual citizenship.

2 thoughts on “Should Japan Allow Dual Citizenship?

  1. Getting dual citizenship makes people not only feel more comfortable to work in foreign country, more important it will give them the urge to belong to the other group as well to contribute their won saying, to make their opinion count in for example voting. Having a dual citizenship makes them part of two countries but also applying for the good of both countries. So when the country where they reside wants to bring in a law which would not be so good for their home country they could utter their voice against such a law or ruling. As such both countries can be in the advantage having citizens with a dual citizenship.

    Japan should be thinking of the advantages for themselves by respecting their own people born in Japan and of Japanese ancestors. The connection with the original home country and the family is an important aspect and can provide also a security for the citizens in case some tribulations start or when there is war.

    Tax and pension regulation can better provided by the countries for the years they were in that country or arranged by internal agreements with those countries. For example that when people live for more than so many months in one country they will get the pension or pay equal to the citizens of that part where they live in. Though this would give less reason for English persons or Scandinavians to live in Spain. Best is to keep the wages and pensions in proportion like they were before or agreed with the company. This would also generate an extra income for the cheaper place where the more fortunate want to go living.

  2. While I do acknowledge the pros and the cons to dual citizenship,I think sub-citizenship will seem redundant to the government because some of the benefits you listed are accompanied by permanent residence or green card. Also, I don’t think sub-citizenship will solve the problem exactly; this will lead into restrictions based on sub-citizenship vs. full citizenship, which will ultimately result in discrimination.

    Although the taxes for sub-citizenship and full-citizenship will be different, I do not think citizens of whatever country would like to be taxed twice and taxes will be required if they want to have educational benefits (such as in state tuition).

    The upside to dual citizenship though is financial stability and a sense of security in a non-native country, but at what cost would this have to be accomplished and is dual citizenship necessary in order to accomplish this?

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