http://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/toukei_t_minj03.html

More than 90% applicants are accepted.

I’ve heard of 4th generation koreans who have applyed and been refused!

You are also correct in a way in that if voting right are extended to permanent residents, then the right to vote no longer becomes a DEFINING right of citizenship. Which opens up an interesting question: what IS the defining right of citizenship? Multiple answers possible, of course. My first one is the obvious “right to live” in a country, which, unlike PR, cannot be taken away (save perhaps in extreme situations). “Right to vote” cannot be the sole definer, since many citizens do not have that right (either too young, or live in countries with no voting).

However, to go from this to feeling threatened by the political clout of no more than 1% is paranoid and xenophobic. You have more reason to worry about, say, the political clout of major religious groups (Soka Gakkai, for a start) than minor national ones.

How could you “lose those rights” if you’d still be the huge majority?

Please, name at least FIVE (5) countries which are democracies and still don’t allow their citizens vote.

There are various reasons why foreigners are not given the right to vote in national elections, but your paranoia does not reflect a realistic situation.

Incidentally, does that mean that non-citizen immigrant children in the US don’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance?

Who governs these “basic human rights” that you speak of? I was under the impression that “basic human rights” covered only the decent treatment of other human beings, not that you get to choose who the alpha leader of the pack is.

Hey, don’t you be knocking it – wearing a tinfoil hat has worked for me: not once have I ever been abducted by aliens. Or North Koreans….

I think this voting rights thing is actually a plot by the whales, those mischievous beasts.

I sympathize.
I guess to change the rule for the gaijin card, you need the right to vote in general election the rule is the law covering every gaijin all over Japan. （I guess
it is 法律、not 条令）

You can actually have dual citizenship in Japan. Sort of. The Japanese government has no right to relieve you of your original citizenship: you must agree to give it up, and they may revoke your new Japanese citizenship if they find you’ve kept your old, but they can’t directly remove it.

PR in Japan is, I gather, basically a matter of how much they like you. Some people get it very easily, others are repeatedly turned down. Why? No idea.

Gaijin who have been here for 30 years and want the right to vote in general elections should have no worries getting citizenship. I would like to see some form of suffrage for PR in local-body elections, and a few rules loosened, but of all the rules and restrictions, voting is the least of them – get rid of the carrying rule for the gaijin card before anything, frankly.

What does it take to be a permanent resident in say the USA? Canada? France? Russia?

What does it take to become a citizen in Japan?

“” Canada? Russia? Other democracies?

I know in Canada and the USA if you marry someone from that country, you become a citizen. (Or at least have the option quite easily so long as your marrage is valid) If you have a child you are a citizen. In Canada so long as your native country will alow it you can hold a duel citizenship.

And yet as far as I’ve seen there are people… no. Gaijin here that have lived here for 10, 20, 30 years. They have children, homes, lives here and maybe they don’t want to vote, maybe they don’t care. But they certainly should, after all this time have the right to do so.

But I don’t know, Politics pisses me off and I tend to waste my vote on parties I know would never win.

You have the right not to be assaulted, at least until someone punches you.

The curly-decoration on the furoshiki cloth is called “Karakusa-moyou” that is a Japanese version of arabesque. Design of Karakusa-moyou was once popular for furoshiki cloth, but, after the design became out-of-fashion, it is often used to show a cheap old furoshiki.

“The difficulty is in the requirements.”

Is 97% acceptance of the applicants make naturalization more difficult than other countries?
It is imaginable that the questions would cover many subjects in the process, the point is, is the rate of being rejected arbitrarily so high? What percentage out of 3 % , for instance in 2004, were rejected in that way?

“The sacrifice is mainly in that Japan prohibits dual citizenship (unless, perhaps, one is Alberto Fujimori.)”

So what percentage of the countries accept dual citizenship?

I tend to think so. A right, to me, is something you possess innately. A privilege is something you are permitted to do. So if it can be removed so simply as being in prison, it’s not a very strong right. (Note that many rights are still valid in prison: these are stronger. But are there any truly inalienable right?)

I don’t share your bleak view, although I can see where you’re coming from. I look at a revocation of voting rights due to incarceration as but one of many rights one loses when in prison. I agree with you, though, that Florida is a troubling case in that some felony convictions carry with them the permanent revocation of voting rights, even after a sentence has ended, which seems unjust. If some felony convictions carry with them the revocation of voting rights for the duration of a sentence (including probation), I see no great problem with it.

Are we to say that all rights are mere privileges because they can be limited or revoked as part of a criminal sentence?

The difficulty is in the requirements. For good or ill, Japan (fairly enough, I think) has some unclear requirements, which can include decisions on whether or not one’s lifestyle is suitably “Japanese” or not, etc. I’ve talked to people who’ve had such arbitrary tests imposed and others who have not.

The sacrifice is mainly in that Japan prohibits dual citizenship (unless, perhaps, one is Alberto Fujimori.)

In 2004 97% of applicants were accepted. It takes about 6 months to be finally accepted since applying.
There might be a lot of paper works to do.
http://www.gcnet.at/citizenship/kikakyokasuu.htm

How about other countries?

My comment about “disturbing” was not meant as a comment on your opinion – I know this is reality: it was shown clearly in the 2000 elections in Florida etc. My point was that how “guaranteed” can a right be if it can be removed so easily? So much for “rights” – voting is clearly a privilege, awarded to the good, rather than a genuine right.

___________
Bruce, why not? What about countries in which such a right has already been granted? And what’s so special about the word “citizenship.” I would agree that every right, including the right to vote, is accompanied by the acceptance of responsibilities and obligations, but “citizenship” can be a nebulous status.
Think of the AMC. Many countries grant citizenship to the descendents of citizens, even if they’ve never lived in that country. Let’s take Zainichi Koreans as an example. Some of them have no tie to Korea other than a passport and family history. Imagine a Zainichi Korean who has never been to Korea and thus never paid taxes there, never fulfilled his service obligations there, never worked there, etc. What is the inherent reason that he’d be better able to decide on what’s best for the country than a non-citizen who lives, works, and contributes there?

In an age when people can and do move from country to country and one’s ties to birthplace or nationality are weaker than ever before, why keep tying rights and responsibilities to blood or a piece of paper?

I haven’t lived in my hometown for over a decade. I’m sure there are many immigrants who have lived there over that same time period and intend to continue living and working there. Why shouldn’t they be eligible to decide what happens there if I am?

Perhaps giving permanent residents the vote is a bad idea. Perhaps, as in Japan, it doesn’t matter as it isn’t likely to impact any election in the next few decades. Perhaps it’s a catastrophic idea. Whatever the case, why argue that permanent residents should never be given the vote in any country? Who benefits from that? And really, if the goal is democracy, isn’t it best to try to bring as many people in an area, with a stake in it, as possible to the polls?

Anyone else find this very disturbing?

However, voting most certainly is a right, and not a privilege, for citizens. In other words, as long as a citizen is law-abiding, that right cannot be taken away. Voting is clearly defined as a right in the Constitution. Were it not, Japan would not be a democracy.

Whether or not permanent residents should be granted suffrage is another matter.

And yes, he does look like some kind of burglar. That kind of hit me when I saw that, even though I didn’t know about the Japanese burglar bag. He does look like he’s sneaking away.

All in all, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to require citizenship to vote, either. The arguments presented above, though, are, as I said, desperate attempts to explain or justify xenophobic paranoia.

So what ? If you are not prepared to make that sacrifice then don’t become a Japanese citizen.

If foreigners want to vote, they naturalize and become Japanese citizens.

Fair enough, but Japan prohibits its citizens from holding any other citizenship, which is rare among industrialized countries.

The Japanese constitution applies to the “Japanese people” [国民], so it would be unconstitutional to allow foreigners to vote.

There is some controversy surrounding this. The official English version of the Constitution uses the word “people” in the same clause, which is the way most courts have interpreted the phrase in decisions, even though it does say “citizens.”

The fact that foreigners pay taxes does not entitle them to voting rights, as the constitution does not link tax payment to voting rights.

The Constitution doesn’t say that taxes are not linked to voting rights, either. Nor does the Constitution lay out visa types, say that Diet members should get free train rides, provide for a sales tax, or cover many other things that are now law.
This objection displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Constitution is and does.

Local governments often carry out the instructions of the national government, so limiting foreign voting rights to local elections could still give them undue influence over what the national government can or cannot do.

That sentence doesn’t even make sense. The national gov’t tells local gov’ts what to do, so one could influence the national gov’t by influencing the local gov’t? Stupid.

Non-citizens could vote in the interest of their own national group, forcing policies onto Japan that might not be best for the country.

We’re talking about voting by permanent residents. Most permanent residents have family here. Most of them have been here for over a decade. They live here permanently. Why would they do something bad for the country?
This plays into the xenophobic assumption that foreigners are willing to go to any lengths to take from Japan and harm it, that they don’t care about their own communities, that they don’t like where they live, and that they are irrational enough to harm themselves in order to harm Japan.
Furthermore, Japan has very strong regional voting tendencies as is and it would be impossible to argue that, for example, the voting proclivities of powerful rural districts have not been extremely harmful to the country as a whole.
Most important is the fact that foreign permanent residents of Japan account for well under 1% of the population. Even if every single permanent resident were eligible to vote and actually voted (highly unlikely), they wouldn’t even be likely to sway a single district, much less vote all together against the interests of the country as a whole by cleverly swinging a certain local issue.

Zainichi Koreans make up the majority of Japan’s permanent residents. While relations between Zainichi Koreans and Japanese people have improved greatly in the last 30 years, some Japanese view Zainichi Koreans with suspicion because nearly a forth of them belong to pro-North Korean groups, and the Zainichi community is sometimes viewed as a source of crime.

This one seems to say that because many Japanese are prejudiced towards Zainichi Koreans, Zainichi Koreans, who are Special Permanent Residents and have generally lived their entire lives in Japan, should not be able to vote. Nonsensical argument.

Any way you slice it, almost all of the arguments against this are desperate attempts to give rational explanations for xenophobic paranoia. This minuscule size of the permanent resident community alone should be enough to allay most fears.

I will add that tax payment is reciprocal between Japan and many countries. That is, for example, Japanese nationals residing in America pay American taxes and have the right to vote in Japan and Americans paying taxes in Japan have the right to vote in America. We’re essentially covering each other’s tabs on the tax front and maintaining our rights as citizens in our home countries. We don’t pay taxes to show we deserve a voice in Japanese government and legislation.

If permanent residents (I’m not one of them, btw) want to vote then they should become naturalized citizens (and that goes for any country, not just Japan). Otherwise, a situation is set up where folks have a vote in two different countries and I don’t think that’d be fair.