Noriko Calderon speaks to the international press

Noriko Calderon, a girl born and raised in Japan who is facing deportation because her Filipino parents entered Japan illegally, spoke to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan yesterday:

Noriko expressed her fears about what decision the government will make about her case. The current deadline for a decision is February 13th (Friday), but the so far the government has repeatedly issued new deadlines to provide itself with more time to consider her case.

A Japanese lawyer supporting Noriko told the reporters that many European countries would grant special residency to children in situations similar to those Noriko is facing, and that he’d like the Japanese government to adopt such a policy stance.

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65 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 11, 2009 at 7:25 am

Categories: Foreigners in Japan Tags:

Mister M

she should stay definitelly in Japan. We should recognize also that the Japanese imigration made a terrible mistake by not realizing long ago that her parents were ilegal in the country. It took a long time to do so, if the immigration had recognized it at the beggining their child would not face such thing.

We should be humble enough to recognize that Japanese government not always make a wise decision regarding to Immigration Issues.
- AM
  
  I have to disagree here.
  
  If her parents came into the country as illegal immigrants, than obviously she should have never been born in Japan in the first place. Granted, I am sure that her parent’s are only acting on the behalf of the best interest of their daughter, but is it fair to put one child’s interest over the law and Sovereignty of a country?
  
  Yes, you can argue that no one is really being “hurt” in this specific case, but then you have to take into account that if you let one “exception” to pass through the crack, your setting up a precedence where others in the future can pull off a similar stunt and be allowed to do so.
  
  The issue isn’t about what is FAIR for the cild but what is LEGAL in this case.
  - The Overthinker
    
    What if the government has the legal ability to grant this appeal? In that case the law says that she first has to go, then that she can stay. in other words, the law is flexible. It is precisely because there is a serious issue of fairness that this case even exists in the first place.
speak out

My question is:

How were they able to live and work in Japan illegally?

How is it that she (Noriko Calderon) isn’t able to speak in Filipino at all? Both her parents are Filipino and they must have both spoken Filipino to each other while around her. I think she is lying to everyone by saying that she isn’t able to speak in Filipino at all.

Also, if she is permitted to stay in Japan, that means anyone who comes to Japan illegally and make a baby can also have the opportunity to stay in Japan like her.

A crime is a crime, no matter how small it may be.

It was because of her parents actions that she is in this situation.

I think her parents are trying to use her situation to stay in Japan permanently because if they ever do go back to the Philippines, they will have nothing and they will have a very hard time surviving.

This is a very difficult situation to be in, but they created it for themselves and now they have to face the repercussions of what they did.
speak out

My question is:

How were they able to live and work in Japan illegally?
How is it that she (Noriko Calderon) isn’t able to speak in Filipino at all? Both her parents are Filipino and they must have both spoken Filipino to each other while around her. I think she is lying to everyone by saying that she isn’t able to speak in Filipino at all.
Also, if she is permitted to stay in Japan, that means anyone who comes to Japan illegally and make a baby can also have the opportunity to stay in Japan like her.
A crime is a crime, no matter how small it may be. It was because of her parents actions that she is in this situation.
I think her parents are trying to use her situation to stay in Japan permanently because if they every do go back to the Philippines, they will have nothing and they will have a very hard time surviving.
This is a very difficult situation to be in, but they created it for themselves and now they have to face the repercussions of what they did.
- noodles
  
  About your language question, I think it’s quite easy to forget your native language at a young age when you are living in a different country. For me, I only spoke Vietnamese till I was 6, so my speaking ability was not very good in the first place. Then, my life started to revolve around an English speaking school with English speaking friend and my Vietnamese stopped progressing at all. By middle school, could hardly speak Vietnamese at all, though I could still understand some of it.
  - The Overthinker
    
    What language did your parents speak to each other and you in?
    - noodles
      
      My parents speak to each other and to me in Vietnamese… but I reply in English. Furthermore, I don’t communicate with them very often (sad, yes I know)
- ZoneDaiatlas
  
  It’s Tagalog not Filipino…
- R.
  
  I think I agree she and her parents know Philippines is a sh*thole.
- The Overthinker
  
  “anyone who comes to Japan illegally and make a baby”
  
  Noriko is not a baby. And even if she was your statement was about the parents and not the child.
  
  I do seriously wonder about her language ability though.
  - hl
    
    she was a baby when she arrived in japan is the point
    
    I can see someone having no useful language ability.
    
    I grew up in a bilingual home. if you dropped me in my country of ethnic origin I would not be able to function. My understanding is fair at best and far surpasses my speaking ability. Imagine having the fluency of a five year old and then letting that deteriorate over several years. You get to the point where you can’t speak anymore.
    - The Overthinker
      
      “Filipino girl born and raised in Japan faces deportation”
      
      If you mean she was a baby when she arrived in Japan, then so were virtually all the Japanese.
- http://mommyq ben
  
  but because of her parents action she must not suffer for what they did.
R.

She should stop playing the “poor little girl” role and take up the responsibility of their parents mistakes.
- tokyojesusfist
  
  How exactly is she responsible for her parents coming to Japan and giving birth to her?
  - R.
    
    Like you see in the movies for example. A character inherits some problem or see his ancestor evilness then to redeem himself try to do everything.
    - tokyojesusfist
      
      So you’re saying they should deport her because that’s what they would do in a movie? Jesus pissing Christ.
    - R.
      
      You purposely ignore the fact I was just making a playful analogy, don’t you?
speak out

Comment by R.
2009-02-11 12:26:21

She should stop playing the “poor little girl” role and take up the responsibility of their parents mistakes.

I agree with you a million percent, but I have to correcy you on one thing. Ther parents did not make a mistake, they did what they did knowingly without thininking of the possibility of getting caught.

Now that they have been caught, they should accept it and go back to where they came from.

It is not right for them to stay here illegaly.
- Brian
  
  This is a point where I like America’s policy. While automatically granting children of illegal immigrants citizen status does have its problems (20-odd million immigrants entering illegally and having upwards of three children per woman), it is, nevertheless, common sense. A child who grows up in Japan, speaking Japanese, going to Japanese schools, being taught Japanese political stances by the schools, government, and society, and understand mostly only Japanese is, by all means, a Japanese.
  
  Or to use an other analogy which is kind of odd to use here but fits well: if it looks like a fish, smells like a fish, feels like a fish, sounds like a fish, and acts like a fish, it’s a fish.
  
  Of course, granting citizen to the parents is an entirely different matter, but they’ve always been here this long and deporting them would cause unnecessary harm to the child. Japan should take the Taiwan route with dealing with her parents — the status quo.
  - ponta
    
    The similar problem takes place with the U.S policy. Think of someone born in Mexico who was later brought to the U.S. by her parents as a baby.
Level3

Normally I would agree that she and her parents should go home.
That’s the law.

But this is ignoring the REAL problem.

The lack of accountability and responsibility in the Japanese bureaucracy, and the tendency of the Japanese government to never make tough decisions – to delay, delay, stay the course and do nothing.
(Part of the larger problem, that the bureaucrats control the country, and are accountable to nobody.)

The lack of professional knowledge about the law amongst the bureaucrats and clerks, and the inability to cope with any situation which falls outside the norm. And the [intentional?] lack of detail within the laws themselves that leaves any unusual case up to the interpretation of the guy sitting at the desk that day…except he won’t step up and make a decision, nor will his supervisor, unless that decision is “we have to think about it” while the human being affected by the rules twists in the wind.

Who HASN’T had a case where the immigration department, or the town hall clerks, or the bankers have just made up rules off the top of their heads, only to be reversed or delayed the next day by a different clerk, while the customer/immigrant is passed from lackey to lackey with much sucking of air between clenched teeth?

Can I get my money back for all the train fare and work time I lost while Immigration officials kept telling me “you need this form, come back with it tomorrow” only to later tell me I don’t need it, but need another? Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
But I only lost about 15,000 yen and a few hours of my life. This girl may have lost 14 years.

The Immigration folks screwed up, they delay and delay so long the girl [born in Japan] is indistinguishable from a native Japanese except for her name.

Yes, the parents should take responsibility, but so should the friggin’ government. And the government should be held to a higher standard. Although in Japan, the government is never held to any standard, domestic nor international.

Besides, what are you xenophobes afraid of? Is this little girl going to be part of the alleged “gaijin hanzai” problem?

I’d bet the only hope for her is the bureaucrats will use their indecision as the basis of a “shigata ga nai” non-deicsion, and decide to let her stay, but still not draft any formal rules about his kind of case, so the next Noriko Calderon will have to go through the same ordeal. Any takers on the wager?
- The Overthinker
  
  I guess the moral is, “get everything in writing”…..
  
  I think the government will accept responsibility, in a way, for not having found these people sooner by allowing at least Noriko to remain.
  
  Your story reminded me of Jeremmy Clarkson’s account of his visit to the US (it’s on The Times site, and is hilarious) in its anger at the low-level bureaucrats….
- nigelboy
  
  Why do I get the sense that if Japanese government just deported the Calderons without any hesitation or reconsideration that Level3 would be the first to bitch and whine how Japan isn’t “compassionate”??
  
  Since Level3 offered his own personal experience, let me share mine.
  
  The problem with many gaijin dealing with government level bureaucrats and clerks is that because of their inability of the Japanese language, it takes 10 times longer if not more to accomplish a simple task. And most often, rather than face up to their own incompetence, they shift their blame on the “Japanese” or even worse, try to steer in the direction to “Japanese are out to get gaijins”.
  - Level3
    
    I can assure you that the incompetence and moving goalposts are entirely the fault of the Japanese civil servants, Japanese regulations, and the inability to handle my atypical situation. I even suspected it was my language ability that made the whole situation seem like nonsense, so I got my Japanese boss to handle negotiations right from the end of Day One, when it was clear things were not going smoothly. She assured me that it WAS a non-sensical situation, and not the fault of my Japanese language skills.
    
    All of your other ASSumptions about me are also wrong.
    
    If they had deported the family right away, before Noriko had been allowed to be born in, and become a teenager in Japan, that would have been the correct thing.
    They didn’t, they were incompetent, they delayed, and now the government is just as responsible for the situation as her parents.
Bruce Smith

How could she not have known she was not Japanese with the name Calderon ?
- weirdo
  
  Who said she didn’t?
  - The Overthinker
    
    Earlier posts on the subject.
    - weirdo
      
      Seriously? You’d have thought her parents’ accents would give it away or something…
    - weirdo
      
      Seriously? What the hell. She must have known…your parents’ accents aren’t things you can easily overlook…
    - The Overthinker
      
      I have no idea myself. But that seems to be the (official) story.
- RMilner
  
  What’s Japanese? What’s in a name?
  
  Arudou Debito is Japanese and he would remain Japanese if he changed his name back.
  
  My wife is Japanese even though her married name is Milner.
  - The Overthinker
    
    And does she ever get taken for a foreigner when she calls herself ‘Milner’ on the phone or in writing? Going to school in Japan with a very non-Japanese last name, someone is bound to have asked her, are you a foreigner? What was her response? What had her parents told her?
    - RMilner
      
      That was my wife I was talking about. She uses both her original Japanese surname and her English married name as convenient.
      
      For example, she is on my koseki-tohon under the name Milner, but her passport is in the name *** (Milner). We have a hanko in kanji that mean Milner (or miruna, perhaps.) Maybe people wouldn’t know from the hanko that the name is foreign.
      
      My wife has been taken for a foreigner in Japan, when speaking Japanese face to face without giving her name, because she was sitting with me. What I mean is, the other person expressed surprise that she could speak Japanese. (Despite her having born and lived her first 25 years in the Kanto.)
      
      All this is slightly off the topic but it illustrates my point that national identity is more complex than being born somewhere or having parents from somewhere, or whatever.
    - The Overthinker
      
      My post was a little muddled – the first sentence was about your wife, the rest was about Noriko.
      
      On YOUR koseki tohon?
    - RMilner
      
      When I married, my wife was taken off the koseki tohon belonging to her father, since she left his household.
      
      A new one was created for me as head of the newly created family and my wife was put on it. Our daughter has since been added to it.
    - The Overthinker
      
      How can you have a koseki if you are not a Japanese citizen? Unless of course you are, but that would be a large chunk of the picture you are not giving us.
      
      When I married, my wife was indeed taken off her father’s. But since I do not have a koseki, she was given her own. Hers, not mine. I’m on it, but it’s not my koseki.
  - Bruce Smith
    
    Arudou Debito is not Japanese. He merely holds Japanese citizenship. There is a difference.
    - RMilner
      
      What is the difference?
      
      He holds a Japanese passport. He has a Japanese name. He can enter and reside in Japan without let or hindrance. He can vote in Japanese elections.
      
      He is at least as Japanese as the returning Brazillian Japanese.
    - The Overthinker
      
      So is any white person holding a citizenship outside of Europe also not an American or Canadian or whatever?
    - weirdo
      
      I think what he means is something along the line that you can’t be black just because you hold south african citizenship.
    - Kevin
      
      Bruce, Debito is not ethnically Japanese, but he *is* Japanese. There’s a difference.
    - The Overthinker
      
      “I think what he means is something along the line that you can’t be black just because you hold south african citizenship.”
      
      Let’s use Kenya instead. But no one is arguing that Debito is ‘yellow’. I would never call myself black if I got Kenyan citizenship, but I would call myself Kenyan. Again, we can’t use “Asian” as “Asian” is not a race, still less an ethnicity, but “Japanese” is largely a cultural construct anyway.
    - Bryce
      
      Of course Debito is “Japanese”. It’s simply that the word applies to two concepts: ethnicity and citizenship. Of course, there are times when saying “I am a Japanese citizen” makes more sense than saying “I am Japanese”, a fact that Debito has taken advantage of. Nevertheless, you can’t say he *isn’t* Japanese
Christine

Geeze, Japan has incredibly strict (not to mention ridiculous) immigration laws. Even though Noriko was born and grew up in Japan, she faces deportation?

I’m really surprised at everyone’s comments–try to put yourselves in the girl’s shoes. She’s being forced from the country where she was born and raised, where all her friends are, the place she calls home, and deported to a country to which she’s never been? A country whose language she doesn’t even speak? (Yes, this point is debatable, but her parents may have raised her speaking English not Tagalog, which would explain why she can’t speak it.) Of course she doesn’t want to go. Why should she face such ire for wanting to stay?

Then again, I wouldn’t call Saitama that much better than the P.I., although Warabi does have that awesome JUSCO.
kay

” A child who grows up in Japan, speaking Japanese, going to Japanese schools, being taught Japanese political stances by the schools, government, and society, and understand mostly only Japanese is, by all means, a Japanese.” <— As to this. She may understand Japanese culture, but she is not by any means “Japanese.” She will have two viewpoints, that of her family and that of her environment.

I can say that being raised by immigrant parents, I may have gone through the American school system, speak english, but there are aspects of what I’ve grown up with, culture is the word, that are beyond what “American culture” encompasses. I would not be happy calling myself just an American. Because I am of mixed asian descent, I see myself as an Asian-American. Nationality and Race/Ethnicity.

Perhaps Noriko has never learned to embrace her uniqueness. This is understandable, in a country in like Japan, where homogenity (the nail that sticks out is hammered down), blending in is encouraged.

I would send her back to the Philippines for now, children are their parents responsibility. If she is able to I would bet a Japanese school would sponsor a child like Noriko, and have the school sponsor her return to Japan. When she’s 18, she can move back to Japan, and start her own life.
- The Overthinker
  
  “I would not be happy calling myself just an American.”
  Funny, I thought American culture was predicated on being a melting pot. Although that is obviously not true, as everyone seeks to distinguish themselves somehow – Irish-American, Italian-American, Japanese-American, Vulcan-American, etc.
  
  “I would send her back to the Philippines for now, children are their parents responsibility.”
  
  Which is why I support jailing children of lawbreakers as well.
  - hl
    
    jailing a kid for being born in Japan?
    - The Overthinker
      
      Oh yes, and excute the children and pets of murderers. Only makes sense, right? Anyway, the Bible supports the idea – the sins of the father, etc.
RMilner

The Japanese have a serious demographic problem with the population decline.

It has turned out that immigrants such as Brazilians of Japanese descent are not well acculturated to Japanese norms and have difficulty fitting in.

I should have thought the government would be only too keen to accept someone who was born and brought up in Japan, and is fully socialised.
- ponta
  
  I should have thought the government would be only too keen to accept someone who was born and brought up in Japan, and is fully socialised.
  
  She is fully socialized and her parents have had no criminal records
  but they have a good record as hard working employees for long time, I think it is good idea to accept the family.
  If the government is worried about the illegal immigration, then all it has to do is to penalize them in other ways.
Dr.Yu

Good luck to her and her family.
contact

Gee, which part of the word “Illegal” they don’t understand? Feels so
good to victimize themselves, eh?

They must go back to the place they belong. All of them. Now.

If anyone to blame, that would be the parents who started the whole
mess in the first place by illegally entering this country. Blame them.
End of the story.

Also, the lawyers and the so-called supporters behind this family who
have their own political agenda can go back to their own home. Man
gyong bong isn’t coming to Niigata anymore, so they better return there
via China.
- Ikunochan
  
  I absolutely agree about the slimy lawyers with their own agenda. I doubt they actually give much of a damn about the girl and her family.
- tokyojesusfist
  
  I don’t see how Noriko belongs to a country she has never visited and has no ties to.
  - LB
    
    She has ties to the Philippines. Two of them. Her mom and her dad.
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RMilner

Who really believes that allowing this girl to stay in Japan would invite a flood of illegal immigrants to the country?

Japan is currently crying out of Philipino nurses, because they can’t find enough native Japanese nurses to staff hospitals.

Throwing out this girl hardly shows proper consideration and hospitality to other immigrants they want to attract.
- LB
  
  On the contrary, cracking down in illegal immigration benefits legal immigrants. Turning a blind eye to illegals does no-one any favors, aside from those who would exploit illegals with long hours, low pay, no benefits etc., as they know the illegals have nowhere to go. It also harms legals as they cannot fairly compete since employers have to pay them fair wages and offer benefits.
  - RMilner
    
    You are right that illegal immigration harms legal immigration.
    
    This girl isn’t an illegal immigrant, though, her parents are.
    
    There is a difference between “turning a blind eye” and taking a considered humanitarian stance on a specific situation. Making an exception in an exceptional case is not opening the flood gates.
    - LB
      
      Actually, she is an illegal immigrant, just not one by choice. She is not in Japan legally. She has no visa, she never applied for nor received permission to live here, she just has the bad fortune to have been born from the union of two illegals in a country that, like most, does not recognize jus solis.
      
      I do agree that it is not fair that she has to be punished for the actions of her parents. But it is also not fair to say she can stay, and since she is a minor so can her parents (even if just until she reaches the age of majority). That would be rewarding them for breaking the law, and sending exactly the wrong message and setting exactly the wrong precedent.
    - The Overthinker
      
      “I do agree that it is not fair that she has to be punished for the actions of her parents. But it is also not fair to say she can stay”
      
      So which “not fair” outweighs the other? That is precisely what the courts and government and whathaveyou are working out.
      
      “and sending exactly the wrong message and setting exactly the wrong precedent.”
      
      So you predict a wave of migrants raising children under the radar until they are in their early teens who think they are Japanese?
      
      I seem to remember something about a legal distinction between illegal immigrant and non-registered alien. That is, overstaying a visa is a different crime from not having one to begin with. And while obviously sneaking into the country without one is another matter, I’m sure I read something about the difference between (a) overstaying the visa *and* (b) being without a residence status, and just being without a residence status.
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Noriko Calderon speaks to the international press

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