by Masataka Yamamoto

Recently, globalization has made many foreigners come to Japan to get jobs but not for only sightseeing. However, there is strict law of dual citizenship in Japan. Compared to Japan, some countries, for example, U.S. has loose law about dual citizenship and many foreigners can be citizens of U.S., even if their parents were not born in U.S. As this situation, many workers from foreign countries cannot get any protection or services from Japanese government and because of this, foreign workers has facing with difficult time to spend hard life in Japan. If Japanese government allow dual citizenship, foreigners who already living in Japan and who has some plan to live in Japan make more comfortable. As I mentioned previously, U.S. has loose law about dual citizenship compare to Japan, so foreigner in U.S. can get protection or services easily and that can make foreigners able to have better life.

However, to having dual citizenships have both advantages and disadvantages. To start from advantages, people who have dual citizenship can go and back to both two countries easily. For example, people who have only one citizenship have some procedures to get in to country A, but people who have dual citizenship have few procedures than people who have only one citizenship if that people have citizenship of country A. However, there are also disadvantages to have dual citizenship. For example, most of people who have dual citizenships are “hafu” people. They might feel their identities belong to country which grew up, but some of them had difficult time with figuring which country they belong to. If people who had an experience of living half of their life in country A and other half of life in country B. Their identities were mixed up with both countries and they confused by which country really belongs to. Eventually, those people might lose nation awareness of which country they belong to and their identity of who they are truly.

In conclusion, it is better to allow or loose the law about dual citizenship in Japan because it has strong advantages other than I mentioned and those will help foreigner to live better life. Also, “hafu” people in Japan don’t have to choose which country they belong to and not imposing by Japanese government so they can have both identities. However, allowing of dual citizenships also has disadvantages so government has to set a baseline carefully.

References

The choice of nationality. Retrieved May 8, 2013 from http://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/minji06.html

GCNET. Retrieved May 8, 2013 from http://www.gcnet.at/citizenship/merit-demerit.htm

Ministry of Justice. Retrieved May 8, 2013 from http://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/minji78.html