JAPAN opening to immigration www.citinavi.net

Asia Consolidates Its Passport Power

JAPAN - SINGAPORE - SOUTH KOREA

In a resounding demonstration of Asia’s growing power and influence on the world stage, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea now hold joint top spot on the Henley Passport Index, with a visa-free or visa-on-arrival score of 189. These latest results consolidate 12 months of Asian dominance, after Japan first climbed to the top spot in February last year. Germany currently sits alone in 2nd place, with a score of 188, while five countries now share 3rd place on the index, which is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

The UK and the USA look increasingly unlikely to regain the top spot they jointly held in 2015, with the UK now siting in 5th place with a visa-free/visa-onarrival score of 185, and the USA in 6th, with a score

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of 184. Afghanistan and Iraq remain at the bottom of the ranking with a score of just 30, a position one or both countries have occupied throughout the index’s 14-year history. The Henley Passport Index is the most rigorous and sophisticated measure of global access, providing an in-depth picture of travel freedom, including which destinations can be accessed visa-free or with a visa-on-arrival with which passport.

This graph shows the countries that occupy the top and bottom five ranks on the 2019 Henley Passport Index. In certain cases, a rank is shared by multiple countries because these countries all have the same level of visa-free or visa-on-arrival access. The information provided here reflects the Henley Passport Index ranking on 26 March 2019

Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

While in Tokyo earlier this month, I couldn’t help but notice how the city has changed. Where once it was rare to hear any language other than Japanese spoken on the street, now it happens constantly. Most of this is due to the huge tourism boom — more than 30 million people now visit Japan every year. But obscured by that vast influx of guests is a longer-term trend. Tokyo is becoming a much more ethnically diverse city. I encountered black store clerks from the Netherlands and Africa, Chinese waiters at traditional Japanese restaurants, South Asian students staffing convenience stores, a white waitress at Starbucks, a Korean restaurant run by Southeast Asians.

These are anecdotes, but there’s data to back them up. In 2018, 1 out of 8 young people turning 20 in Tokyo wasn’t born in Japan. That doesn’t even count the people who were born in Japan but aren’t ethnically Japanese. Although Tokyo isn’t close to becoming a multiracial metropolis like New York City or London, the word “homogeneous” no longer fits the city.

Tokyo is an early harbinger of changes that are coming, albeit more slowly, to the rest of Japan. The capital city’s diversity is in large part the result of Japan’s increasingly open stance toward immigration. Japan’s foreign-born population is still small compared to most other rich countries — a legacy of the highly restrictive attitudes and policies toward immigration that prevailed in past years. But since Shinzo Abe became prime minister at the end of 2012, the number of foreign-born people working in the country has expanded steadily:

The government reckons that there are now about 2.73 million foreigners living in the country — a 6.6% increase over the previous year, even as the overall population shrinks rapidly. In recent years, the Abe administration has adopted major changes that will probably sustain the influx of immigrants. In 2017 Japan implemented fast-track permanent residency for skilled workers. In 2018 it passed a law that will greatly

expand the number of blue-collar work visas, and — crucially — provide these workers with a path to permanent residency if they want it. These changes thus represent true immigration, as opposed to temporary guest-worker policies (despite the common use of the term “guest worker law” to describe the new visas). In time, it will mean a more ethnically diverse Japanese citizenry. Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. Some foreigners will also marry Japanese nationals, and their children will thus be citizens as well. Since the new law prevents visa holders from bringing families with them to Japan, many of the new workers will likely be single people looking for spouses, making them more likely to marry locals.

While this new immigration will help keep Japan’s economy and pension system afloat, it will inevitably introduce social strains. Unlike the U.S., Canada and other nations whose populations are mainly a hodgepodge of the descendants of recent immigrants, Japan has little history of mass immigration. The one major recent episode of immigration was the movement of Koreans to Japan during the Japanese colonization of Korea and later during the Korean War. Due to Japan’s lack of birthright citizenship, the descendants of those immigrants have become a racialized minority, speaking no Korean but bearing Korean passports. Discrimination against these people, sometimes called Zainichi Koreans, was severe for decades, and though it has decreased substantially in recent years, a far-right fringe has emerged to persecute and slander the Zainichi.

Abe, despite being a conservative on foreign policy issues, has not tolerated these groups. In 2016 Japan passed its first law against hate speech, which is now being used to prosecute members of this group. But the episode shows that Japanese society probably won’t be immune to the waves of nativist populism that have rocked Western countries in recent years. If even ethnic Koreans — who are generally physically indistinguishable from ethnic Japanese people — face persecution, people of visibly different racial groups may encounter even more. An early sign of such tensions emerged in 2015, when a beauty-pageant winner who was ethnically half Japanese and half black became the center of an online controversy, with some criticizing her for not being Japanese enough and others leaping to her defense. For now, the racial purists have generally been shouted down, and a half-Indian woman won the Miss World Japan pageant in 2016 with little backlash. But as the number of mixed and minority people in Japan becomes more prominent, the rightists can be expected to return with fresh rage.

More generally, Japan’s institutions are not used to coping with foreign and minority residents. Unlike in the U.S., where English as a Second Language classes are widely available, Japan has few classes to assist non-native speakers to catch up in Japanese fluency. Nor do Japanese cities have many official celebrations of immigrant culture or contributions.

So Japan is beginning a major and unprecedented exercise, similar in some ways to the experiments embarked on by many European countries. Japan is still far from being a diverse country, but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous. The next two or three decades will reveal whether the country’s culture and institutions will be able to learn from Europe’s experience and manage a smooth transition, or whether immigration will spark a nativist backlash that closes the country off once again.

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Japan's workforce is ageing fast and lawmakers are working to reform the country's immigration laws - what lessons can Europe teach Japan?

Japan is in the process of changing its famously restrictive immigration laws. During the last few weeks, Japanese lawmakers have held an extraordinary session of the Diet to discuss the topic. They aim to bring in foreign workers to address the most severe national labour shortage in four decades while causing minimal disruption to society. This may prove difficult: in 2017, legal foreign residents comprised only 1.95 percent of the country’s population.

What lessons can Europe – a continent with a long history of immigration – teach Japan? In light of the much-publicised migration crisis in Europe, many Japanese see the European experience as a cautionary tale rather than a model to emulate. Indeed, for those who oppose immigration, the rise in social unrest and populism in Europe that followed the migration crisis vindicates their stance. However, they have adopted a reductive view of a complex phenomenon. If Japan genuinely wants to address its migration challenges, as well as the challenges of a shrinking population, it needs to look beyond the migration crisis.

Japan’s pressing need for migrants A glance at Japan’s demographic trends underlines the urgency of the migration issue. With approximately 25 percent of its population over the age of 65, the country is experiencing one of the fastest rates of ageing in the world. And with birth rates below replacement levels, the longest life expectancy in the world, and a baby-boom generation that is reaching retirement age, Japan is also facing challenges to its pension and healthcare systems. In the Japanese construction sector, for example, one-third of workers are older than 55 and only 11 percent are younger than 29. According to a report the Migration Policy Institute published last year, “immigrants would need to make up at least 10 percent of the overall population” to address these challenges effectively. Japan needs to resist the temptation to view Europe as merely an example of the negative socio-political consequences of immigration Until recently, Japan preferred to appeal to highly skilled immigrants and to use artificial intelligence to mitigate its labour shortage. Launched in 2012, the country’s Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals visa initiative is partly modelled on the Australian and Canadian points systems. Last year, Japan adopted measures to offer permanentresidency to some highly skilled workers in

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Euorpe’s Migration Lessons for Japan by Irina Angelescu, International Affairs Specialist, USA

as little as one year. Despite these efforts, the 2017 edition of the IMD World Talent Ranking listed Japan as the least attractive of 11 Asian nations as a destination for highly skilled workers. This suggests that there is a need for broader reforms.

Lessons from Europe In this context, careful analysis of the European experience provides some helpful lessons. The first – and far from surprising – lesson is that boosting immigration helps offset the challenges of ageing and shrinking populations. The European Union projects that European countries’ acceptance of migrants should help them maintain their current population size throughout this century. Many Western European states have fertility rates below replacement levels among native-born citizens but, unlike Japan, they have used immigration to make up the difference. In contrast, the populations of countries in central and eastern Europe – which generally experience high rates of emigration and very low rates of immigration – have shrunk in recent years.

The second lesson is that immigration may well have improved Europe’s competitiveness and economic growth. The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report consistently places European countries with high rates of immigration – including Switzerland, which has a foreign-born population of almost 25 percent – near the top of its rankings and, in some cases, above Japan. Despite the disruption of the financial and migration crises, the Eurozone has experienced positive (if modest) economic growth since 2015. The most economically successful European countries have actively courted foreign workers, offering both competitive salaries and optimal living conditions, including housing, language classes, and other benefits.

A third lesson is that the gains discussed above will only be sustainable if the government implements effective integration policies in collaboration with civil society. Here, countries in Western Europe are by no means perfect but, in the Center for Global Development’s 2016 ranking of states’ immigration policies, they performed better than Japan. Integration is a multifaceted process that requires effort from both sides: immigrants working

to integrate into the host society, and that society reaching out to accept them. According to Harvard University’s recent study of perceptions of immigration in Western Europe and the United States, most people exaggerate the size and impact of the immigrant population in their country. Those who know immigrants are a notable exception.

Boosting immigration helps offset the challenges of ageing and shrinking population These findings suggest that governments need to actively encourage open public dialogue on immigration and interactions with immigrants in host societies. The native population’s investment in the process should accompany policies that help immigrants find jobs, enter the housing market, and learn the local language. Another integral part of a successful integration policy is a healthy system of naturalisation. Here, Japan remains one of the few countries to implement a restrictive jus sanguinis policy (one based on parents’ nationality). Germany revised its jus sanguinis law in 2000 to make it easier for foreign residents to acquire citizenship. As a consequence, while Japan naturalises approximately 1,000 people every year, Germany naturalised 112,211 in 2017.

A new Japan? Japan’s recent measures to boost labour immigration suggest that it is undertaking a series of ad hoc measures rather than implementing a coherent strategy. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s February 2018 statement that his government “has no intention of adopting a so-called immigration policy” supports this view. While it is right to proceed cautiously, Japan would benefit from an open public dialogue on immigration and national identity given many Japanese citizens’ perception of the country as culturally and ethnically homogeneous. Japan needs to resist the temptation to view Europe as merely an example of the negative socio-political consequences of immigration. By learning from the European experience, the country can enjoy the positive aspects of immigration. Moreover, Europe and Japan could both benefit from direct consultations with each other on the issue, using the forums for cooperation they created under their recent Strategic Partnership Agreement(SPA).

Irina Angelescu is an independent consultant based in Washington, DC. Her work focuses on transatlantic affairs, migration policies, and EU-Japan relations. The views expressed in this piece are her own. The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. This commentary, like all publications of the European Council on Foreign Relations, represents only the views of its authors.

JAPANESE CITIZENSHIP Naturalization to Japan by Hyong-Jin KWON

There are an estimated 700,000 dual citizens past the age of 22 living in Japan with uncountably numerous expats abroad. Dual citizenship is technically only legal in Japan until the age of 22, at which point an individual is required to make a “declaration of citizenship,” effectively asking dual citizens to give up their claim on at least one of their countries of origin. Some Japanese friends of mine living in Europe having European dual nationality are not willing to disclose their illegal passports to benefit local advantages outside of Japan like most chinese dual nationality holders as well as overseas born children.

In Japan, citizenship is defined by the “right of blood.” called jus sanguinis citizenship for upholding birthright-transmission law of ethnicity and descent without respecting“right of soil”born in the territory of Japan. You are only a citizen if you have at least one parent whose blood can be classified as Japanese except some based on naturalization and refugee status.

In 2008 conservative lawmakers proposed that DNA testing become part of the process necessary to determine Japanese citizenship, suggesting that biological markers could identify Japanese blood over foreign blood. It promotes a Japanese ethnostate, an ideal citizen composed of 100 percent racially Japanese. Japanese nationality refers more to the connecting characteristic of ethnicity based on‘blood’.

Koreans living in Japan without nationality

The ethnic Koreans living in Japan, known as "Zainichi Koreans," (The word Zainichi refers to the ethnic Korean community that arrived in Japan during the 1910- 45 occupation of Korea and stayed on after Japan's defeat in World War II) , are permanent residents with South Korean nationality and a South Korean passport, and "Chosen-seki" (Korean domicile) or those who have chosen not to have nationality. Chosen-seki is a status as being stateless or having an alternative nationality which can travel overseas by being issued temporary travel documents.

In 1947, Japan ordered the Korean people in Japan to list their nationality as "Chosen (last kingdom of Korea)." Despite discrimination, Chosen-seki Zainichi in Japan said they stand solidly by their

status. However, this status continues to be treated differently by the society that he belongs to.

Between 1868 and 2015, 581,000 people have legally become Japanese. And, even today, thousands of people are naturalized each year. (www.turning- japanese.info). On a technical level, the Japanese requirements of citizenship are similar to those of many European countries : eligible based on sustainable economic independance with a stable source of income (any monthly salary above 250 000 yen approximately 2200 USD) as well as a certain language level in five consecutive years physically and legally in the country. And you must be willing to give up all your other nationalities.

Dual citizenship in doublebelonging.

This duplicity is the nature of citizenship to uphold humanity while simultaneously denying it. For the Roman philosopher Cicero, one of the first to consider the idea of the citizen, explained : In return for completing certain civic responsibilities (say, paying your taxes and following road signs), citizens are offered rights: protection from the state, the ability to claim nationality.

More than a thousand years later, Hannah Arendt echoed this same sentiment by famously calling citizenship “the right to have rights.” In her view, citizenship was a necessary vehicle to deliver human rights. One needs a state to fulfill them. Taken backwards, this implies that without a government’s acknowledgement of citizenship, a person can be stripped of the rights inherent to their existence. In other words, if you’re not a citizen, you’re not fully a person.

Contrary to USA, most European countries accepting dual citizenship,

Japan still accepts single nationality based on its restrictive immigration law. Its fundamentally competitiveness with demographic trends of aging and shirinking population needs to challenge adopting migrants and naturalization policies.

Amsterdam grant the local franchise to noncitizens who reside in the metropolis for at least five years through their employment. These city-citizens are then entitled to have their interests and voices represented in citywide elections and to form political parties. The noncitizens gain political standing and the protection of the enabling locality without reference to their place of birth or bloodline. In this respect, the ‘jus nexi’ reform is informed by reinvigorated definitions of membership at the international and local levels…(view of Ayelet Shachar) This reconception highlights the value of an actual, real, everyday, and meaningful web of relations and human interaction.

Japan started the working holiday programmes first with Australia in 1980. A working holiday visa is a special visa for young people of 23 countries between the age of 18 and 30 (25 in case of some countries), to stay in Japan for up to one year. Working holiday visa holders are allowed to work part time while staying in Japan. Of late, the annual number of the youth who obtain Japanese working holiday visas totals nearly 15,000.

Foreign tourists in Japan set to hit record 30 million in 2018. Chinese and Vietnamese workers account for almost half the total number of foreign workers in Japan. There were 1,460,463 foreign workers in Japan as of the end of October 2018.

As more and more humans cross more and more borders in search of jobs, security and a better future, the need to confront, assimilate or expel strangers strains political systems and collective identities that were shaped in less fluid times. As europeans have transcended the cultural differences of Greeks-French-Spanish-Germans, despite recently suffering a few million impovershied refugees and BREXIT issues, we hope that Europe can find a path enabling to keep the gates open to strangers without being destabilized by people who don't share its values. Perhaps this formula ‘jus nexi’ could illustrate Japanese new progressing immigration policies to share the cultural values of different races in the future.

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