Photo/Illutration Foreign nationals detained at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau shout to supporters gathered outside the facility. (Rei Kishitsu)

The Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau is located just minutes away by bus from JR Shinagawa Station in the center of the capital, but it might as well be another world apart.

The main floor handles visa extensions and other procedural matters for foreign nationals, while the upper floors house those being detained for overstaying their visas.

Some have applied for refugee status, while others with families in Japan do not want to return on a permanent basis to their native lands.

Those held at the bureau have a shared interest in the outcome of deliberations now before the Diet on legislation to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.

One objective of the revision is to do away with long detentions for foreign overstayers. There have been instances of people being held for more than two years as well as deaths from hunger strikes.

The situation in Japan has sparked intense international criticism.

However, supporters of foreign nationals held in detention argue that the planned revision would make things worse. They assert that the rights of immigrants and refugees in Japan would be trampled on.

The United Nations and U.S. State Department are among entities that have cast a critical eye on the Japanese policy of detaining individuals for indefinite periods even without an arrest warrant.

Wishma Sandamali, a 33-year-old Sri Lankan woman who died in March while in detention at a facility operated by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau, likely spoke for many detainees when she told members of a support group who visited her three days before her death, “Please take me home with you today.”

Related News