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If you imagine paying taxes in Japan entitles you to welfare, you may want to take a seat
“Welfare ruling stuns foreigners.” That was the headline to The Japan Times On Sunday’s July 20 lead story about the Supreme Court’s ruling a couple of days earlier that non-Japanese residents do not have a right to access the nation’s welfare system.
I’m a foreigner, but the only thing that surprised me was the headline. To be honest, I don’t know how anyone who has been paying attention could have expected the court to rule any other way.
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Whether non-Japanese human beings get any [...] rights under the Constitution — including the “right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living” under Article 25 (the constitutional basis for the welfare system) — has been the subject of some debate, as well as constitutional litigation. The short answer is “yes but no”: “Yes” as in “Non-Japanese are generally entitled to the same constitutional protections as Japanese people in principle,” but “No” as in “I cannot think of a single instance where a non-Japanese person has been granted relief by the Supreme Court in a specific case, even though the court may have recited the general principle before finding it doesn’t apply in this case.”
(I refer to this decisional dichotomy as “kittens-are-cute jurisprudence” since it involves making a broad statement of principle that most people find agreeable (“Generally speaking, kittens are cute”) while denying relief in the case at bar (“But, unfortunately, this particular kitten is not”)).
[...]
So again, nothing about the Supreme Court’s decision surprised me. In fact, I found it depressing for a different reason. According to the lower court, the 82-year-old Chinese plaintiff was not penniless; she was married and had money in the bank and income-producing property. Unfortunately, her husband also had dementia, for which he was hospitalized. His younger brother moved into the house and was physically abusive and seized control of the bank books and hanko seals.
Driven from her home, she lacked the resources to do things such as have herself declared her husband’s legal guardian, which would have required her to pay someone to evaluate his mental state. Applying for welfare may have been the only way for her to protect her inalienable rights to marital property and spousal support payments.
Yet where were the police and other tax-funded institutions that should have been there to help regardless of her nationality, simply because she was being subject to violence and the wrongful deprivation of her property rights? If anything, the case points to a much broader failure of the social safety net — one that potentially affects everybody.
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chokonen888 wrote:Online? All she had to do was walk into the bank and say she's the wife....IPU is a bit more forgiving than me though. I would have immediately filed a claim/police report/etc.
Coligny wrote:chokonen888 wrote:Online? All she had to do was walk into the bank and say she's the wife....IPU is a bit more forgiving than me though. I would have immediately filed a claim/police report/etc.
Nah, it's our French bank accounts... There is no more physical place to go since we/I are expat...
Mike Oxlong wrote:Not specifically Japan related, but a good article on immigration from The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... _page=true
Workers in the developing world can be much more productive when they are not locked in places with crumbled infrastructure, poor academic institutions, and mass corruption.
Mike Oxlong wrote:Not specifically Japan related, but a good article on immigration from The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... _page=true
The recurring debate over how much of a say non-Japanese residents should have in the country’s political process is flaring up once again, amid Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s drive to attract more foreign workers to the country’s shores ahead of the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020.
In the latest controversial move, Abe’s Cabinet discouraged local governments from passing an ordinance that would give non-Japanese residents a right to vote in municipal referendums.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party had previously distributed a brochure in 2011 urging its local chapters not to pass such an ordinance, after party members became alarmed at the increasing number of municipalities across the country that had introduced — on a permanent basis — non-Japanese-inclusive polling systems as a means of reflecting the public will.
The LDP said it had advised its prefectural chapters in June once again to abide by that earlier recommendation.
The ruling party says that more inclusive local-level voting rights give non-Japanese citizens an unduly generous say in the nation’s politics, and point out that this may violate the Constitution by undermining the principle of sovereignty of the Japanese people.
“(This may be happening) at local levels, but there is a financial burden shouldered by the central government, and we have to consider the interest of Japanese taxpayers across the country,” said LDP Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba last month. “I do not think local municipalities can do whatever they want.”
The Japanese Constitution and the Local Autonomy Act allows referendums for several uses. Article 95 of the Constitution, for example, prohibits the Diet from passing laws affecting a particular municipality unless the majority of its residents express support via a referendum. The Local Autonomy Act, meanwhile, gives Japanese citizens the right to recall public officials through a poll.
An increasing number of municipalities are now making use of local statutes to hold votes on critical issues that affect their local populations.
While the results of these local votes are not legally binding, some LDP members and academics see them as legally problematic because they recognize foreigners, including Zainichi ethnic Korean residents, as eligible voters in local referendums.
Opponents of expanded voting rights say that contradicts stipulations in the Constitution stating that only Japanese nationals above 20 — a category which includes naturalized citizens — have the right to vote in local and national elections, as well as some referendums.
“An ordinance should be within the scope of the Constitution and law, but some local communities are trying to reinterpret those laws via their ordinances, violating the Constitution,” said Akira Momochi, a Nihon University professor specializing in Constitutional law.
The former town of Maibara in Shiga Prefecture became the first local municipality to allow permanent foreign residents over the age of 20 to vote in a referendum on whether the town should merge with adjacent towns in 2002.
According to the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan), some 200 municipalities granted non-Japanese citizens the right to vote in local polls around that time, as the central government pushed smaller towns to merge in a bid to streamline local governments.
And while many of those polls were one-time, single-issue affairs, some municipalities now allow foreign nationals who are permanent residents to vote whenever a referendum is put on the table.
The city of Kawasaki, for example, passed a municipal ordinance in 2009 giving residents over the age of 18, including non-Japanese who have lived in the city for more than three years, voting rights.
While Kawasaki has yet to put a statute to the vote, Momochi and other critics are concerned that foreigners in the city and others across the country could become critical swing voters in highly politicized matters such as the relocation of military bases or the reactivation of nuclear power plants.
“Supporters of this movement are trying to allow foreigners to have a larger say in political processes little by little, as they understand it is hard to give foreigners suffrage in Japan,” he said. “But foreigners could vote against the Japanese interest.”
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we have to consider the interest of Japanese taxpayers across the country
if japan admit dual nationality and foreingers voting, ching chong chinese will vote to kick US bases out and snatch Okinawa out of japan.Russell wrote:The more I read this statement, the more it puzzles me. What do they actually mean by that, foreigners voting against the Japanese interest? Would a Japanese voting in the same way as a foreigner then also vote against the Japanese interest? And would all foreigners vote the same? I bet not, so that would mean that there would also be foreigners voting for the Japanese interest.
But what does that mean, "Japanese interest"? Does it mean the interests of some elite group within the LDP that identifies themselves as the champions of Japanese interests?
And wouldn't Japan be in a less fiscally dire strait if only foreigners would have had more influence in electing fiscally responsible politicians into power?
Takechanpoo wrote:if japan admit dual nationality and foreingers voting, ching chong chinese will vote to kick US bases out and snatch Okinawa out of japan.Russell wrote:The more I read this statement, the more it puzzles me. What do they actually mean by that, foreigners voting against the Japanese interest? Would a Japanese voting in the same way as a foreigner then also vote against the Japanese interest? And would all foreigners vote the same? I bet not, so that would mean that there would also be foreigners voting for the Japanese interest.
But what does that mean, "Japanese interest"? Does it mean the interests of some elite group within the LDP that identifies themselves as the champions of Japanese interests?
And wouldn't Japan be in a less fiscally dire strait if only foreigners would have had more influence in electing fiscally responsible politicians into power?
you damn gaijin dudes should understand the political reason peculiar to japan. europe and america dont have china next to them
Yokohammer wrote:The paranoid seem to forget that voting is sort of a multiple choice thing.
It's not like subversive foreigners could just up and vote to give the Senkakus to China or something like that.
It might be possible for foreigners to support someone standing for election that has views favourable to their situation, but that goes for everyone else as well. And we're talking about around 2% of the population at most.
Jisedai no To (Party for Future Generations) said Tuesday it plans to submit a revised bill to the extraordinary Diet session this fall to exclude poverty-stricken non-Japanese residents from receiving welfare benefits.
The opposition party, launched this month by conservative lawmakers including former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, said the public assistance law should be revised in accordance with the recent landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that permanent residents of Japan are not entitled to welfare benefits for financially needy people.
“Based on the ruling, it is (our duty) to revise the public assistance law,” Hiroshi Yamada, the secretary-general of the party, told a news conference in Tokyo.
Regardless of whether foreign residents pay taxes in Japan or not, the public assistance law is only for “Japanese nationals,” he stressed. Another law should be created to deal with foreigners, he said.
The conservative opposition party, headed by Takeo Hiranuma, was officially established on Aug. 1 after breaking from Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party). Its basic policies, unveiled in July, include denying non-Japanese residents the right to vote in national or local elections as well as introducing stricter standards for foreigners to obtain citizenship.
Yokohammer wrote:If Ishihara was the only problem I could simply put it down to one deranged individual, but unfortunately it's a little more widespread than that. Hiranuma is a racist c*nt too. He's the guy that dismissed Ren Ho as irrelevant because she's "not a true Japanese anyway" several years ago when she said or did something he didn't like. And that's sort of the point: I didn't even have to look that up. I just know it because things like that leave an indelible impression that will never, ever go away no matter how many apologies are offered or reparations are made. I might be able to accept an apology and treat the giver with a modicum of public respect, but the incident will never be forgotten and trust will never be fully restored.
Samurai_Jerk wrote:Why not naturalize?
Samurai_Jerk wrote:Why not naturalize?
Russell wrote:Samurai_Jerk wrote:Why not naturalize?
Ishihara and co. want to make that more difficult too.
And who would want to naturalize if one does not feel accepted in the first place?
Yokohammer wrote:Samurai_Jerk wrote:Why not naturalize?
As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, this is something I have considered seriously. I still haven't eliminated it as a possibility, but for all the good reasons I can think of to naturalise (many of them neatly listed by our friend Havill), I keep running into an equally persuasive list of reasons not to. General xenophobic and exclusionist tendencies are going to bug the crap out of me regardless of nationality. Maybe I'm just taking it too seriously ... I'll only be around for a couple or at the most three more decades anyway ... but for me it is an extremely difficult decision.
Samurai_Jerk wrote:I get it and I'm not saying that I agree with the idea of excluding foreigners from welfare. Especially not permanent residents, special or otherwise. However, by choosing not to become a citizen you have to accept that you'll never have the full rights of a Japanese national and the rights you do have can change for better or for worse with less controversy and push back than taking the rights away from citizens.
Samurai_Jerk wrote:There are always going to be racist pricks not matter how much more enlightened society as a whole becomes.
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