mytest

SPIEGEL ONLINE – 26. November 2007, 16:30
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/reise/fernweh/0,1518,519596,00.html

Translated by Ralph, original German at
http://www.debito.org/?p=803
==============================
Border Controls
Japan’s fear of foreigners
by Christoph Neumann

No Japanese citizen even needs an Identity Card; yet the biometric data of foreigners will be stored for 70 years. Civil rights campaigners can smell the terrorism hysteria and racism, while the National Tourist Office fears for the country’s image.

“Yokoso!” Welcome! The Japanese National Tourism Office greets visitors to Japan at the airport by displaying giant-sized notice boards with the word Yokoso! in red letters. The Japanese Immigration Department however is somewhat less exuberant in its welcome for arriving foreigners: since last week, foreigners no longer have to just show their passports as previously, but also, as in the USA, have to provide their fingerprints, have their photos taken and survive a short interrogation. This regulation concerns not just tourists and people travelling on business, but also applies to foreigners who are resident in Japan. Excepted are only diplomats, children under 16 years of age and family members of Korean nationals who were forcibly brought to Japan during the Second World War.

JAPAN: PROTESTS AGAINST FINGERPRINTING
(A selection of photographs starts. Click on any one of four.)

Yuki Ogawa from the National Tourist Office does not at first regard the measures as being a contradiction to the heartfelt welcome: ” Just like us, the Immigration Department officials could be relied upon to extend a warm and hearty welcome to Japan to foreign visitors. But there have been some cases….”

These “cases” are highlighted by the Japanese Ministry of Justice in an information video. Scenes from the collapsing World Trade Center and the bomb-destroyed Atocha Railway Station in Madrid appear. The smiling woman speaker then links the increased security measures explicitly with the “ever-growing threat of terrorism”. When the new system was officially inaugurated at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the Minister of Justice, Kunio Hatoyama, promised that:” Now we will be able to prevent any Al-Qaida terrorists from entering the country”.

“I’m making my contribution”

Over several years the promotion of a very selective terrorism hysteria within Japan has failed to achieve any actual results. On Tokyo’s gigantic railway stations, such as Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, both of which see over one million passengers every day, almost no real security measures are apparent. Instead, passengers even on slow trains and barely used country lines are being bombarded with announcements and posters urging them to immediately report unattended baggage: all of this in the name of “measures to protect against terrorism”.

For a while last winter, women working at the country-wide chain of railway station kiosk shops wore a sticker proclaiming:
“Me too, I’m making my contribution to the battle against international terrorism”. As to how exactly she would do this, when she was squeezed in between plastic bottles of tea, sandwiches and newspapers, the determined woman brusquely brushed off the question: “We all have to wear this, but I don’t have any time to think what they might actually mean by it”.

In fact Japan as a rich Westernised industrial power and an ally of the USA in the Iraq war has reasons to fear a terrorist attack. Actually, not so long ago, Japan was the victim of several terrorist attacks, such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground network in March, 1995. However, even such Draconian immigration controls as those they have now would not have prevented a single one of these attacks, because up to now all terrorist attacks on Japanese soil, have been carried out by Japanese citizens.

Protests against ID cards

The Japanese Ministry of Justice does not even have photographs of many of its own citizens, let alone their fingerprints. Japanese commonly identify themselves by means of their Health Insurance card. For many mobile phone providers in trusting Japan, all Japanese need to do to prove their identity is to show their latest electricity bill. A few years ago, when the Government finally got round to proposing the introduction of ID cards for its citizens, something which most of the rest of the world has had for ages- and these were just cards with a photo, but no fingerprint- there arose cries of protest throughout the country. In 2006, the Japanese Constitutional Court even declared that such cards would be unconstitutional.

In comparison however, there is no problem with storing the fingerprints and photographs of all foreigners in Japan for 70 years, and even to share them with the “authorities of other countries” “under certain conditions”. At the National Police Agency, they may well be rubbing their hands in glee, but Japanese civil rights activists are in an uproar. Debito Arudou, the author of a book about racism in Japan, calls the new regulations “a part of a government plot to have all foreigners declared criminals”.

Makoto Teranaka from Amnesty International Japan explained at a protest meeting: “Since 9/11, even in Japan, under the banner of the fight against terrorism, all sorts of human rights have been being cold-bloodedly eliminated. The fact that our government is going after foreigners using these measures is nothing other than racism”.

Meanwhile, the conservative Japanese media are having a field day over the news that since the introduction of the new system, eleven foreigners, who had overstayed their visas and previously been deported, were able to be discovered and refused entry.

Discrimination becomes socially acceptable

Nevertheless, most Japanese are still helpful and friendly to foreigners and curious to know more about them. But the 15-year economic crisis and a visibly increasing foreign population have made many Japanese jittery and open discrimination has become surprisingly socially acceptable.
Many clubs, public bathhouses and even noodle shops have notices at their entrance stating Japanese Only, explicitly forbidding entry to foreigners. The police in Nagano Prefecture had notices displayed at ATMs, in which white-skinned confidence tricksters are to be seen, who are in the process of Japanese of the money, which they have just withdrawn.

Moreover, the popular leading politician, Shintaro Ishihara, the Governor of Tokyo, a man notorious for his racist outbursts, recently became responsible for the promotion of a campaign to bring the Olympics to Tokyo in 2016, something which does not bide well as a symbol of interracial understanding.

And Ms. Ogawa from the Tourism Office fears that worse may still come: ” The Government has asked us to carefully observe tourists’ mood regarding these changes over the coming few weeks. If Japan’s image really does drastically deteriorate, then in our final report, we may have to include the recommendation that that these measures be abandoned.”

===================

以上
Hopefully, all this typing has helped to destroy some of my fingerprints….
Ralph

mytest

Hi Blog. It’s not as though I can read German (the author sent this to me), but he says it’s more media favorable to our cause. English translation here. Thanks to Christoph. Debito in Sapporo

==============================
SPIEGEL ONLINE – 26. November 2007, 16:30
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/reise/fernweh/0,1518,519596,00.html

GRENZKONTROLLEN
Japans Furcht vor dem Fremden

Von Christoph Neumann
Ein Japaner braucht noch nicht einmal einen Personalausweis – biometrische Daten von Ausländern jedoch werden für 70 Jahre gespeichert. Bürgerrechtler wittern Terrorhysterie und Rassismus, das Fremdenverkehrsamt fürchtet um das Image des Landes.

“Yokoso!” – Willkommen! In leuchtend roten Lettern auf riesigen Plakaten begrüßt das Japanische Fremdenverkehrsamt ausländische Besucher am Flughafen. Der japanische Zoll empfängt die Einreisenden etwas weniger überschwänglich: Seit vergangener Woche müssen Ausländer nicht nur wie bisher den Pass vorzeigen, sondern wie in den USA auch ihre Fingerabdrücke abgeben, Fotos von sich machen lassen und ein kurzes Verhör durchstehen. Die Regelung gilt nicht nur für Touristen und Geschäftsleute, sondern auch für in Japan wohnhafte Ausländer. Ausgenommen werden nur Diplomaten, Kinder unter 16 Jahren sowie die Familien der im II. Weltkrieg nach Japan verschleppten Koreaner.

JAPAN: PROTEST GEGEN DEN FINGERABDRUCK
Fotostrecke starten: Klicken Sie auf ein Bild (4 Bilder)
Yuki Ogawa vom Fremdenverkehrsamt empfindet die Maßnahmen erst einmal nicht als Widerspruch zum herzlichen Willkommen: “Genau wie wir sind ja auch die Zöllner sind angewiesen, ausländische Gäste warm und offenherzig in Japan zu empfangen. Und es gab eben gewisse Fälle…”

Die “Fälle” illustriert das japanische Justizministerium mit einem Informationsvideo. Zunächst werden Szenen vom einstürzenden World Trade Center und vom zerbombten Madrider Atocha-Bahnhof gezeigt. Danach begründet eine lächelnde Sprecherin die verschärften Einreisebestimmungen explizit mit der “ständig wachsenden Terrorgefahr”. Bei der Feier zur offiziellen Inbetriebnahme des neuen Systems am Tokioter Flughafen Narita hatte Justizminister Kunio Hatoyama versprochen: “Damit werden wir wohl verhindern, dass in Zukunft al-Qaida-Terroristen ins Land kommen.”

“Ich leiste meinen Betrag”

Eine sehr selektive Terrorhysterie treibt bereits seit einigen Jahren seltsame Blüten in Japan. Auf Tokios Megabahnhöfen wie Shinjuku oder Ikebukuro mit über einer Million Passagieren täglich sind nach wie vor keine Sicherheitskräfte zu sehen. Dagegen werden Fahrgäste selbst in Bummelzügen und auf einsamen Landbahnhöfen mit Durchsagen und Plakaten traktiert, unbeaufsichtigtes Gepäck sofort zu melden, “als Maßnahme zur Terrorabwehr”.

Die Mitarbeiterinnen der weit verbreiteten “Kiosk”-Verkaufsbuden trugen im vergangenen Winter eine Zeitlang Anstecker: “Auch ich leiste meinen Beitrag im Kampf gegen den internationalen Terrorismus.” Die Frage, wie sie, eingeklemmt zwischen Tee-Plastikflaschen, Sandwiches und Tageszeitungen, sich denn konkret ihren Beitrag vorstelle, bürstet die resolute Verkäuferin unwirsch ab: “Das müssen wir jetzt alle anstecken, aber ich hab jetzt keine Zeit, darüber nachzudenken, was die damit eigentlich meinen.”

Dabei hat Japan als reiche westliche Industriemacht und Verbündeter der USA im Irak-Krieg einigen Grund, Terrorattacken zu fürchten. In jüngerer Zeit war Japan auch bereits Opfer mehrerer Terroranschläge, so beim Nervengas-Angriff auf die Tokioter U-Bahn im März 1995. Nur hätte auch eine noch so scharfe Zollkontrolle keinen Einzigen der Anschläge verhindert, denn alle Attentate auf japanischem Boden wurden bisher ausschließlich von Japanern verübt.

Protest gegen Personalausweis

Von vielen der eigenen Bürger aber hat das japanische Justizministerium nicht einmal Fotos, geschweige denn Fingerabdrücke. Japaner weisen sich oft nur mit ihrer Krankenversicherungskarte aus. Manchen Handy-Providern im vertrauensseligen Japan genügt sogar nur die letzte Stromrechnung als Identitätsnachweis. Als die Regierung vor ein paar Jahren endlich, wie sonst auf der Welt längst üblich, einen Personalausweis einführen wollte, nur mit Foto und ohne Fingerabdrücke, rollte ein Aufschrei des Protestes durch das Land. 2006 erklärte das japanische Verfassungsgericht den Ausweis schließlich sogar für verfassungswidrig.

Die Fingerabdrücke und Fotos der Ausländer in Japan dagegen sollen 70 Jahre lang gespeichert und “unter bestimmten Bedingungen” auch mit “Behörden anderer Länder” geteilt werden. Im Bundeskriminalamt reibt man sich vielleicht schon die Hände, aber japanische Bürgerrechtler sind in Aufruhr. Arudou Debito, Autor eines Buches über Rassismus in Japan, nennt die neuen Bestimmungen einen “Teil eines offiziellen Putsches, um alle Ausländer zu Verbrechern zu erklären”.

Makoto Teranaka von Amnesty International Japan erklärte bei einer Protestveranstaltung: “Seit dem 11. September werden auch in Japan unter dem Vorwand der Terrorismusbekämpfung alle möglichen Menschenrechte kaltblütig verletzt. Dass unsere Regierung mit den Maßnahmen jetzt die Ausländer zur Zielscheibe macht, ist nicht anderes als Rassismus.”

Die konservativen japanischen Medien feiern derweil, dass in den wenigen Tagen seit der Einführung des neuen Systems bereits elf Ausländer, die wegen Visavergehens ausgewiesen worden waren, beim Versuch der illegalen Einreise überführt werden konnten.

Diskriminierung wird gesellschaftsfähig

Zwar sind die meisten Japaner Ausländern gegenüber nach wie vor neugierig, freundlich und hilfsbereit. Aber die 15-jährige Wirtschaftskrise und ein sichtbar steigender ausländischer Bevölkerungsanteil haben viele Japaner nervös und offene Diskriminierung erstaunlich gesellschaftsfähig werden lassen.

Viele Clubs, öffentliche Bäder und selbst Nudelküchen verbieten auf Tafeln am Eingang explizit “Ausländern” den Zutritt: “Japanese only”. Die Polizei der Provinz Nagano hängte an den örtlichen Geldautomaten Plakate auf, auf denen Trickbetrüger weißer Hautfarbe zu sehen sind, die Japanern ihr gerade erst abgehobenes Geld rauben. Und der populäre Spitzenpolitiker Shintaro Ishihara, Tokios Gouverneur, ist berüchtigt für seine rassistischen Ausfälle. Dabei hat er sich vor kurzem offiziell mit Tokio für die Ausrichtung der Olympiade 2016 beworben, des Symbols der Völkerverständigung schlechthin.

Und auch Frau Ogawa vom Fremdenverkehrsamt ahnt doch noch Schlimmes: “Wir sind von der Regierung gebeten worden, das Stimmungsbild der Touristen in den nächsten Wochen genau zu beobachten. Wenn sich das Image Japans tatsächlich drastisch verschlechtert, kann es durchaus sein, dass wir in unserem Abschlussbericht eine Aussetzung der Maßnahmen empfehlen.”

ENDS

mytest

Foreign residents oppose fingerprinting as “a new form of discrimination against foreigners”
Chuugoku Shimbun 2007/11/18
Translated by Stephanie Coop
Original Japanese at http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/News/Sp200711180227.html

Ahead of its implementation on Nov. 20, foreign residents in Japan are protesting the new immigration system requiring foreigners to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering Japan, arguing that “it’s a new form of discrimination.”

“I’m really sad that we will be forced to give our fingerprints even though we have committed no crimes. It’s just one more form of discrimination against foreigners,” a 29-year-old Turkish Kurdish man living in Tokyo said disgustedly. “Japan just meekly went along with what the U.S. wanted and got involved in the war in Iraq. I’d like to ask the government about the real reason for having to be worried about terrorism in the first place.”

“I’ve lived here for 15 years and was thinking of applying for permanent residence, but now I feel for the first time as if I’m being institutionally discriminated against. I feel really sad and angry about this,” said Australian national Stephanie Coop (38), a graduate student at a university in Tokyo. “I think that the previous attitude in Japanese society — being concerned about crime without automatically assuming that everyone is a criminal — is far safer and far more attractive [than the new system].”

Lawyer Chang Hannyon [note: not sure if this is the correct transliteration] (44), a third-generation Korean in Japan who was arrested under the Alien Registration Act in 1985 for refusing to give his fingerprints, is a special permanent resident. “If [the new system] is supposed to be an anti-terrorism measure, it’s strange that they are not also fingerprinting Japanese nationals and special permanent residents,” he said. “Why are only foreigners being treated like terrorists? There’s no rational reason for it, which means it is nothing but discrimination.”
ENDS

mytest

Hi Blog. Mark Schreiber from the Japan Times gives us an amusing account on what happened to him when he took a junket to Saipan, just to test the Fingerprinting machines on the way back… Debito in Sapporo
=============================

THE ZEIT GIST
Prints rejected, scribe accepted
Our writer attempts to give Immigration the finger at Narita
By Mark Schreiber
The Japan Times November 27, 2007
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20071127zg.html

The center of the little monitor — I’d guess about 20 cm from the looks of it — flashed the word “Yokoso” (welcome). Its colored border was festooned with a collage of images near and dear to visiting tourists’ hearts: “torii” gates, the shinkansen, Zen gardens, Mount Fuji . . .

“Please place your fingers on the pad,” ordered the immigration officer from behind the counter.

Before I relate more sordid details, let’s begin at the beginning. Having heard much emotional debate on the new fingerprinting system, I decided that I would leave and re-enter Japan for the express purpose of subjecting myself to this supposed indignity, and then deal with it in the most exhibitionistic manner possible: the article you are now reading.

It seemed reasonable to give Narita Immigration five days to get its act together, so I flew down to Saipan and entertained myself with a visit to Banzai Cliff. My return flight, Northwest Airlines 75, touched down at Narita at 6:50 p.m. on Nov. 24.

First and foremost, let me make it crystal clear where I stand on this matter: I don’t particularly like to give my fingerprints. Nevertheless, my strongest objection to the new system relates less to my human rights than to my wanting to exit the airport as expeditiously as possible. Since 9/11, air travel has become a nightmare, and after undergoing security checks up the kazoo and being cooped up in a stuffy tourist-class cabin for 12 hours on a flight from Chicago or Detroit, I’m in no mood for further torment.

One more thing: For more than 20 years, holders of re-entry permits were permitted to use the same gates as Japanese nationals, with no questions asked. I’ve always appreciated this privilege and felt aggravated that, through no malfeasance on my part, this consideration — a great time-saver — was apparently being withdrawn.

That said, if I were to report that I was forced to cool my heels in a long queue last Saturday, it would be an outrageous lie. The fact was, it was the mostly Japanese passengers who did the slow shuffle. At that particular time few foreigners were in evidence and as a result, fingerprinting aside, I was probably one of the first ones out of the place.

As soon as I made my approach, a senior official pounced on me like he’d been waiting there all day just for my arrival.

“Have you filled out one of these E/D cards?” he asked with an encouraging smile, waving one of those familiar entry/departure cards with its incomprehensible questionnaire on the back.

Indeed I had, so I was sent straight to the nearest vacant counter.

The young inspector was all friendly and smiley. He took one look at my passport and knew I was going to be a piece of cake: a permanent resident, papers in order, and nobody named “Mark Schreiber” on Interpol’s terrorist watchlist. (Little did he know, nya-ha-haa . . .)

Then the moment of truth arrived, and he requested me to place my left and right index fingers on the little glass pads. I sighed, set down my six-pack of duty-free macadamia and chocolate chip cookies on the floor, and followed his instructions.

The green lights beside my fingers changed to red. Something was not working properly.

“Um, I can’t seem to get a clear reading off your fingers,” he said, popping open a container of premoistened finger wipes. “Please use this to clean them and try again.”

I gave both fingertips a quick but thorough rubdown and repeated the process.

After several clicks from his keyboard he shook his head again.

He stood up, reached over, and used the same wipe to polish the glass surface of the fingerprint reader.

“OK, uh, this time, let’s try your middle fingers,” he encouraged, holding up his digit in an unintentionally rude gesture some people refer to as “flipping the bird.”

Once again I complied. Click-click-click. Click-click. Click.

“Please, would you mind not pressing down so hard on the pad?”

“But I’m not pressing down hard,” I countered.

From his exasperated reaction I got the distinct impression my middle fingers were not providing usable prints either.

“Well, anyway, let’s take a picture,” he grimaced, standing up and tilting the camera angle upwards to accommodate my 189 cm height.

And that was that. Confirming that I looked like the captured image, and that both resembled the mug shot in my passport, he waved me through.

“Gokuro-sama,” I told him — by which I meant “Sorry to give you such a rough time” — and headed for the baggage carousel.

But wait a minute: My prints didn’t take. Why wasn’t I dragged off into a separate room and interrogated? Why, after all the fuss, was I simply admitted on the strength of my passport, status of residence and re-entry permit?

It would seem that human officials, at their discretion, are empowered to overrule the almighty fingerprint thingamajig.

After relating my experience to a friend on Sunday, he directed me to a BBC News item dated Oct. 17, 2005, in which a fingerprint expert is quoted as saying that “Work such as laboring and typing (italics mine) wears down those ridges and affects the smoothness of the skin. It can make fingerprints very hard to read.”

So my first encounter left me chuckling that the government laid out ¥36 billion for something anyone can outwit by pounding a keyboard, as I do, for 14 hours a day.

Just think: four of my fingers, with no help from their owner, pulled off a courageous feat of passive resistance. In the ongoing struggle for foreigners’ rights in Japan, let them henceforth be known as the “Narita Four.”

On a separate note, there’s been much talk about a system that permits residents to pre-register their biometric data prior to departure, either at the main Immigration office in Shinagawa or in the departure areas at Narita.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I can’t see any point to this, either in terms of time savings or exemption from the big, bad biometric bogeyman. Pre-registration or not, unless you’re a Japanese national or a “special permanent resident” (and if you have to ask what that is, you’re almost certainly not one), you will still be obliged to give your fingerprints every time you enter the country.

So unless Japan suffers a drastic dropoff of foreign visitors and operators of hotels with single-digit occupancy rates begin screaming bloody murder to their Diet representatives, I suppose we’re stuck with this newfangled nuisance for the duration.

At least the government ought to consider a way to recover some of its outlays. Let’s turn the immigration gates over to a private operator and put the system on a paying basis. For instance, they could program the fingerprint and face scanners to detect things like razor nicks and chipped nails that invite commercial exploitation.

Upon giving one’s fingerprints, personalized messages would scroll across the monitor. “Yokoso to Japan, Mark Schreiber-sama. While here, check out our latest USB-portable multi-blade shaver.” Or, “Yo, Schreiber-kun. Pamper your fingers, and give their ridges the nutrients they need with Mother-of-Pearl Cream — for typists, pianists and . . .”

Yokoso, anybody?

Send comments on this issue and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp
The Japan Times: Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007

ENDS

mytest

Here’s The Economist (London) on the NJ Fingerprinting Debacle. FYI. Nothing really new (except a silly bit on butterflies), but ample airtime given to the critics and the controversy, thanks. NHK, take note. Debito

==============================

Japanese immigration control
Giving you the finger
Nov 22nd 2007 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10184633
A controversy over fingerprinting foreigners

IN 1641 Japan’s shogunate designated an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour as the only place foreigners could live. Japan has of late been more welcoming to gaijin. Yet this week it began to photograph and take digital fingerprints of all foreigners entering the country—residents as well as tourists and visiting businessmen. Privacy advocates deplore the emergence of a surveillance state. Pundits say it panders to anti-foreign sentiment in Japan, and undermines the country’s ambitions to increase tourism and make Tokyo a global financial centre. Angry expats expect long waits at immigration.

In defence, the government says the measures are simply to keep terrorists out. As an example, Japan’s justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama, a butterfly enthusiast, explained that a friend of a lepidopterist friend was an al-Qaeda operative, who for years travelled in and out of Japan on fake passports; the new measures would block the chap. Mr Hatoyama was quickly forced to backtrack lest it appear that ministers run around netting butterflies with terrorists. Yet the truth remains: terrorism in Japan has only ever been home-grown, most recently in 1995, when a sarin gas attack by a religious cult killed 12 in Tokyo’s subway.

The system mirrors America’s equally controversial US-VISIT programme. In principle, it should not cause such a fuss. All countries are moving towards the collection of “biometric” information: from next year, Britain will collect such data from visa-holders. The problem comes with implementation. America’s US-VISIT system is fraught with flaws and cost overruns. Technical problems have delayed Europe’s introduction of digital passports. For all Japan’s prowess in designing computers, the government is peculiarly inept at running them. This year, it admitted it had lost 50m electronic-pensions records.

Exempt from the new screening are diplomats, children under 16 and certain permanent residents (ethnic Korean and Taiwanese who have lived in the country for generations). Why only gaijin? Japan already has all sorts of ways to keep watch on its own people, such as “neighbourhood associations”. Foreigners are outside these social controls. Yet fingerprinting foreigners is just a first step to securing the biometric details of everyone entering and leaving: as it is, frequent travellers, Japanese as well as foreign residents, may save time by pre-registering to use an unmanned automatic gate at airports that takes photographs and fingerprints.

Mr Hatoyama says people should not be delayed more than the 20 minutes it already takes immigration officers to process visitors. This week some of the machines played up, but most travellers fell into line. Officials even claimed to have caught a handful of people who had already been deported at least once. They did not reveal whether they were butterfly collectors.

ENDS

mytest

Hi Blog. Much the same ground covered in this article as others. But good to see a write-up this thorough making a splash throughout the US East Coast–in the Old Grey Lady, no less (a paper the GOJ takes most seriously of all overseas publications). Debito in Sapporo

================================

New Japanese Immigration Controls Worry Foreigners
New York Times November 18, 2007
By MARTIN FACKLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/asia/18japan-1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

TOKYO, Nov. 17 — Japan has tried hard in recent years to shake its image as an overly insular society and offer a warmer welcome to foreign investors and tourists. But the country is about to impose strict immigration controls that many fear could deter visitors and discourage businesses from locating here.

On Tuesday, Japan will put in place one of the toughest systems in the developed world for monitoring foreign visitors. Modeled on the United States’ controversial U.S.-Visit program, it will require foreign citizens to be fingerprinted, photographed and questioned every time they enter Japan.

The screening will extend even to Japan’s 2.1 million foreign residents, many of whom fear they will soon face clogged immigration lines whenever they enter the country. People exempted from the checks include children under 16, diplomats and “special permanent residents,” a euphemism for Koreans and other Asians brought to Japan as slave laborers during World War II and their descendants.

The authorities say such thorough screening is needed to protect Japan from attacks by foreign terrorists, which many fear here because of Japan’s support for the United States in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the measures, part of an immigration law enacted last year, have been criticized by civil rights groups and foreign residents’ associations as too sweeping and unnecessarily burdensome to foreigners. They note that the only significant terrorist attack in Japan in recent decades was carried out by a domestic religious sect, which released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 people.

Some of the most vocal critics have been among foreign business leaders, who say the screening could hurt Japan’s standing as an Asian business center, especially if it is inefficiently carried out, leading to long waits at airports. Business groups here warn that such delays could make Japan less attractive than rival commercial hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore, where entry procedures are much easier.

The business groups also contend that the screening runs counter to recent efforts by the government to attract more foreign investment and tourism.

“If businessmen based here have to line up for two hours every time they come back from traveling, it will be a disaster,” said Jakob Edberg, policy director in the Tokyo office of the European Business Council. “This will affect real business decisions, like whether to base here.”

Business groups also fault the government for bungling the few attempts it has made at explanation. Two weeks ago, the justice minister created a commotion when he defended the new measures by stating that “a friend of a friend” who belonged to Al Qaeda had entered the country repeatedly using forged passports. The government scrambled to say that the minister, Kunio Hatoyama, had never had direct contact with the alleged Qaeda member.

However, some civil rights groups worry that the government is using terrorism to mask a deeper, xenophobic motive behind the new measures. They say that within Japan, the government has justified the screening as an anticrime measure, playing to widely held fears that an influx of foreigners is threatening Japan’s safe streets.

These groups also note that fingerprinting of foreigners is not new here. Until fairly recently, all foreign residents were routinely fingerprinted. That practice was phased out after years of protest by foreign residents and civil rights groups.

“Terrorism looks like an excuse to revive to the old system for monitoring foreigners,” said Sonoko Kawakami at Amnesty International in Japan. “We worry that the real point of these measures is just to keep foreigners out of Japan.”

One request made by the European Business Council, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan and other business groups is to add special lines at airports for foreign residents, and especially frequent business travelers.

Until now, foreign residents have been allowed to use the same lines at airport immigration as Japanese citizens, speeding their entry. But the new law will bar them from doing so.

Only the Tokyo area’s main international airport at Narita has agreed to set aside lines for foreign residents. Others, including the nation’s second-largest airport, Kansai International near Osaka, will force these residents to line up with other foreigners, who even before the new screening often waited an hour or more to pass through immigration.

That irks Martin Issott, 59, a Briton and the regional director for a British chemical company who has lived in Japan for 20 years. Mr. Issott said he used the Kansai airport two or three times a month for business trips. He uses the immigration line for Japanese citizens and never waits more than five minutes. He said he feared that the change in rules would result in long waits at the end of every trip.

“I have no problem complying with the letter of this law,” said Mr. Issott, who lives in the western city of Kobe. “But I am utterly disgusted that they haven’t found a way to make this quicker and more painless.”
ENDS

mytest

[For Foreigners]
(Reference Material for the PR Dept.)

Operation of the Automated Gate

Ministry of Justice, Immigration Bureau

1. Introduction
Automated gates will be placed at Narita Airport from November 20th, 2007, in order to improve convenience of immigration procedures by simplifying and accelerating them. We would like to ask foreigners who wish to use the automated gates to provide their personal identification information (fingerprints and a facial portrait) in advance and register themselves as applicants in order to use the gate.

2. Registration as an Applicant to Use the Automated Gate
(1) Required Items for Registration
1. Valid passport (including Re-entry Permit) and re-entry permission
2. Application form to use the automated gate
(2) Where and When to Register
We will be accepting applications from November 20th at the locations stated below:
1. Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau
Application Counter for re-entry permission (2F) 9:00-16:00 (Except Saturdays, Sundays, National Holidays and December 29th to January 3rd)
2. Narita Airport District Immigration Office
The departure inspection area at South Wing of Passenger Terminal 1: 9:00-17:00
The departure inspection area at the South Exit of Passenger Terminal 2: 9:00-17:00
(3) Registration Procedures
Submit your application form with your passport and provide fingerprints of both index fingers and a facial portrait.
Then, when the official affixes a registration stamp on your passport, the registration procedure is complete. In principle, you can use the gate from that day forward.
(4) Points of Concern for the Registration
1. Time Limit of Registration
You can register until the expiration date of your passport or the expiration date of your re-entry permit, whichever comes earlier.
2. Registration Restrictions
In some cases, such as when you cannot provide fingerprints, you may not be able to register.
3. Using and Providing the Registered Information
We will manage information including fingerprints and facial portraits provided at the registration as personal information set forth in laws on protection of personal information held by administrative agencies, and the information will not be used or provided beyond the range allowed for in these laws.
4. Deletion of Registration
Submit the application form to delete registration if you wish to delete your registration. Then, your registration will be deleted and the fingerprints and facial portrait you provided will be erased.

3. How to Use the Gate
(1) How to Use the Gate
1. When you arrive
Step forward before the immigration officer and place your passport over the Passport Reader. After being recognized as a registrant, provide your fingerprints and facial portrait. Then, submit your passport and ED card to the immigration officer. After checking, the gate will open. Arrival inspection procedures are now complete.
2. When you depart
Step forward before the immigration officer and place your passport over the Passport Reader. After being recognized as a registrant, provide your fingerprints. Then, submit your passport and ED card to the immigration officer. After checking, the gate will open. Departure inspection procedures are now complete.
(2) When you use the automated gate, as a rule, the entry/departure record (a stamp) will not be left on your passport.
ENDS

mytest

Hi Blog. Here are some translations, by Hanako Tokita at Global Voices Online, of some domestic voices in Japanese regarding the NJ Fingerprinting issue. Japanese and English T.

I won’t cut and paste them all here, since it is an elaborate site, but it’s worth a look. If only to see how half-baked the domestic debate has been.

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/11/12/japan-fingerprints-mugshot-welcome-to-japan/

Courtesy of Chris Salzberg. I hope Hana does more domestic comments, because given what I know and have experienced about how anonymity affects the responsibility of posters, I bet the ill-considered/reactionary/xenophobic comments are the majority. The ones up on GVO are surprisingly intelligent in places. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

PS: GVO has appropriated Nick Wood’s excellent animation gif portraying the issue. Bravo.

mytest

Hi Blog. The issue just keeps on rolling. LA Times yesterday below says everything we’ve been saying, for a big US Pacific Coast audience with close ties to Japan (the article even includes Hatoyama and Al-Qaeda, just didn’t mention the GOJ’s connecting “contagious diseases and terrorism” to all NJ only); Terrie’s Take this morning even gives a shout-out to Debito.org as an “excellent” source (thanks!). Notable quotes:

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LAT: “Japan’s justice minister… even offered a bizarre personal anecdote to explain how easy it was for non-Japanese to sneak into the country. “A friend of my friend is a member of Al Qaeda,” Kunio Hatoyama told foreign reporters in Tokyo, saying that the man had entered Japan numerous times using fake passports and disguises. Hatoyama later backtracked slightly on his story, distancing himself from any connection to Al Qaeda and raising suspicions that he had embellished his anecdote to press the case for fingerprinting foreigners.”
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Terrie’s Take: “We’ll say up front that the proposed measures have been an unmitigated public relations disaster for the Japanese government and the Justice Ministry in particular. Although the basic idea was to cooperate with the USA and other nations to try to catch potential terrorists at the borders, the measures have in fact proven to be disjointed, unorganized, and ultimately unworkable. They have also managed to infuriate pretty much every long-term, tax-paying, foreign resident in Japan.”
================================

I’ll put Terrie Lloyd’s write up first, then Bruce Wallace of the LAT’s second. Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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* * * * * * * * * T E R R I E ‘S T A K E * * * * * * *

A weekly roundup of news & information from Terrie Lloyd. (http://www.terrie.com)
General Edition Sunday, November 11, 2007 Issue No. 445

+++ WHAT’S NEW

Back in early October (TT-440) we talked about the coming changes at Immigration, where the authorities have decided in their wisdom that every foreigner in the land except those who are third generation Koreans and Taiwanese, diplomats, US soldiers, and kids, will be subject to anti-terrorist biometric checks at the airport every time we come into Japan. Since writing about that, we have had lots of email and have been following the situation pretty closely. Many thanks to all those people dropping us notes about the changes as they have been happening.

We’ll say up front that the proposed measures have been an unmitigated public relations disaster for the Japanese government and the Justice Ministry in particular. Although the basic idea was to cooperate with the USA and other nations to try to catch potential terrorists at the borders, the measures have in fact proven to be disjointed, unorganized, and ultimately unworkable. They have also managed to infuriate pretty much every long-term, tax-paying, foreign resident in Japan.

Let’s get an update on what is happening now.

As many readers will already know, the Immigration folks have decided to put in place a pre-registration system and an “automatic” gate at Narita, so that permanent residents and others with re-entrant visas will be able to by-pass the tourist lines so long as they are pre-registered. You can apparently pre-register either at the Tokyo Immigration Bureau at Konan, inconvenient at the best of times, or at Narita Airport.

The pre-registration counters will be at the South Wing of Terminal 1 and South Side of Terminal 2. Note that the opening times at Narita are limited to 9.00am-5.00pm. So it’s probably a good idea to go early. There is no indication of how long the pre-registration process takes, but comments we’ve heard so far are a few minutes if there is no queue.

However, having said that, since literally tens of thousands of people with re-entry visas will be leaving for Christmas, you should leave plenty of time to get the pre-registration done. For documentation you just need the application form (presumably they’ll give it to you) and your up-to-date passport.

Now, if you happen to be using an airport other than Narita, including Haneda, Nagoya, and Osaka, there will be no automatic gates, and thus pre-registration isn’t going to do you much good. We can see this riling a lot of foreign business people who have picked Japan for lifestyle but who frequently travel to China and elsewhere in Asia for business. For those people, moving to Singapore right now has to look pretty good. It seems that the Japanese government isn’t really that interested in foreign investment after all…

Now for those of you used to the Japanese floating new laws and changing them after feeling the heat from the public, there is some hope. We have heard through a well-placed friend that the Immigration senior management are surprised at the amount of negative reaction by the foreign community. While their being surprised shows just how out of touch they are, in any case we heard that Immigration may in fact consider exempting permanent residents from the re-entry procedure after-all. If they do this, at least they’ll be bringing themselves back in line with the USA, where this whole biometric fiasco started in the first place. There, the green card holders are allowed to enter immigration through the US Citizen lines.

As the procedures have started to unfold (why do we get the sense that they’re making this up as they go along?), there has been plenty of newspaper reader feedback in the Daily Yomiuri and other foreign press. You have the Japan apologists stating, “Well, these measures aren’t so bad, what’s a little fingerprinting and eye scanning every now and again if it keeps the country safe?” through to “Oh, those whiney foreigners, if they don’t like it, let them go home.”

The fact is that the fingerprinting and eye scanning really are just an irritating inconvenience. What is making people mad is how the government has decided that foreigners living in Japan for decades, and in a number of cases those who were even born here, are now lumped in with tourists coming in for a week on the way to China or elsewhere. This seemingly insignificant rule change has woken up a lot of resentment over how Japan treats its foreign residents in general.

Getting past the feelings of shabby treatment, you then get to a more disturbing situation — what happens to the data after it is collected? At the end of October, we attended an Amnesty International Japan press conference, where a prominent leader of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Barry Steinhardt, related what is done with the data collected in the USA’s US-VISIT program.

He made some very interesting points. Firstly, that the terrorist alert database being used by the USA contains 750,000 names — an order of magnitude larger than the actual number of likely terrorists in the world — meaning that there are a lot of people on that list who shouldn’t be there.

Secondly, the database has been proven many times to be flawed thanks to its very superficial data. Essentially, any person with a suspicious first name/last name, like that of Dr. Robert J. Johnson, is flagged at the port of entry and they are regularly dragged off for grilling. Treatment like this of innocent people has naturally caused tourism to the USA as a percentage of the global travel market to fall — in fact by 35% since 1992. Japan can look forward to much the same result.

Thirdly, although no one has admitted as such, the ACLU suspects from recent cases involving activists prevented from entering Canada, that the USA is now sharing its database with other nations.

The announcements by Immigration say that the new biometric checks are being put in place to detect known terrorists as they enter the country. However, Japan doesn’t possess its own list of foreign terrorists, mainly because there hasn’t been an incident of foreign terrorism on Japanese soil (well, OK, North Korean abductions, maybe) since WWII. Thus, for them to correlate tourists entering the country, they’ll have to borrow someone else’s list. The ACLU and Amnesty are hinting that it will be the faulty US list. Too bad if your name happens to match one of the 750,000… Any Bob Johnsons among our readers? Let’s hope “Taru Suzuki” or a similarly popular Japanese name doesn’t suddenly make it to the list.

What is interesting, too, is that while Japanese names and biometrics are not on the Japanese database because the electorate wouldn’t stand for it, for those Japanese nationals traveling to the USA and UK, their data is indeed being captured — and it is only a matter of time before this data is fed back to Immigration here in Japan. This smacks very much of a back door effort by the powers that be to collect global data — and there isn’t much the civil rights people can do about it.

Then we heard another interesting tidbit. Now you might think that with all the hot technology for accurately scanning fingerprints and eyes, this data would be whizzing back in real time to some massive Interpol-like database, and that if there was a match then the Immigration officer’s screen would start flashing red and bells would start clanging.

Nope, nothing like that. What we heard is that the data is “batched” and sent to a screening center for analysis. Apparently it takes up to 24 hours to turn the data around! That’s probably just the right amount of time for an earnest terrorist to catch a bus over to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, let off some sort of device, and high-tail it back overseas.

So what we have here is a FUBAR situation of the highest order. 1) A law that no one really thought too hard about, but which will irritate the hell out of a lot of tax-paying, law-abiding permanent residents. 2) A computer database that is riddled with inaccuracies and is being adopted to buttress the Japanese screening effort. Let’s hope it gets some important Middle-eastern customer of Mitsui or Marubeni locked up for a week or two until the authorities find out that the database is unreliable. 3) A processing system that is so slow that a real terrorist could enter and exit the country without being detected in time.

There is a petition that you can sign to protest the new procedures. The URL is: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/fingerprints-japan/index.html. This petition will be presented to the General Affairs Division, Immigration Bureau, at the Ministry of Justice.

Also, we can recommend the website of Debito Arudou, which has an excellent running log of developments on fingerprinting and similar human rights issues. You can find it at:
http://www.debito.org/?cat=33

We’d be interested in hearing the experiences of people who have pre-registered on November 20th, and/or who passing back into Japan as permanent residents.

terrie.lloyd@japaninc.com.
ENDS

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Japan’s welcome mat getting prickly
New rules requiring fingerprints and digital photos of visitors are revealing about attitudes toward foreigners, critics say.
From the Los Angeles Times November 11, 2007
By Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-screening11nov11,1,4675245.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=8&cset=true
Courtesy of Jon Lenvik

TOKYO — The kind of greeting a foreigner receives at immigration upon arrival at an international airport can be a good, if imperfect, indication of the country that waits on the other side of the barrier.

London’s Heathrow? Long queues and lousy service.

New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International? Crumbling infrastructure and over-the-top bureaucracy.

Some Middle Eastern airports? Slow-moving lines that can be circumvented with the right connections and cash.

Now the Japanese government has created new immigration procedures for foreign visitors — rules that critics say are all too revealing about official attitudes toward foreigners.

On Nov. 20, Japan will begin fingerprinting and photographing non-Japanese travelers as they pass through immigration at air and sea ports. The government says the controls are a necessary security measure aimed at preventing a terrorist attack in Japan.

The new system is modeled on the U.S. program instituted in 2004 that takes digital photos and fingerprints of travelers entering the United States on visas. But the Japanese system goes further by requiring foreign residents — in addition to visitors — to be photographed and fingerprinted.

There are exceptions: diplomats, children younger than 16, U.S. military personnel serving in Japan, and long-term residents of Korean or Chinese descent whose presence here is largely owed to Imperial Japan’s overseas conquests. But all other foreigners will be scanned each time upon entry.

Critics say the data collection is a dubious terrorism-fighting measure, instead reflecting the government’s desire for closer surveillance of foreigners.

“The Japanese government has a long history of not wanting long-term foreign residents, and they really feel they need more control over foreigners,” said Sonoko Kawakami of the Japanese chapter of Amnesty International. “The government just wants to gather as much information as possible on people.”

The only terrorist spectaculars in Japanese history have come from homegrown groups: the Japanese Red Army, which conducted attacks around the world in the 1970s and ’80s, and the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

But officials say Tokyo’s support for the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes Japan a target, and taking biometric data such as fingerprints and digital facial photos is the only way to nab terrorists traveling on fake passports.

At least that was the recent contention of Japan’s justice minister. He even offered a bizarre personal anecdote to explain how easy it was for non-Japanese to sneak into the country. “A friend of my friend is a member of Al Qaeda,” Kunio Hatoyama told foreign reporters in Tokyo, saying that the man had entered Japan numerous times using fake passports and disguises.

Hatoyama later backtracked slightly on his story, distancing himself from any connection to Al Qaeda and raising suspicions that he had embellished his anecdote to press the case for fingerprinting foreigners.

But Hatoyama has long been among the senior public officials who believe Japan is already too open to overseas workers. When he became justice minister in August, Hatoyama made it clear he had no intention of proceeding with earlier plans to allow in more unskilled workers.

That, he warned, could lead to an increase in crime.

Statistics, however, show that the number of crimes committed by foreign visitors is falling. And despite alarm about particularly sensational crimes that attract media attention, Japan’s overall crime rate is declining or flat.

That hasn’t stopped some senior Japanese politicians from stoking anti-immigrant fires by contending that foreigners living in Japan commit a higher proportion of crimes. And those contentions have sent bureaucrats in search of ways to weed out the “good” foreigners, presumably those with money to invest, from “bad” ones, such as the Chinese pickpocket gangs that get so much media attention here.

The new immigration system appears to be one answer. Fingerprinting is actually a resumption of a system that was abandoned in 2000 after strong protests by long-term Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese residents who resented being fingerprinted in their own country. A jittery, post-9/11 America provided the initiative for the Japanese to revive it.

The law instituting the new regime passed parliament last year with very little outcry. The Federation of Japanese Bar Assns. was a lonely critical voice, complaining that fingerprinting people who had already been granted residency was an infringement on civil liberties. But the government avoided a repeat showdown with the Koreans and Chinese by exempting them from the new requirements.

“The Japanese public does not see this as ‘our’ problem,” said Masashi Ichikawa, a human rights lawyer in Tokyo. “The climate is that it is legitimate to be ‘against terrorism,’ and that people just have to follow the rules.”

The fingerprinting issue underscores the Japanese dilemma in dealing with foreigners.

On the one hand, in this age of increased global mobility, the threat of terrorism, though remote, is a plausible one.

But on the other, the Japanese government needs more foreigners. Japan has low unemployment by global standards and faces a demographic crunch as its population ages and workforce shrinks. Tokyo is fighting to preserve its position as a world financial center as competitors such as Singapore actively cultivate a welcoming aura for foreign businesses.

And Japan is still searching for ways to address its tourist deficit at a time when well-heeled travelers have a widening array of Asian destination choices.

It remains to be seen whether treating every visitor as a potential terrorist, until their fingerprints prove otherwise, is the best way to roll out the welcome mat.

———————
bruce.wallace@latimes.com

Naoko Nishiwaki of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.
ENDS