Permanent Residents Will Be Fingerprinted?
You may have read the following about Japan’s new policy of fingerprinting foreigners entering the country:
All foreigners aged 16 or older will be photographed and electronically fingerprinted when they enter Japan, under a similar system to the one introduced by the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Permanent residents, including ethnic Koreans born in Japan, will be exempt from the law, along with state guests and diplomats.
That may come as a relief to our readers who hold permanent residency, but according to Arudou Debito you mistaken. “Sloppy, lazy journalism and interpretation, if not some careless statements by government officials” have led to misleading press reports about exceptions for all permanent residents. The Japanese government has only said that “special status permanent residents” will be except from fingerprinting:
“Special status permanent residents” (tokubetsu eijuusha) mean the Zainichi generational “foreigners”. This means regular-status permanent-resident immigrants (ippan eijuusha) or “long-term foreign residents” (teijuusha) are NOT exempt. They will be fingerprinted.
This means you if you’re not a citizen, a Zainichi, or naturalized. Every time you enter the country. Don’t comply, you don’t get in. Be advised.
Please be aware of the reality before you take a trip outside of Japan, permanent residents!
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Welcome to the Police State that is the post 9-11 world, where even countries that weren’t attacked are using it as an excuse to increase xenophobia and control of all citizens. LDP working papers on fingerprinting and immigration control like to say this is sort of thing is for the “protection” and “benefit” of foreigners, which is a bit like a mugger claiming he’s relieving you of your wallet so you won’t have to worry about carrying it. They also distinguish, condescendingly, between “good” foreigners and “bad” foreigners, but assume all foreigners are bad, under the naive idea that “if you haven’t done anything wrong you won’t be in trouble.” Claims that this is to prevent terrorism are just the propaganda to get people to blindly agree – the real goal is cracking down on illegal immigrants, as that Mainichi WaiWai article linked in the News section also shows (all foreigners, regardless of visa status, must have their presence reported by their companies). I haven’t visited the US since that evil US-VISIT scheme was introduced (and I note with some satisfaction that visitor numbers have dropped sharply according to the NYT) but it’s going to be harder to avoid passing through Japanese airports.
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And cracking down on illegals would be a bad thing how?
Oh, I went through US immigration today and the fingerprinting and photo was from a procedural point of view rather a non-event. You do your fingerprints as he’s stamping your passport and the photo is just a one-second delay.
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I did not say cracking down on illegals itself was a bad thing.
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I think even on a cost per benefit basis the program fails miserably.
I fail to understand how the program would crackdown on illegal immigrants. How would that work?
The program does mean that activists labeled as “terrorists” will not be able to enter Japan.
Terrorists will be able to enter fairly easy through normal channels. I think the recent episode with Pakistani shipworkers entering Japan, which was blogged here, shows that where controls really count, there aren’t any. If you don’t understand this I’ll explain, there are little if any controls to prevent trading ships at Japanese ports from allowing their nationals to “illegally” enter Japan. It’s extremely easy for a national from a docked ship to enter Japan.
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Shouldn’t this post at least have a ! instead of a ??
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