doubt about this country

I've simply had doubt about recognition of Japan as one of developed countries lately. After taking one seminar held by NGO, full of contradiction as well as unfairness has remained in my mind.

It was about the situation of asylum seekers living in Japan.

The opportunity to take this seminar came from one impressive question from my partner who is actually working as a social worker, mainly dealing with asylum seekers, in an immigrant office in Finland. Till then, I had no idea how things goin' on in terms of asylum seekers "in Japan". His question was ...

"What about the situation in Japan? Is it available for many asylum seekers to be able to get refugee status? Well, it goes without saying that the answer will be NO as long as I know."

The first thing that I did was net-surfing, and checked out all kinds of information. Then accidentally found NGO called "Japan Association for Refugees", which is in fact the only one NGO giving both legal support and livelihood support for ayslum seekers living in Japan. And foutunately they were about to hold two-day seminar a couple weeks later, so I decided to take it for opportunities to get to know even if it can be brief knowledge.

All in all, it was impressive and confusing.

The surprising fact is that ...
While the donation of this country toward UNHCR is listed as the second scale in the world, here is only 57 asylum seekers who successfully got refugee status, out of more than 1500 people.

I was like...."what?"

And what is worse, they cannot work legally during time to wait for the result of applying for refugee status, which can take more than 3 years on average. No public support or anything....how could we tell them to survive? so in many cases, they end up being illegal-workers....
I could say that this is pretty fucked-up situation everyone can imagine.

I also heard real story from one of asylum seekers in the seminar, who eventually got refugee status after 4 years... she was quite energetic woman that I was so impressed, but the more I heard the story, the more there is just doubt about this country, Japan.

Generally speaking, here Japan is a typical country which is mighty homogenous, and minority could be socially weak. What's more, as you might know, this country isn't that open at all for people from outside compared with other developed countries. It's really time to change, I do think so. It's ashame that this country hasn't changed much about the way of dealing with people from outside.

There are always majority and minority in this world, but Japan should think highly of both side and should never neglect.


にほんブログ村

にほんブログ村