Fingerprinting & Illegal Immigration in Japan
Yet another Japanese TV report about the new fingerprinting system at airports, this time with a special focus on illegal immigration:
The first couple minutes are pretty much a repeat of the introduction to the system we’ve seen in other TV clips, but 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the clip we are shown a particularly tall foreigner experiencing problems with the camera:
The report then shifts its focus to illegal immigration, displaying a graph that shows that illegal entries actually decreased in from 2005 to 2006 (but they’re still above the magic 10,000 line!):
Most of these illegal foreigners come to Japan to work. Once they’ve made their way past the airport immigration checks, it’s pretty hard to catch and deport them, states a Kansai Airport immigration official.
The most interesting part of the report comes around the 3 and a half minute mark, in which they actually meet an illegal immigrant who has been captured by the authorities at Kansai Airport (it was filmed earlier this year, prior to the new fingerprinting system):
The man shown is an Iranian who tried to enter Japan using a fake Greek passport. Immigration officials had given him a paper in Greek asking him to fill out some information about himself, but he couldn’t read the Greek and filled it out incorrectly. They later found his Iranian passport and he admitted the truth. He had bought the passport in Thailand for $2000, hoping that it could get him into Japan to find work (in the Japanese subtitles it claims he says in English that Japan is easier to enter illegally than the United States, but his English wasn’t so clear). Needless to say, he was kicked out of Japan.
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The real goal? None of the above. I think it is a blantant attempt to reduce the number of foreigners entering Japan.
Yep, I saw that broadcast and was amazed. They should be celebrating so few illegal immigrants, not saying there are too many. Read my comparison with other countries here.
“The real goal of the new immigration system is:” – to follow in America’s increasingly retarded and paranoid footsteps.
Or to somehow combine the terrorism-fear nonsense of America with the foreigner-fear nonsense of Japan.
Just makes me sad for Japan, really.
I liked the guy at the ends comment.
“If this is going to work, we should do it to everyone, including long-term residents.”
He was probably talking about Koreans, but he forgot to say ’special’ long-term residents.
If it’s about stopping over-stayers, then all foreigners should be checked. If it’s about stopping crime, then all people should be checked, including Japanese people. However since neither are happening I have to assume it’s about stopping crime and over-stayers to a certain extent, but not working too hard because that would be too much work (and illegal to fingerprint Japanese citizens).
I wouldn’t have a problem with it if everyone, including Japanese citizens was fingerprinted, but since that’s not the case, it bothers me because they just take fingerprints from whomever they can, regardless of having a good reason or not.
Peter Pan has it almost right. The irony is the answer’s staring him in the face.
“If it’s about stopping over-stayers, then all foreigners should be checked” he says.
Ah yes, this makes perfect sense, because there are no foreigners who have permanent residence. Oh, wait…
Same goes for new laws asking employers to report the status of all foreigners working for them.
Either one is a sledgehammer approach to a minor issue, and one that only succeeds in tarring the entire community as potential troublemakers, regardless of legal status.
What bothers me with databases like this is that I can “get caught” for something I didn’t do. Maybe I just happened to pass by an area before or after a crime was commited, and put my fingerprints somewhere at that location, just from a database scan I can now easily be linked to something I didn’t do. I guess I could just walk around with gloves all the time though, but I won’t, I will never visit Japan because of this “guilty until proven innoncent”-nazi style databases.
Hmmm… You have a point there.
Would it be possible to let me know when and on what channel the report on the Iranian guy was shown on TV??
I think in the subtitles he claims that people from all over the world come to Japan to work, not only himself and not only Iranians.
I would really appreciate it if you could let me know the channel.
Thank you very much.
Eleni
Color me stupid, but I really don’t understand how this is going to reduce illegal immigration, over-stayers or terrorists.
You need a database of fingerprints to compare against for this to work.
Illegal immigrants – they would need to be on record and arrested once for this to work. In the US this would make more sense (I’m against our program too, though) as repeat cases are not unusual, and it is relatively cheap and easy (I said relatively!) to try again. Are there many repeat offenders of this nature in Japan? I guess I have no idea.
Over-stayers – pretty much same as above; you have to catch them IN the country, afterwards they can’t come back anyway, so are illegals.
Terrorists – uhm, yeah. Where are we collecting all the fingerprints of the low-level operatives that show up to plant the bomb? Medium-level planners, perhaps.
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Assuming for a moment that their reasons are on the up-and-up, will this even work? what am I not seeing?
I don’t know but it’s sounding too sick to me. But I agree that illegal entry it’s a big offense to the dignity of local people. That involves fake marriages, taking advantage of privileges of others, irresponsibilities to their own countries. In short they are “parasites”.