Tag Archives: immigration

The immigrant issue in Japan

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by Asako Morita

Because the lecture last week by guest speaker was quite inspiring, I decided to research more about immigrant in Japan. Even though Japan has been welcoming more immigrants these days, it is still far from multicultural society compared to other countries. Therefore, as guest speaker insisted, the issues and problems of minority are easily ignored or invisible to the masses until minority in a trouble raises voice as a group. Then I would like to seek how Japanese government should make the policy to invite more immigrants.

First, I would like to demonstrate general information about immigrants in Japan. According to the statistic of national census, more than 2 million foreign workers are now in Japan. This number is still low compared to other developed countries such as the U.S. but it is almost increased twice than 10 years ago. 1.6 millions of people are from Asia and Chinese is the major immigrants in 2011. The next biggest number is from South America especially from Brazil. In the total number, almost half of them are women. However, like 75 percent of Philippines immigrants are women, the number of sex rate is quite different from each country. Because more and more immigrants or foreign workers have come to Japan, issues are getting defined.

Second, I would like to analyze what issues immigrants and foreign workers in Japan have. The one of the biggest issue is about an employment. Now, Japan is facing the issue of dwindling birthrate and an aging population. The concern from presence situation is shrinking of the labor force. On top of that, Japan is now in a depression so what enterprises in Japan have needed was the expectation of wage control. Then companies want 20 to 30 years old young simple labors and expected workers to go home before they get old. However, this turning over of young foreign workers cannot solve the issue of decreasing labor force. On the contrast, if a specific age group stays in Japan, Japanese composition of population becomes distorted.

Although if Japan succeeds in receiving numbers of immigrants, they may have hard time get used to living in Japanese society. Because Japanese life style is quite different from others, a friction might be caused and mass of immigrants would make a community by country where someone is from. Once Japanese government promotes to accelerate to receive immigrates, it is hard to stop it even though the situation changes.

Therefore, what I suggest is that Japan should make up the comfortable working environment for elderly people, women and foreign workers who are eager to work. And also, Japan has to break away from winning low cost competition model. Not only young simple foreign labors but also more and more skilled foreign workers should be welcomed. This is the way Japan survives in global economy under globalization.

Global Citizenship and Identity

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by Eriko Maruyama

As one society is shifting from homogenizing society to multicultural one because of the increase of immigration, the problem of language is always controversial. In the United States, the increase of Hispanic immigrants is very remarkable, so it has been worried that Spanish would replace English. However, the fear was found to be wrong (Portes, A, 2002). The fact is that the migrants have getting to manage English as younger generations grow up. Almost 3rd generation of the migrants cannot speak their mother language but they only can speak English. Thus, the assimilation to English has been proceeding, while unities of mother languages have been getting weak. Does the collapse of language unity lead to the chaotic society?

In response to the tendency of immigrants’ loss of its original culture, the immigrants’ dominant society has launched to set bilingual education to maintain their mother languages. In these bilateral schools, students have subsidiary classes in their mother languages. According to the reading, this dual language education has been successful, and students can handle two languages fluently. Moreover, some school organise this dual language education even for students whose native languages are English. I disagree with this education system because equitable education must be regarded at least in public schools. I suppose that we cannot make agreeable selection of language in the multicultural society. Therefore, I would suggest the education which will make ‘global citizenship’.

One of the authoritative international organizations, Oxfam, defines the global citizen as people who is “aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own role as a world citizen”, “respects and values diversity” and “is outraged by social injustice” (Oxfam Education). It is obviously important to have one common language, which means English, in order to communicate each other and create better society altogether. However, more importantly, we need to welcome the diversity of sense of values and respect them each other. In this context, the compulsory dual language education does not make sense at all. The objective of the dual education system is to preserve the original culture. But in my opinion, it is possible to maintain own original culture even we speak English because what makes society tied is not the language, but the common hope for the peaceful society. We can have two identities; our original culture identity and the identity as global citizen.

I have asked my European friends about their identity. They told me that they have two identities as their origin countries, such as Italian or German, and as the citizen in European Union. They speak different languages but they share the same future goals for the peaceful society. And their sense of identity has been built through the education. Therefore, I believe that it is possible to have more than two identities at the same time and to create diverse, but peaceful society. The lost of linguistic unity in the immigrants’ society does not lead to the chaotic society. It means that people create whole new identities as their original countries’ citizen and as the member of this planet. The common hope is much more important than forcing to speak fixed language. Lastly, I would quote the speech of the President Barack Obama:

“I believe we can keep the promise of our founding, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or straight.” (Guardian.co.uk, 2012, cited in http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/07/barack-obama-speech-full-text)

As President Obama declared, it does not matter what kind of identity we have. The most important thing is that we respect the diversity and go forward for the creation of unified society as a member of global citizens.

Bibliography

Guardian.co.uk (2012), Barack Obama’s victory speech – full text, [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/07/barack-obama-speech-full-text [2012, November 11]

Oxfam Education, What is Global Citizenship?, [online]. Available: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/gc/what_and_why/what/ [2012, November 11]

Portes, A (2002) ‘English-only triumphs, but the costs are high’. SAGE Journals, vol. 1, February, pp 10-15.

Japanese Education Systems’ Ignorance of Muslim Migrants Children

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by Akie Kuwano

Although Japan used to be referred to as ethnically homogeneous, the number of immigrants reached more than 1.5% of Japanese population in 2005. Despite this shift in immigrants’ population, Japanese education system is reluctant to change. In order to keep Japan as secular nation, Japan persists in its principle of separation of religion and education. However, this attitude often creates problems between Japanese schools and migrants parents/children. The problems are mostly evident in the case of Muslim migrants because their religion, Islam, rules not only the realm of their private life, but also their behavior in the public sphere. The main problems those Muslim migrants are facing in Japanese public schools is about school lunch.

One example of Muslim faith conflicting with school lunch in Japanese school is Ramadan. Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, provides that the ninth month of the Islamic calendar as Ramadan, the month of fasting. Many Muslims start Ramadan at the age of 7, just about the time when children start going to elementary school. Although it is medically proved that Ramadan does not cause any medical illness to healthy individual, without having any knowledge some teachers feel it abuses children.

The other instance is Halal food. Islam regulates what followers can eat and cannot eat, according to Qur’an. Food that is compatible with Islamic teaching is known as Halal food, while the others are called Haraam. The most frequently used Japanese condiments like soy sauce or mirin are Haraam because they usually contain alcohol. Accordingly, many of the lunch that Japanese schools provide are Haraam to Muslim children. In order to avoid Haraam foods, Muslim children often bring their own lunch box from their home. Some school view this as unequal to other Japanese children, some school urge Muslim parents to pay for school lunch.

To sum up, it is the lack of knowledge which preventing Japanese schools from handling problems correctly and flexibly with Muslim migrants children. It is understandable that Japan wants to eliminate religion from public sphere because in Japanese sense religion is what governs people’s private life; however, Japan also needs to understand that religion is sometimes inseparable from their public life and is even forming their culture, in which the society needs to pay respect to accommodate population from foreign countries.

References

Mina, Hattori. (2007). “Development of Religious Value for Indonesian Muslim Children in Japan: A Case Study of Voluntary Educational Activities in Nagoya City”, Intercultural Communication Studies, Vol.19

樋口直人、丹野清人「食文化の越境とハラール食品産業の形成―在日ムスリム移民を事例として―」、徳島大学社会科学研究弟13号、p99-p.131

Multiculturalism in South Korea

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by Youngim Kim

Unlike the U.S, South Korea tends to be a homogenous country and just permitted the overseas tip in 1981. However, since South Korea became a member of OECD, the migration of people from China and Southeast Asia in pursuit of better living has increased. I found the situation described from the US articles is somewhat similar to multicultural issues in Korea. South Korea has intensely developed intellectual and high skilled industry through immersion education system. Koreans consider many undocumented Chinese and Southeast Asian dayworkers as potential criminals. Most of them are rejected by Koreans and also experience discriminative treatment in terms of human right and basic wages. In spite of the multicultural policy by Korean government, immigrants and Koreans are hostile to each other.

Unlike the US-Mexico example, one growing part of immigrants in Korea can be classified as intercultural marriage between Korean men and foreign women from elsewhere in Asia in the country side. Korean men living in a rural community who are the majority of Korean women try to avoid marrying with, cannot help marrying through an arranged match with women from poorer country to carry on a family lineage. Though foreign women who married with Korean men can have Korean visa, the children born through such kind of international marriages usually feel a sense of alienation and have an identity crisis. The government policy also still does not support them even after the settlement. Most of foreign women living in the countryside of Korea have been forced to assimilate to traditional Korean culture, which is supporting husband’s parents and also doing traditional women’s work. The people who try to maintain and teach their culture to their children are still a minority. Moreover, the majority of Korean is against multicultural policy because they think foreigners disturb public peace and order, even though they know nobody of immigrants who committed a crime.

Of course, Chinese and Southeast Asians are not all of immigrants in South Korea. However, the discrimination toward foreigners depends on their race and language. Like Japan, Caucasians speaking English are the most welcomed people. In the global society, I think we cannot change this current flow, what is international mobility. Korean should change their attitude toward foreigners from a dichotomy or prejudice like “the foreigner” and “Korean” to cordial cultural exchange for the development of both countries.

Does the DREAM Act bring benefits to America?

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Kaori Isobe

On August 1, 2001, the U.S. Senate introduced American legislative proposal which is called the DREAM Act, stands for “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors”. It gives opportunities to get the permanent residency in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants who suit requirements. There is a serious background to come up this bill.

In the United States, there are 11.5 million of undocumented, illegal immigrations in 2011. And about 20% of undocumented immigrants are under 18 years old. They were born in the U.S. or they came to the U.S. from other countries. However, their parents illegally came to the U.S., therefore they are also illegal residence in the U.S. It means that they don’t have the U.S. citizenship and nationalities, even they look like totally American, such as they live their most entire lives in the U.S. and they speak English, have American way of thinking and so on. However, due to migration law, they cannot go to colleges, and have a lot of difficulties to find jobs. Also, they cannot get identifications such as ID card. To come to the U.S. is not their choices. They are forced unstable lives without choice.

This bill is not approved because the Republican Party rejected. However, as of November 2012, 11 states have their own DREAM Act, for example in New Mexico, California, New York and other states, undocumented immigration who meet requirements, are eligible to pay in-state tuition for colleges and universities at New Mexico. It seems to have been improved. But in fact, it is said difficult to pass this law because of political situation of recent days. So, let suppose that this bill would be passed, this DREAM Act would be able to bring benefits for America?

In my opinion, as long as I have studied, I would say YES. There are two reasons.

One of them is that if the DREAM Act would give opportunities to get the permanent residency for undocumented immigration, a huge economy impact would be occurred in the U.S. in a good way. According to a video from “dreamact.info”, an average of 30-years old Mexican immigrant woman who graduated from college pay more than $5,300 in taxes, then at the same time, it costs the government less $3,900 in taxes. Then, total annual fiscal contribution would be $9200 per person.  It means that the DREAM Act would be able to bring a good fiscal influence. Furthermore, if immigrants would be able to get legal residency and get legal jobs, economy in the U.S. would be better because they would be able to buy stuff they want. So, influence on economy is one of benefits.

The other one is that undocumented immigrations’ talents would become a huge impact on education and research field. Because of migration act, many undocumented immigrations who have great record have to give up to go going to college or higher institution. However, if the DREAM Act would be passed, undocumented migrants would be able to go to college, then they would be learn and some of them would be specialists as American do. Do not desert their abilities. Also, I think every child has right to get education. The society have responsibilities to get children have education not only at high school, but also at college and universities if they want to go. So, this is another benefit that I’ve considered.

However, there are some criticisms. For example, this act would give unfairness to legal immigration parents and children because they have to pay full tuition, but on the other hand, undocumented immigrations can get scholarship to go to college.  The other is that this act would encourage and reward illegal immigration. Also, if injured accidentally during the 2-year military service which is one of the requirements, the DREAM Act applicant cannot get permanent residency.

As a conclusion, whether the DREAM Act would be passed or not, I think there are some aspects that the society relies on immigration, which means that immigration do what American usually do not, such as 3D jobs, house keeper, and so on. Immigration is one of important thing for the society. Therefore immigrant problem should be considered seriously, and deeply in many ways. I hope everything will be better for undocumented people who are forced to have unstable lives without their own choices.

References

Dream act info http://dreamact.info/

Undocumented shadows – A dream act infographic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXnqhG2h9QA&feature=related

 

Immigrants and Crime in Japan

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by Anonymous

There is a general perception that immigrants are likely to commit crime more than Japanese in Japan. However, is that right realization? It seems that the mass media in Japan deal with crimes by foreigners or immigrants excessively, and it brings people a kind of prejudice.

Mass media in Japan often shows how foreigners or immigrants are dangerous with daily news, newspaper, or magazine. This phenomenon can be analyzed by closed society in Japan. Still in today, Japan is said that it has little variety of nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, and language, while the world comes to be more global. Compared with other countries like America, Japanese’s attitude of accepting immigrants is by far less flexible. People tend to have uncomfortable feeling against immigrants and it helps Japanese to have negative perception against them like committing crime. However, according to the data by National Police Agency, many cases of the crimes by immigrants have Japanese accomplices. It means that Japanese accomplices have been hidden because of the emphasized report of the crime by immigrants. Through this, I think it’s not necessarily appropriate to suggest that only immigrants tend to have high possibility to commit crime, and Japanese and they are standing in equal field.

However, it is also true that there are crimes committed by immigrant in Japan. The immigrants should have some reasons, because I think nobody commits crime without reason, Conceivable factors are that the lack of the opportunities for work, or the uncomfortable environment at working place or community. In Japan, it seems that most of immigrants have non-regular employment, and it means that they are in an insecure situation and also the payment is lower than the average. On a daily level, it is difficult for them to integrate into Japanese community, because of differences in language, culture, religion, and character of people. They might be isolated by community. I think these factors bring immigrants negative feelings, and sometimes it drives them to commit crime.

Although there is prejudice against immigrants in Japan, the problem of the crime committed by immigrants actually exists. We have to think how we can deal with it. I think the most important thing is that Japanese and immigrants should have good relationship by participation in communities. If they make connection, they will pay attention to each other, and it might help them when they are in trouble. Moreover, it might help them to understand their differences. The crimes committed by immigrants will decrease when the future that Japanese and immigrants can live together without prejudice or discrimination comes.

Citation

the status of arrest against the foreign crimes 来日外国人犯罪の検挙状況. (2011).  Retrieved Nov 10, 2012, from National Police Agency: http://www.npa.go.jp/sosikihanzai/kokusaisousa/kokusai/H23_rainichi.pdf

International Migration

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by Wataru Yukita

International migration has increased in recent years. In Japan, some people say that Japan should accept many immigrants to increase production power because of a decline in working age population. However, is that right? I have a skeptical view for this opinion.

At the beginning, I agree that Japan becomes more tolerance to foreigners. In Japan, many people (especially in Internet) agree to deport illegal immigrant who have worked properly, it is funny in common sense. Giving permanent residency to the foreigners who work seriously in low wage job and raise children born in Japan is a right policy, compared to give preferential treatment to idle Japanese. I think that accepting many immigrants in order to increase economic growth without thinking is the opposite.

First, who is pay cost to accept immigrants? Though there is no problem for company and farmers that simply want cheap labor, local government and autonomy must ensure house for immigrants, education on their children, social welfare and so on. Many local governments confront shortage of revenue. So, could they take measures of these problems? I think that it is very difficult. If many children of immigrants could not get education and they make poor, Japan will face social problems of difference in race like western countries. Immigrants have human right, not machine. Because we accept “human”, we must guarantee life as human beings for everyone. If we wouldn’t do so, our society will collapse in morality. Company and other organization that simply want cheap labor should be criticized.

Second, are there any people who really want to immigrate to Japan? Many developing countries have a problem of decline birth rate and a growing population of elderly people while economic growth. Many workers are in need in these countries as well as Japan. If Japan promotes immigration policy, Can Japan collected many immigrants? I have doubts about this idea.

Finally, multiculturalism is very difficult to achieve. This can be presumed from European countries and United States that have accepted many immigrants. In these countries, immigrant policy is a major issue in election every time. Of course, this is true of presidential election in United States coming soon. Japan, have never experienced of acceptance of immigrants, are not even start these discussion in level in the Member of Parliament.

That is why I disagree to accept many immigrants in Japan. However, we need to discuss this problem for the future in Japan.

Why does the gap between poor immigrants and rich immigrants exist?

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by Ayana Nishizaki

Last week, in my post about ‘International Immigration’, I was wondering why poor immigrants stay poor while the rich get richer. Though my study, the causes are different ones than I expected. There are two main reasons: educational opportunity, and inefficient use of human capitals. I would like to discuss these reasons in terms of ‘illegal Hispanic immigrants’.

Immigrants of America are divided into two groups: legal immigrants who can speak English and illegal immigrants who can’t speak English well. Recently, increasing the number of illegal Hispanic immigrants is one of the big problems. They try to stay longer after the tourist VISA expired because it takes long time and much money to get the right of permanent residence.

The first reason of the gap is their education. According to one reading, Gross Enrollment Ratio of Hispanic is 57％ while that of American is 80％. Most illegal immigrants don’t have enough money to take educational opportunity. Therefore, they have no choice to get low income jobs. On the other hand, educational cost of the high quality school is getting higher. It means only the rich can get high quality education and tend to get high income jobs. Therefore, the gap is still not getting close.

As the second reason, human capitals of immigrants are not used effectively and correctly. Recently, new immigrants are more highly educated than old immigrants because the number of immigrants who graduated from universities is increasing. However, immigrants are still faced with a difficulty to get acceptation of a job they want. The problem comes up when immigrants enter host country and show their qualification and ability to employers. These qualifications that they got in home country are not necessarily useful in host country. Even if these qualifications of home countries are similar to those of host countries, their ability of communication, language knowledge, and adopting culture are different from those of natives. There is a fact that there are many opportunities to get jobs like house keeper and restaurant server. However, when it comes to more high-skill-required jobs such as IT manager, it seems more difficult for immigrants than natives. Therefore, some high educated Hispanic immigrants have no choice to work what they really don’t want because of unpractical use of their ability.

From this study, I realized that the problem of the gap is caused by less education opportunity and inefficient use of human capitals. I though the main reason was merely their poor economic situation. However, even if some immigrants achieved high academic ability, they can’t get jobs they really want. In my view, that point (how difficult it is for immigrants to get acceptation from employer in terms of language skills, ability of adaptation) is one of the barriers when they assimilate. Therefore, as one of the solutions, I think government should clarify what kind of skills and ability in each jobs is exactly necessary in host country and inform immigrants of the clear criteria. By doing so, immigrants can make their life plan (such as which skills is necessary to get in advance) to reach their goal and also employer can easily measure and their ability and communicate with them.

The problem Japanese Brazilians face when going back “home”

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by Chie Munemori

Today a great number of immigrants are living with us in Japan. Each of them has various types of reasons for leaving their home countries and migrating to Japan. In the case of Japanese Brazilians whose ancestors are Japanese who migrated from Japan to Brazil in the past hundred years, they immigrated back to Japan because of financial disaster which happened in the late 1980’s. They wish to get good job and send remittance to families in Brazil, and some of them even decide to settle down in Japan for rest of their lives. In fact, in spite of their dreams, the present situation surrounding them in Japan is against their wills. The circumstances are difficult for them in the extreme. Below I present some of those problems they face and also potential resolutions of them.

One is that most of Japanese Brazilians have citizenships of Brazil and they are already not familiar with the culture, customs, and social system of Japan. It means that many of them tend to have difficulties with their daily lives right after coming to Japan. For example, in my hometown Hiroshima, many Japanese Brazilians are there and one of my friends in my schooldays is also the one. She and her family did not understand even easy sentences written or spoken in Japanese so that they always had to ask their neighborhoods problems such as how to throw out garbage and to pass of a circular in their area. Response to this situation, some mayoral governments and local communities have started providing them with free support services such as Japanese school, offices to look for a job and to rent a house, desks to teach them how to pay taxes, and so on. Komatsu city in Ishikawa prefecture is the one of those local governments.

Secondary, Japanese compulsory education system does not include foreign children as its target because the Constitution of Japan in Article 14 says “All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law” but Japanese Brazilians are not included in “all people”. In other words, in this article “all people” means people who have Japanese citizenship. That’s why public elementary schools in Japan do not have proper curriculum of Japanese for children who are not Japanese in it. And worse is that some of young Japanese Brazilian students in elementary school are ill-treated by classmates since they do not understand Japanese. In such cases, those students become not to go to school because of that. To result these problems, administration need to modify its educational system to give them chance to learn Japanese in public school as their human rights. Additionally, teachers in school need to teach students cross-cultural understanding between Japanese and those who have different cultural back grounds from them.

In conclusion, it is necessary to change our social system not only for Japanese Brazilian but also for us Japanese under the situation of decreasing birthrate and aging population. Japanese Brazilian is potential power in Japanese society. We have to reconsider their rights and life conditions.

Does Japan need to accept more immigrants or not?

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by Takumi Matsumoto

Today, our world is going to be globalized and the borders of country are vanishing little by little. Many people are traveling all over the world for business, sightseeing, or migration. In this situation, we are required to consider “How should Japan play an active part in international situation?” China overtook Japan as world’s second-biggest economy last year and we have been influenced by Europe’s debt crisis. In addition, we had the big earthquake on 11th march last year. Things in Japan are not good in terms of economy. In my opinion, Japan has to discuss about immigrants and immigration system in order to accept more immigrants. There are several reasons for that. But, we have to develop the plan slowly and carefully.

First reason why I recommend getting immigrants is countermeasure for aging society. Aging society is one of the most serious problems we have in Japan. Some researchers said that the population of elderly people will be one-third of total population in Japan. It means that young people are imposed great financial burden on the health care for elderly. The decline of young people accelerates to make the situation worse. So accepting immigrants brings the labor force and rises up the birthrate. Second reason is finances that they pay as taxes. If immigrants live in Japan, they have to pay taxes. Then government makes most of the money useful for health care or economic recovery.

However, there are difficulties at the same time. For example, many Japanese residences are not willing to accept immigrants partly because they are afraid of increasing criminal rate and a job shortage for Japanese people. According to one research, 48.5% of Japanese firmly refuse immigrants. 19.3% don’t want immigrants that much. 16.8% said that there is no choice but to accept immigrants. It means 74.6 % of Japanese have a hesitant idea for immigrants. Besides, Japan doesn’t have good enough immigration system. If we accept immigrants easily and carelessly, immigrants will get old and become a part of aging society, even though they give us great labor force in few decades.

In conclusion, Japan cannot make requirements for immigrants loosely now because of insufficient system or law for immigrants. But we finally have to accept immigrants in the future in order not only to make Japan better, but also to make futures of world better. We need to think about Japan and immigrants.