Representatives of municipalities and human rights groups voiced their opposition Thursday to government-sponsored immigration bills they say will lead to violations of foreigners’ rights and excessive control over them.

The proposed bills would issue new “zairyu” (residency) cards to replace their alien registration cards. Failure to carry the cards or report any changes in status could lead to a fine of up to ¥200,000, and failure to comply within three months could lead to one’s visa being canceled.

Alien registration is currently handled by local ward offices, but the new bills would hand responsibility for that task — and any records collected — to the Justice Ministry.

Hiroko Uehara, the former mayor of the city of Kunitachi in western Tokyo, refused to connect the municipality’s resident registry network to the nationwide Juki Net network in 2002 to protect residents’ privacy. She warned that transferring the management of alien registration from municipalities to immigration offices would reduce the quality of service for foreign residents.

“Municipalities have so far made an effort to provide, at their own discretion, services to foreign residents,” Uehara told a gathering in Tokyo. “But if immigration takes control of registration, all that effort will be lost,” she said. 

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090529a3.html

A total of 5,631 dispatch workers were killed or injured in work-related accidents in 2008, many of them inexperienced workers in the manufacturing industry, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry report.

While the figure is 254 lower than in 2007, it is still high–more than eight times the number injured or killed in 2004, when a ban on dispatching workers to the manufacturing industry was lifted.

The manufacturing industry accounted for 64.8 percent of cases–62.9 percent of whom were workers with less than one year’s experience at the companies in question.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090528TDY03102.htm

Opponents of change to immigration law fear loss of privacy, other human rights violations

More than 200 people [including members of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu] rallied in Tokyo’s Shinbashi district Sunday to protest government-sponsored immigration bills they claim would violate the privacy of foreign residents and strengthen government control over them.

The protesters say the proposed system would allow the government to punish non-Japanese who fail to properly report their personal information, and could even make it possible for immigration authorities to arbitrarily revoke their visas.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090525a1.html

New gaijin cards could allow police to remotely track foreigners

When the Japanese government first issued alien registration cards (aka gaijin cards) in 1952, it had one basic aim in mind: to track “foreigners” (at that time, mostly Korean and Taiwanese stripped of Japanese colonial citizenship) who decided to stay in postwar Japan.

Gaijin cards put foreigners in their place: Registry is from age 16, so from a young age they were psychologically alienated from the rest of Japanese society. So what if they were born and acculturated here over many generations? Still foreigners, full stop.

Even today, when emigrant non-Japanese far outnumber the native-born, the government tends to see them all less as residents, more as something untrustworthy to police and control. Noncitizens are not properly listed on residency registries. Moreover, only foreigners must carry personal information (name and address, personal particulars, duration of visa status, photo, and — for a time — fingerprints) at all times. Gaijin cards must also be available for public inspection under threat of arrest, one year in jail and ¥200,000 in fines.

However, the Diet is considering a bill abolishing those gaijin cards.

Sounds great at first: Under the proposed revisions, non-Japanese would be registered properly with residency certificates (juminhyo). Maximum visa durations would increase from three years to five. ID cards would be revamped. Drafters claim this will “protect” (hogo) foreigners, making their access to social services more “convenient.”

However, read the fine print. The government is in fact creating a system to police foreigners more tightly than ever.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090519zg.html

The exploitation of workers is a huge business worldwide.

People forced to work without pay collectively lose more than $20 billion a year in earnings, according to a report from the United Nations International Labour Organization released Tuesday.

Global profits from human trafficking and forced labor have reached $36 billion, according to the United Nations, and that sum is climbing.

“Forced labor is the antithesis of decent work,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement as the report became public. “It causes untold human suffering and steals from its victims.”

“It is the vulnerable who suffer the most” in times of economic crisis like the present, the report says. (Read on …)