by Shoki Fujimoto
As we learned in class, there are some people who are called undocumented immigrants in the world. Most of them came into other countries without necessary qualification, so they are illegal. The reasons why they went into other countries are various. Some people decided to go to foreign countries to get job, money and chance to be successful, and another went over boundaries to escape from the threats of the authority like government by political and religious reasons. There are many cases of undocumented immigrants in the world. In this article, I describe about undocumented immigrants in Japan.
According to the Ministry of Justice, in the case of Japan, there are 67,065 illegal immigrants. The country which produces the biggest number of undocumented immigrants is Korea, and Korean undocumented immigrants account for the quarter of the total amount. The second is China. It produces about 10% of the total. The reasons why they stay Japan illegally are various. The most common one is expire of short stay visa, and it accounts for about 70%. Then, why Japanese government permits this situation? I found interesting political reasons. One of them is that Japanese government would like to avoid political troubles between such countries.
Some years ago, there were many Iranian undocumented immigrants in Japan, and Japanese government made them go out from Japan. However, Iranian government took countermeasures to this. Iran stopped accepting Japanese tourists. What if this happen in Japan and China, Korea? Today, the economic connection between Japan and China, Japan and Korea is necessary. Therefore, if these countries government took countermeasures like Iran, Japanese economy and politics will get big damage. This is the biggest reason, I think.
We studied the case of Noriko Calderon. She is a child of parents who entered Japan with forged passports. Noriko grew up in Japan with Japanese environment, she knows only Japanese culture and speaks only Japanese, so there was a debate on what we should do about her situation. The Japanese government decided ejection of her parents and only permits for Noriko to stay in Japan alone.
It is a very difficult problem, but in my opinion, Japanese government should take a strict stance for illegal immigrants. Needless to say, it is a tragedy for the Calderon family to be forced to be separated, and of course I feel sympathy for her. It sounds merciless, but her parents are criminals. Moreover, I think it is not too much to say that Noriko’s human rights were trampled on her parents’ crime. To protect children’s human rights, Japanese government should take strict stance, and even if Japanese government does not hope to have troubles between illegal immigrants-producing countries, Japan should not be worried because it is not wrong.
References
Ministry of Justice [http://www.moj.go.jp/nyuukokukanri/kouhou/nyuukokukanri04_00016.html] (retrieved June 27, 2013)
Information on migration [http://www.interq.or.jp/tokyo/ystation/jvisa6.html] (retrieved June 27, 2013)
JAPANsociology 
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hi.my brthr went to japan in 1992.he was in touch until his sudden disapearing in1993.i did my bst to find a hint in ibaraki ken ken whr he lived and worked but how can i find his name and whr.u site isnt a help either.
A.R.Jatan I
I’m not sure where you can get information but you might try contacting your embassy in Japan.
Rightly defined, crime is unjustfied aggression against another person or another person’s property. The Calderon parents are not criminals. On the other hand, the Japanese government is criminal. Immigration laws are inherently unjust. A person is a guest on someone’s private property, but who owns Japan as a whole? No one does. The Calderons are not criminals for breaking laws that are inherently unjust.
A crime is an unlawful act. It does not have to be against anyone or their property. It just has to have occurred in violation of a law. By your definition, it is not a crime to randomly fire a weapon outside of a gun range within a city — just as long as you don’t hurt anyone or damage their property. Whether or not you think this should be illegal is immaterial given written law that it is. Illegal immigration is a crime because it bypasses the legal procedures for entry into or stay within a country. Those parents are thus criminals, regardless of whether or not they bore any malicious intent toward other people or property.