Category: Immigration

Fingerprint scheme exposes xenophobic, short-sighted trend in government As Japan sinks into elderly obsolescence and threatens to retire to the economic backwaters, it needs more openness, not less. Yet our leaders insult [non-Japanese] residents by calling them names and policing them further. Not to mention the purposeful xenophobes, capitalizing on a complicated world, who whip…

Japan has started a new system obligating foreigners entering the country to provide their fingerprints and face photos. The United States started a similar process following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the government has gone along with this, revising the immigration law to make it obligatory for foreigners to take these steps. Data collected…

A controversy over fingerprinting foreigners IN 1641 Japan’s shogunate designated an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour as the only place foreigners could live. Japan has of late been more welcoming to gaijin. Yet this week it began to photograph and take digital fingerprints of all foreigners entering the country?residents as well as tourists and visiting…

Dozens of protesters, both foreign and Japanese, gathered outside the Justice Ministry on Tuesday to voice opposition to the new policy of fingerprinting and photographing visitors entering Japan. The biometric screening system was launched Tuesday over the strong objection of foreign residents as well as human rights organizations, including Amnesty International Japan [and NUGW Tokyo…

The Justice Ministry has instructed regional immigration bureaus to forcibly take fingerprints from foreigners who refuse to be fingerprinted or to leave the country, sources close to the ministry said. The ministry’s Immigration Bureau sent the directive to regional immigration bureaus prior to the introduction of a system on Tuesday, under which all foreigners who…

Protestors inflated a 3-meter-high yellow hand with an extended forefinger and thrust it toward the Justice Ministry’s offices in Tokyo on Tuesday to demonstrate against a controversial fingerprinting policy beginning at ports of entry across the country the same day. About 80 protestors turned toward the ministry building and shouted in unison their opposition to…

‘Fingerprint Day’ adds insult to injury for Japan’s foreign community From July 3 to 11, 2005, U.N. special rapporteur Doudou Diene visited Japan to assess the factors of discrimination that affect a variety of minority groups in this country. In his final report, he recommended that the Japanese government should “avoid the adoption of any…

Today sees the introduction of a law requiring the majority of foreigners entering Japan to be fingerprinted and photographed. This change has been met with howls of protest from foreign residents and the foreign media, who have pointed to the fact that the only terrorist attacks on Japanese soil have been carried out by Japanese.…

In the good old days, very few Japanese knew about Alien Registration Cards ? you know, those wallet-size documents all non-Japanese residents must carry 24/7 or face arrest and incarceration. Back then, a “gaijin card” was only something you had to show a bored cop doing random racial profiling on the street. Legally, in fact,…