Immigration Laws: March, 2002 - Number #16

Japan had 221,870 legal foreign workers on June 1, 2001, up seven percent from a year earlier, and up sharply from 96,528 in 1993. Japan admits foreigners legally to work; the largest number of legal worker admissions are entertainers, 103,000 in 2000; followed by humanities specialists, 7,000; and then 3,000 to 4,000 each engineers, skilled laborers, and intra-corporate transfers. Trainees are admitted for training, not work, although most of them work alongside Japanese workers for very low wages- 54,000 were admitted in 2000.

Japan had 1.7 million registered foreign residents at the end of 2000, persons who were in Japan 90 or more days. They were from Korea (635,269), China (333,575), Brazil (254,384) and the Philippines (144,871). There were 7,244 alleged violations of immigration laws detected in 2001.

Japan's first "lawmaker with blue eyes," Finnish-born Marutei Tsurunen, wants to end racial discrimination in Japan. He says that the growing number of foreigners living in Japan has made the Japanese begin to identify themselves more in terms of nationality than race. Tsurunen arrived in Japan in 1967 as a missionary, married a Japanese, was naturalized in 1979, and ran for office in 1995. Tsurunen says: "There are almost two million foreigners who are not citizens of Japan, and their situation is still very weak compared to Japanese. I want to make their life better."

Japan is debating whether the movement of PTKs, persons with at least a BA degree, represents a brain drain from source countries or a brain exchange among Asian countries. Those who argue that PTK migration is a brain drain stress the loss of people educated with tax funds to their countries of origin- they say educated workers are needed to attract FDI and ensure good government. The brain exchange perspective, on the other hand, emphasizes that many PTKs who migrate would be under or un-employed at home, that migrants can maintain links with their countries of origin and accelerate economic development, as in the Indian IT sector, and that migrants may send home remittances that exceed their stay-at-home incomes. The interregional movements of the highly skilled are dominated by the movement of intra-company transferees in Asia.

Students. There are relatively few foreign students in Asian countries, although Asians often dominate among foreign students in North America and Europe. In 1998, there were 54,000 foreigners among the 3.9 million higher education students in Japan, 2,100 among 2.5 million in Korea, and 5,000 among two million in the Philippines. Some 400,000 Chinese went abroad for study; 25 percent returned. The rate of return was almost 50 percent for the Chinese who studied in France and the UK, 37 percent in Japan and Canada, and 14 percent for those in the US.

Asians who go abroad to study are often supported by their governments. Countries such as Malaysia require students to sign bonds promising to return home for three to seven years in exchange for scholarships. India may be less concerned about brain drain than other Asian countries because most Indian IT workers pay for their own education.

Labor. The Japanese economy continues to struggle amid rising unemployment- the rate reached 5.6 percent in December, and is expected to surpass six percent. The major reasons for the persisting Japanese recession include the large number of nonperforming loans made during the bubble economy of the late 1980s that have not yet been written off by banks. When they are, unemployment is expected to rise.

Korea. The number of migrant workers rose from 100,000 in 1998 to 250,000 in November 2001. In December 2001, the trainee system, the old 2-1 program (two years trainee, one year worker) was changed to a 1-2 program, with employers who abuse migrants subject to disqualification from the program.

A report by the Construction and Economy Research Institute of Korea estimated that up to 160,000 foreign workers, including illegal residents and stowaways, are working on construction sites in Korea. Of the foreign workers engaged in construction work, only 1,003 are legal workers who came to Korea as industrial trainees, while illegal residents are estimated to number between 73,000 and 85,000. About 37,000 to 80,000 foreign workers, who entered the country without documents, are working at large apartment construction sites in the Seoul metropolitan area, including Seongnam, Ansan and Yongin.