It's ok f'ed visa gaijin, really, we looooove you.

[Taro Toporific]

More flexibility for overstayers
(09/01) Asahi/IHT
The Justice Ministry plans to ease its rules in granting special resident status.
The Justice Ministry will be more flexible in granting special resident status to foreign nationals facing deportation, it was announced Tuesday.
"We will actively give special resident status to those people who require humanitarian considerations," said Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa.
The strategy will be implemented while the government sticks to its plan to halve the number of illegal residents within five years.
---See the previous we-love-gaijin threads:
Japan gets tough on visa violators
Op-ed: "VISA VILLAINS"
"Barbaric immigration policy" Gregory Clark

[Steve Bildermann]

A little deep background for those of you Japan 'newbies' (say 20 years or less in this fair land) 'ease its rules in granting special resident status' is of course the perennial sop to 'human rights' that the Japanese government does every two years or so when it makes it's application for a permanent seat on the UN security council.

"We will actively give special resident status to those people who require humanitarian considerations," said Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa.

If you care to look up the wording of the UN security council charter you will find those are the exact words that each council member is supposed to abide by.

It's now become such a fixed ritual they do not even bother to go through the motions of actually passing any laws to implement the supposed 'easing of the rules' just getting by on saying they have 'plans'

So as they say 'nothing to see here, move along'

[kurohinge1]

More flexibility for overstayers
(09/01) Asahi/IHT
... The Justice Ministry will be more flexible in granting special resident status to foreign nationals facing deportation, it was announced Tuesday.
"We will actively give special resident status to those people who require humanitarian considerations," said Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa ...

The impression from most posts by FG lifers suggests that anyone who would want to live and work in Japan is automatically in dire need of "humanitarian considerations"

... The strategy will be implemented while the government sticks to its plan to halve the number of illegal residents within five years ...

Just make the better half of them legal - objective achieved.

[Steve Bildermann]

[Mulboyne]

Feel the love

Local gov'ts to provide entertainment for transit passengers at airports

TOKYO; The government plans to expand services for foreign transit passengers at airports as part of a campaign to attract more foreign visitors to Japan, government officials said Thursday.

[Taro Toporific]

-> Overstayers to get stiffer penalties

Starting December 2, the Japanese government will start applying stiffer penalties against the nation's estimated 219,418 illegal overstayers ....
....While cracking down on those it actually catches, at the same time, the government is trying to encourage voluntary departures of overstayers by reducing the ban on returning to Japan to just one year if a person leaves by their own free will.

via Terrie's Take
by Terrie Lloyd. http://www.terrie.com/
General Edition Sunday, September 12, 2004 Issue No. 294
Also http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=10301

[kurohinge1]

... the government is trying to encourage voluntary departures of overstayers by reducing the ban on returning to Japan to just one year if a person leaves by their own free will...

If so, now's the time to buy that old Korean shack and convert it to a half-way house for all those illegal gaijin exiles who leave voluntarily but wish to return in 12 months.


Kuro's Korean Half-way House, 2005?

[Caustic Saint]

-> Overstayers to get stiffer penalties

Starting December 2, the Japanese government will start applying stiffer penalties against the nation's estimated 219,418 illegal overstayers ....

Holy crap! They're on to me.

(My current tourist visa expires December 1!)

[Taro Toporific]

"We rub you, we rub you F*CKED GAIJIN-SAN! Prease, prease stay Japan. Now we have pran to change rooze!"

Japan and the immigration issue
The Japan Times, Sept 14 / THE ZEIT GIST
---Barry Brophy and Debito Arudou offer two views on the immingration system---

Japan is not ready or willing to accept an immigrant influx, says Barry Brophy....promotion of large scale, long term immigration when applied to Japan at this time is flawed in several key respects.
Most crucially, assuming large numbers of immigrants were admitted, what kind of welcome would they receive?
The government, even at a time when it moots replacement migration as a possible answer to the aging issue, aggressively seeks to marginalize the existing foreign population, from running absurd campaigns against foreign crime to refusing to enact even the most basic of human rights legislation for foreigners.

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo via Yahoo: 90 percent of people reporting illegal foreigners are anonymous
Nearly 90 percent of people accessing an online Justice Ministry system that allows them to report on foreigners they suspect are staying in Japan illegally are anonymous, Amnesty International Japan said Friday. The system, which was launched on Feb. 16 last year, has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, who say it promotes racism and violates privacy. "The rampant anonymousness will further urge people to be involved in the discriminative reporting system," said Makoto Teranaka, secretary general at Amnesty International Japan.
Amnesty and other human rights groups obtained the figure when they met Justice Ministry officials last month to seek the termination of the system. Responding to their request to show detailed data about the informants, the ministry said it received some 4,900 reports from its launch until the end of October, of which nearly 90 percent were anonymous, according to Amnesty. Based on the reports, the ministry detected some 200 foreigners who were staying illegally in Japan, Amnesty said.