Filipino girl born and raised in Japan faces deportation

Punish the child for the sins of the father then, hey?

“…would you willingly allow unchecked immigration that disregards your respetive nation’s laws and have people come in without doing all the necessary paperwork and procedure?”

Depends on the circumstance, but most likely yes. Are they drug traffickers? No, of course not. Are they poverty stricken? My humanity tells me they deserve a chance.

“Why did my ancestors have to follow the rules when they came into the United States while others don’t?”

Why did your ancestors get to come when others didn’t? For that matter, why did my ancestors get to move to America while others didn’t?

“Are laws to be ignored and side-stepped?”

Oh, how wonderful it must be to live in a world of extreme black and white contrast. I’ve got all of these shades confusing mine.

I’m actually surprised at how many “No” votes this got. If any of you “No” voters were to take in a roommate, only to discover (after his arrest) that he was dealing drugs without your knowledge, would you raise a fuss if the police decided that you needed to be incarcertated as a result.

I realize that’s an extreme example but, come’on… if this girl’s parents really did keep their illegal status from her and she wasn’t the one who entered the country illegally, why punish her? There’s nothing in the rule of law that says someone who unwittingly associates with a law-breaker is guilty by association. What kind of message does that send? You better not associate with anyone else, lest they be later accused of a crime and you’re left hanging out to dry as a result.

Deport the parents? Sure… Maybe let one or both stay another few years until their daughter can survive on her own and then, out they go. But she was born in Japan and did *not* enter the country illegally. Where’s the crime?

Laws are not to be side-stepped, no. But the way i took the question was, should SHE be allowed to stay? Not, should her entire family be allowed to stay. If The girl could somehow work out maybe if she could stay with a friends family or something similar, it would be alright. Maybe she should have the choice of whether or not she should have to leave the country with her parents? She could stay temporarily with someone while her parents go through the processes of getting their legal visa. But I do think that she should not be outcast because of what her parents did. She should be considered a legal citizen just as anyone else born and raised in Japan.

Make her an orphan? She’d be the most recent case of poison-gas suicide.

How is it possible to live a normal life when she has never been to the Philipines in her life? As the article stated she only knows Japanese which probably means that she never learned about the Philipino culture or the language. As far as I’m concerned she is Japanese just like all of us are our own nationalities. It’s not as easy as you think to adapt to a new country. Maybe if it was America I would understand, but the Philippines is a homogenous country so there is not as much support for other cultures like there is in the US.

Technically, she didn’t even immigrate. I think her case should be eligible for a “special circumstantial grant”, but it’s hard to achieve ideals in a bureaucracy.

“Nationality isn’t about the color of your skin or your parents skin…”

Correct. It’s about the blood of your parents when it’s based on a jus sanguinis system.

“As far as I’m concerned, If you’re able to survive in another country you should be given rights to live there as a citizen.”

You are leaving out one very important part – so long as you are willing to adapt to your host country and not insist your host country adapt to you. If you are willing to do that, then as the Minister of Immigration for Overthinkerland, welcome.

“However, fairness has to be considered in the context of the “bigger picture”. If Noriko is allowed to stay, it will send a green light to anyone seeking a better life for their children (if not for themselves) to travel to Japan, have children there, and rest assured that even if they themselves are deported better opportunities will already have been secured for their offspring.”

Yeah, it’s almost too easy. Forge documents to sneak into the country, convince a Japanese employer to give you an undocumented job, get your spouse pregnant and have her give birth at a Japanese hospital, then stay under the radar until your child gets into middle school. Keep your eye out for any plump-bellied South East Asians in the next few years…”We’re on to you, pregnant non-Japanese!”

“Well, I suppose when you are 12-13 you don’t necessarily connect these things up.”

Either that, or she is exceptionally dense. Didn’t she ever think it was odd when the other kids in her class started picking on her for being a gaijin? I mean, that’s rampant here in xenophobic Japan, right?

What is even more amazing to me is it took the authorities 14 years to realize the mother was an illegal when some people supposedly get stopped on their bikes and carded every week or more right in front of their homes, by the same cops over and over!

Because deportation is not a punishment for a crime.

If you do not have the right to stay in a country, you just have to leave the country.

Why not apply to none at all? I still just don’t get people’s insistence on locking up their borders like this. Let anyone who wants it get citizenship after signing some brief paperwork. Why the hell not? People should be free to move and be citizens wherever they want in the world, it’s the way I feel about it!

“1- Illegal immigrants should be deported when he or she arrive in Japan.”

Difficult for all those visa overstayers. But that is exactly what the fingerprinting is designed to pick up – or rather, those that have been expelled once and are trying a different name.

“If, for some reason, she’s not able to find a foster family that’ll take care of her, then she’d have to be raised in an orphanage.”

Who will pay for it? If you really care and if you live in Japan, you can adopt her so that she can live in Japan.

If Noriko is allowed to stay in Japan, then why not others? A flood of other cases would ask for the same leniency. For those that scoff at national law in the interest of humanitarian benovelence, then why don’t we consider this. Let’s say we accept all refugees from war-torn nations as well as those who are in dire economic straits to the United States. If we make a conservative estimate to how many people that accept this, let’s say 50 million. Now these 50 million people will most likely be unable to speak or read English, understand American civics and its institutions, their children will receive free education and medical benefits.

Another post that is really about US illegal immigration and not about Japan. The old “if we let those damn foreigners in then we’ll end up like Somalia” attack. First of all, what possible basis do you claim “a flood” from? You are also setting up a strawman by going on about all these foreigners flooding into the US when the whole point about this situation is that it this is a very unusual case. And of course if the US did accept all these people then it would be done officially – they would be legal, working through the system.

And I might point out, too, that these poor US taxpayers will include the newly-arrived 50 million of course.

“In that case, nation-states no longer exist with that sort of thinking.”

Interesing concept….

Never say never. There is a visa called “Teijusha visa” that is granted to foreigners for humanitarian reasons. There are a lot of cases where Teijusha visas were granted to children of illegal immigrants in Japan.

But I think the chances are slim for her to get Teijusha visa, because the visa violation of her parents is very serious and planned, unlike overstayers who are likely to get Teijusha visas.

And yet, similar problemｓ arise in those countries.

Students’ deportation date set
Move enforced despite having lived in the country since ages 1, 3
http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2004/04/13/CampusNews/Students.Deportation.Date.Set-1498673.shtml

“If I was to go back to Bangladesh, it would be completely devastating for me. I don’t know how to read or write the language. I can barely speak it,” said University of Toronto student Saad Alam to a crowd of supporters, only days before he lost his bid to remain in Canada. He and his parents, were deported to Bangladesh last Friday.
http://media.www.thestrand.ca/media/storage/paper404/news/2008/10/16/News/Uoft-Student.Deported.To.Bangladesh-3490911.shtml

What Bruce said. This is not the US, nor any of the relatively small minority of nations that assign citizenship based on birth within that nation’s territory. Only children of Japanese citizens are given Japanese citizenship at birth.