The number of registered foreign residents in Japan at the end of 2005 totaled roughly 2,011,500, surpassing the 2 million mark for the first time ever, the Justice Ministry announced Friday.

The figure was up 1.9 percent from a year ago and foreign nationals now account for 1.57 percent of the total population.

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Japan is set to accept more foreign professionals by introducing more flexible immigration policies, the government said Thursday in line with a set of policy targets adopted by a government panel and aimed at securing leadership in international society.

In an attempt to attract more human resources with highly advanced knowledge and techniques from abroad, the government will extend the legal limit on the length of stay for them to five years from the current three years on a nationwide basis, the Cabinet Office said.

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A special U.N. rapporteur on racism on Thursday criticized Japan’s new immigration legislation on fingerprinting and photographing all foreign visitors as a process of treating foreigners like criminals.

Doudou Diene, on his last day of a six-day visit to Japan to conduct a follow-up of his report on racism, said at a press conference in Tokyo the immigration bill that just passed the Diet on Wednesday “illustrates something I have been denouncing in my reports for four years. It is the fact that, especially since Sept 11, there has been a process of criminalization of foreigners” all over the world, he added.

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Despite strong criticism from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and human rights organizations, the bill cleared the House of Councilors with a majority vote by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito.

With the revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, an estimated 6 million to 7 million foreigners entering Japan every year will be obliged to have their fingerprints and photographs taken, along with other personal identification information.

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Nova Corp said Friday it expects its group net balance to have fallen into the red in the business year through last March with a loss of 3 billion yen as a result of competition for student enrollment among its own schools. The major English conversation school operator had projected a 200 million yen profit for fiscal 2005. The projected net loss compares with the 204 million yen profit for fiscal 2004.

Nova rapidly increased the number of its schools by around 300 to 994 between October 2004 and March this year. The expansion has caused the company to employ inexperienced managers and suffer from competition among its own schools located close to each other.

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