CONTROLS ON FOREIGNERS

Activist Akira Hatate opposes the bills to tighten control of foreign residents, arguing they will not serve the government’s goal of clarifying who is in the country illegally because transgressors will see little benefit in turning themselves in.

“What (the bills will) achieve is to tighten control of law-abiding foreigners, who have no need to be under tight control,” Hatate, director of the nongovernmental organization Japan Civil Liberties Union.

“The bills are very unbalanced because the government will not be able to control the intended target: undocumented foreigners,” Hatate said. “Instead they will greatly tighten the leash on properly registered foreigners, who do not need monitoring.

“To me, this is the government’s reinforcement of infrastructure to control foreigners. Fingerprinting at airports is to control entrants and the bills are to control residents. The government probably thinks it needs to do this because the number of foreigners will inevitably increase,” he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090630f1.html

A tent village [known as Haken Mura] for laid-off temporary workers set up in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year’s holidays was officially declared closed Sunday at a symposium to discuss unemployment issues, but many of those who stayed in the village remain jobless.

The group that organized the village, consisting of labor unions [including NUGW Tokyo Nambu] and citizens’ groups, reported at the symposium the results of a questionnaire it recently conducted on around 260 of the 630 unemployed people who stayed in the tent village or attended advisory meetings in the spring.

According to the survey, which received responses from 108 of the 260 people, only 13 had been able to find jobs while seven had been hired as temporary workers, mostly earning ¥200,000 or less per month. Fifty-five respondents were still searching for jobs and 48 said they had not been feeling well.

“The people who ended up coming to the tent village have disadvantages from the start, considering their educational and professional backgrounds, and many of them are suffering from depression triggered by the fact that they cannot find jobs,” a member of the group, which will disband Tuesday, said.

Eighty-one respondents are receiving welfare benefits from local governments and nine others are receiving unemployment insurance payments, and at least 46 were in debt.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090630a3.html

New law would tighten up oversight of foreigners

Human rights groups complain that because the justice minister can access foreign residents’ personal information with residence (“zairyu”) card numbers, which are to be given to every documented foreigner, it is an infringement of privacy. [Immigration Bureau General Affairs Division official Kazuyuki] Motohari defended the bureau by saying, “It is not unusual for us to hold information that helps us confirm the identify of foreign residents.”

The bills stipulate that the justice minister must not use residents’ personal information for purposes other than “managing” foreign residents and must handle the information in a way that does not violate privacy.

He also said it is essential to let foreigners know the rule changes, including advantages such as extending visa duration from three to five years and ending the requirement to obtain a re-entry permit if one returns to Japan within a year.

“It will undoubtedly be more convenient for legal residents,” he said.

The bureau’s statistics show 1.41 million foreign residents re-entered Japan within a year in 2007, accounting for 98.7 percent of the 1.43 million who left Japan after obtaining a re-entry permit.

The Immigration Bureau is considering enabling foreign residents to report changes in workplace and apply for renewal of residence cards via mail or the Internet instead of requiring them to go to local immigration offices, he said.

Currently, renewing alien registration cards, which are to be replaced by zairyu cards, and reporting changes in personal information can be done at municipal offices, more of which exist than immigration offices.

For address changes, residents can go to municipal offices even under the new system. For changes in name, gender and nationality, they will have to go to immigration offices instead of municipal offices, but such changes rarely occur.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090627f1.html

The group that set up a tent village for laid-off temporary workers in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park over the New Year holidays will disband at the end of this month, the chief of the group said Wednesday.

Makoto Yuasa said his group has decided to end its activities after helping to change peoples’ perceptions of the situation surrounding temporary workers but will continue to support the unemployed through consultation services.

“People began to recognize that the lack of social safety nets is an underlying problem behind the layoffs and firings of temporary workers,” Yuasa said of the significance of his group’s activities. “It had earlier been said that such workers themselves were responsible (for their situations).”

Yuasa, a social activist who has tackled poverty issues in Japan since the mid-1990s, served as “mayor” of the Hibiya tent village [known as Hakenmura] that drew attention as a social problem after an increasing number of business corporations cut jobs amid the deepening economic crisis.

His group’s members, who include members of labor unions [including the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu] and civic groups, were originally scheduled to disband early this year, but they have been providing follow-up employment and other support for the people who lived in emergency shelters in the tent village.

The village “shed light on the need to promote collaboration between people engaged in social welfare and labor rights movements,” Yuasa said.

http://www.pddnet.com/news-ap-group-organizing-tent-village-for-unemployed-to-be-062409/

June 28, 2009 (Sunday)
1:00pm to 4:00pm
Tokyo Nambu Office, Shimbashi 5-17-7 2F, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Map: http://nambufwc.org/contact

The law says one thing, employers do another. Find out what the law is about universal public health insurance and pension and learn about the infamous 3/4 threshhold.  We will have a short lecture followed by a long Q&A period.  We will not persuade you one way or another, just give you the facts and let you decide.

Casual atmosphere, free entry, bring a friend.