LABOUR-JAPAN: Immigrants Needed but Face Insularity

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jul 3 2006 (IPS) - Because the cramped Mundo de Alegria school in Hamamatsu city offers Spanish and Portuguese curricula, Latin American immigrants in the area regard it as a godsend for their 120 children.

But for Masami Matsumoto, who launched the school in 2002 and managed to gain official recognition for it, last year, keeping the institution running has turned into a daily struggle.

”It was my dream to start a school to provide a chance for children of the Nikkei migrant labour to study and enter the Japanese mainstream. Yet, today I face a grave financial situation and do not know how long I can carry on with my school,” she explains.

As Japan debates on how to treat its growing foreign labour, the plight of Matsumoto’s school, say experts, represents the ever worsening environment for the Nikkei or Latin American migrants with Japanese ancestry. The situation has been blamed on the lack of a coherent immigration policy.

Until recently, the education ministry would refuse accreditation to ethnic schools run by the Nikkei or other foreign groups such as the Koreans so that graduates from these schools were ineligible for admission in Japanese universities and so were doomed to find employment in lower grade situations.

In some cities that host large numbers of foreign residents, the plight of the Nikkei is particularly grim. In Hamamatsu, 230 km west of Tokyo, things are so bad that city mayor Yasuyuki Kitawaki has become a leading critic of the central government.

‘’With surveys showing that foreign workers are not only seeking jobs but are also planning to live in Japan permanently we have been desperately asking for help from the government but to no avail,” Kitawaki said recently, while speaking to the press.

He explained that there is an urgent need for more funds to support an education system in foreign languages to reduce school dropouts among the Nikkei population and provide health insurance and inexpensive housing.

”Migrants need support mechanisms that cater to their specific needs. It is only by having successful integration programmes that there can be a cohesive society in which Japanese and foreigners can respect each other’s rights and fulfill their social responsibilities,” said the mayor warning of an increase in crime and other social problems unless steps are taken immediately.

Japan tightened immigration rules for Nikkei following public outrage over the murder of a seven-year-old girl by a Peruvian of Japanese descent in Hiroshima city in November.

Hamamatsu has many manufacturing companies that produce automobile parts, musical instruments and electronic items that employ a large number of foreign workers. The majority of them are Nikkei who had migrated to Latin American countries such as Brazil or Peru in the 20th century.

They ‘returnees’ arrived in Japan looking for economic opportunities under an immigration amendment enacted in 1990 which allowed second and third generation Japanese from overseas to receive resident status without regulations on work.

Indeed, four percent or 30,000 out of Hamamatsu’s population of 810,000, are registered foreign residents, much higher than the national average of 1.6 percent or 2 million. At the top of the list are Brazilians who now number 18,000.

A 2005 survey by the justice ministry shows that the growth of Nikkei has expanded so rapidly that this group comprises more than 20 percent of Japan’s total foreign population – a trend that experts contend would soon see the “new comers” overtaking the country’s homegrown ethnic Korean population that is now around 600,000 residents.

Demographically, Japan needs immigrants because its own population is bothe aging and declining. In 2005, deaths outnumbered births by 10,000. From this year onwards, the population is projected to dwindle steadily and some projections say that, on current trends, the present 127 million population could dwindle to around 100 million by 2050.

Tara Kono, Japan’s vice-justice minister, said last month that foreigners could account for up to three percent of the population, going by the recommendations of a panel he headed on foreign labour.

In response to the newly emerging immigration picture, Kono’s ministry is discussing the inclusion of proficiency in the Japanese language as a new condition for migrants. This, officials explain, would make foreigners more readily accepted in Japanese society.

But Oizumi city in Gumma prefecture, north of Japan where foreigners now occupy 20 percent of the total 41,000 population and work in manufacturing plants that have long relied on migrants, shows why this is not so easy.

‘’Japanese language knowledge is a good step but what is more important is to ensure that migrants accept Japanese social rules such as the need to send their children to school and pay into a social insurance scheme rather than save money with the intention of returning home some day,” said Hiroe Kato, an Oizumi government official.

Matsomoto, however, says forcing the Nikkei and other foreign workers to learn the language and adapt to Japanese conditions is not the answer to the problems.

‘’Rather,” she says, ‘’the government must have programmes catering to migrants in their own language as well as teach Japanese to learn to accept foreigners as equal residents. It is only then that migrant workers will treat Japan as their home rather than as a workplace.”