"Barbaric immigration policy" Gregory Clark

[Taro Toporific]

Barbaric immigration policy
The Japan Times, Aug 22 / By GREGORY CLARK - - Japan's current campaign against visa overstayers is both puzzling and cruel.
Tokyo says the campaign aims to put an end to the upsurge in foreign crime. And Japan is right to be concerned about the crime problem. But the foreign gangs so active here are hardly likely to be walking the streets without seemingly valid visas or passports. If they can crack safes, forge credit cards, pick pockets or break into houses with such skill and ruthlessness, they will have little trouble getting false documents.... of these people have low education and few skills; they are clustered in non-Japanese speaking ghettos close to the vehicle factories of Hamamatsu, Aichi and ...

[djgizmoe]

[quote="Taro Toporific"]Barbaric immigration policy
The Japan Times, Aug 22 / By GREGORY CLARK - - Japan's current campaign against visa overstayers is both puzzling and cruel.
Tokyo says the campaign aims to put an end to the upsurge in foreign crime. And Japan is right to be concerned about the crime problem. But the foreign gangs so active here are hardly likely to be walking the streets without seemingly valid visas or passports. If they can crack safes, forge credit cards, pick pockets or break into houses with such skill and ruthlessness, they will have little trouble getting false documents.... of these people have low education and few skills]

I'm sorry, maybe I'm turning into a huge conservative immigrant prick (see AH-NOHLD in Sacramento), but I think Clark is missing the point here. Penalties for those over-staying should remain stiff (screw Bobby Fischer); foreign visas, however, ought to be made easier to obtain and renew. His slamming of nikkei Brazilians and Peruvians is as strangely racist as it is counterproductive to his arguement; does he think that open immigrations policies WON'T create huge ghettos of SE Asians, Russians, Chinese, etc. because they DON'T have Japanese blood?!? Huh? And where are the stats behind his "major source of foreign crime here, namely the Latin Americans" assertion, anyway? Maybe this guy's hearts in the right place, but when he bad mouths the gaijin that are living here legally, it only hurts his argument to allow the illegal ones (who are most vulnerable to 'the criminal element') to stay.

[kansaiboy]

I wonder what stats there are to compare Japanese based organised crime with that of crimes committed by persons from other countires...?

"he who is without sin cast the first stone.."

[blackcat]

i think his article is spot on.

about young people coming to Japan for university study of Japanese and things Japanese being arrested, incarcerated, strip-searched, forcibly deported and banned from Japan for five years simply because they mistakenly overstayed their visas by a few months or even days -- is both accurate and horrifying.

true, he forgot to mention many women are raped by japanese prison officers...before they are sent packing....unable to return or seek justice, and denied the right to lawyers. dont think so? do a search on this site re.. treatment of foreign women in detention

djgizmoe: The latin american point is not really racist as he points to the fact that japan believes in blood line above all else. he is also right to some extent about the lack of education and opportunity for these migrants....(not always thier fault)

[Mulboyne]

foreign women in japanese detention.....pity them

Deviant cop jailed for raping gaijin prisoner

[djgizmoe]

i think his article is spot on.
about young people coming to Japan for university study of Japanese and things Japanese being arrested, incarcerated, strip-searched, forcibly deported and banned from Japan for five years simply because they mistakenly overstayed their visas by a few months or even days -- is both accurate and horrifying.
true, he forgot to mention many women are raped by japanese prison officers...before they are sent packing....unable to return or seek justice, and denied the right to lawyers. dont think so? do a search on this site re.. treatment of foreign women in detention
djgizmoe: The latin american point is not really racist as he points to the fact that japan believes in blood line above all else. he is also right to some extent about the lack of education and opportunity for these migrants....(not always thier fault)

Wow, the rape stories are truly horrifying, although they would not be surprising in any country, including the U.S.. See http://www.spr.org/pdf/sexabuseohio.pdf

And you're right, it was harsh to call it a racist comment, and he was bringing up the bloodline visa thing (which is admittedly pretty stupid), but you have to admit it doesn't help his argument that we need to allow illegal aliens to stay.

And I'm sorry, I lived in Aichi and I and my friends would hang around with Brazilian factory workers, go out clubbing with them (they went out EVERY weekend) and I even dated one for a short time. From what I can tell, they were working 9-5 jobs, making good money (as good as my uni salary right now) and the "ghettos" I saw them live in were company dorms that were a tad better than my own Nagoya apartment. Free education, insurance, money to send back home, legal status, etc; they had it pretty good. The only crime I witnessed were backroom pot deals at clubs and the occasional fighting over girls (a lot more guys than girls come for the jobs, so there's a real glut of horny Brazilian guys (that's where my American female coworkers came in!)). And I taught several Brazilian junior high school students in Aichi as well, when I was on JET. Have to say I was not personally witness to any "ijime" and I did see quite a lot of accomodations made to these students. I'm sure it was hard to learn a foreign language like that, but I know lots of friends in the U.S. (and returnees in Japan) who were dumped into an English classroom and found it easier to swim than sink...


The problem with the article is that it mashes several different arguments together into one rant.
1. He dismisses visa overstay penalties because the examples he gives are of innocent, slightly careless students and illegal immigrants, not real criminals (who are uniformly too clever to be caught).
2. Though he gives examples of harsh student deportation, he states that the average deportee is actually someone who has settled into an illegal occupation and is just more comfortable living illegally here than doing so in their own country. These people will never become criminals because they will be deported if they are caught doing anything bad (forget the fact that both overstaying your visa and working illegally are both crimes. And what exploitive non-unionized jobs are these people working at exactly?)
3. "Overall, they do far more good for Japan than any possible harm. Many are crucial to the survival of small, labor-intensive industries here. They help overcome the Japan's growing problem of population aging and decline. Some even create small pockets of internationalization, opening the eyes of the Japanese around them to the world outside." (Oh please...I'd like to see some stats behind this. Sounds more like he's transferring his feelings towards illegals in the States to a Japanese context.)
4. And if they are caught?
"On deportation day they are handcuffed and roped together like cattle to be put on buses for forcible transport to airports and marched onto planes as common criminals." (Nice appeal to emotion here. You mean they're not driven by limo to the airport and given first class tickets back on JAL?)

5. And then he brings up the harsh treatment of Bobby Fischer (ok, he's a Fischer supporter. Is this the secret impetus behind the article?)

6. Japanese are obsessed with rules and laws. Japan should look to the U.S. for its more liberal immigration policy. (Apples and oranges. And is this really a good idea to begin with?)

7. Why don't they go after those criminal Latin American nikkei! They're legal but they're the real criminals. (Hey, these are the small pockets of internationalization that he's so excited about! Already ranted on this one enough. Always thought the Chinese mafia was more of a stereotypical danger, and they ARE here illegally).

8. "Australia has since had the good sense to move to the point system of allowing residence to people of any race who have the education, language, contacts and other qualities that promise easy assimilation. Japan should do the same, and if it did, so many of the people now being refused visas or deported with such gusto would be welcomed as useful migrants." (So you think we should make education level the criteria for those "willing to do the menial work young Japanese now refuse to do"?

I don't think anyone is supportive of prison abuse, persecution of the blameless or non-internationalization. If Clark had just stuck to the "we should make deportation more humane" argument, he would've been pretty convincing. But he just has too much on his idealogical plate here and he's not thinking clearly enough about where his arguments are leading him.

Ok, rant officially over. Damnit, as a somewhat critical knee-jerk-liberal, it pisses me off when I see people with cooler jobs than me writing incompetently about the same stuff I (basically) agree with.