There has been a groundswell of public debate on the nation’s immigration control and refugee management system.

The core question has been how to ensure appropriate treatment of foreign nationals illegally staying in Japan by the immigration authorities.

The Diet should not try to bring a premature conclusion to the debate.

The Lower House is now considering a bill to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law to improve the rules concerning the detention and deportation of foreign nationals staying in Japan without a proper visa.

The ruling coalition and some opposition parties are poised to pass the bill after some minor changes.

What is at issue is what should be done to prevent unreasonably prolonged detention of such foreigners at immigration facilities. But the bill submitted by the government offers no legal measure to allow independent reviews of decisions concerning detention such as judicial judgment.

That means the immigration authorities will continue to have broad and strong discretion over these decisions.

The bill also provides for an exception to the ban on deporting asylum seekers while their applications are being processed. This provision could lead to deportations of people who desperately need protection to countries where they can be persecuted.

The legislation should not be enacted without fundamental amendments.

But bipartisan talks for revisions to the bill among the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the LDP’s junior coalition partner, Komeito, the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the conservative opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party) failed to address such fundamental issues.

Have they forgot the fact that the legislative initiative to revise the law was prompted by a disturbing incident in 2019 in which a Nigerian male detainee in a detention center in Nagasaki Prefecture died from starvation after he refused to eat in protest against his prolonged detention?

Two years ago, when a similar bill was introduced, only to be scrapped after it was roundly criticized, Wishma Sandamali, a Sri Lankan woman who overstayed her visa, died from ill health following six and a half months of detention at a state facility in Nagoya.

We still have fresh memories of how these incidents provoked a wave of criticism about the inhumane treatment of immigration detainees that spread across the nation through social media and protest rallies.

In the face of these protests, the ruling and opposition parties began talks to revise the former bill with the shared recognition of the need to institutionalize effective measures to prevent unreasonable detention. But the bill was killed after the talks failed to produce an agreement.

The basic framework of the aborted bill has been carried over to the new one. Passing it with only minor revisions would be inconsistent with why and how the previous bill was discarded.

During the latest round of talks over the bill, lawmakers discussed adding a supplementary provision calling for consideration of entrusting an independent institution with the responsibility to process applications for refugee status.

This proposal should be realized before debate on the content of the bill.

It has long been pointed out that administrative work for protecting asylum seekers, which is based on the Refugee Convention and other international human rights norms, should be independent of the immigration inspection and residency management systems.

The Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council this month sent a letter to the Japanese government stating the proposed amendments to the law “appeared to fall short of international human rights standards in several aspects of the protection of the human rights of migrants.”

The Special Rapporteur delivered the same verdict on the former amendment bill introduced two years ago.

Justice Minister Ken Saito has downplayed the importance of the letter, which he said was not legally binding, and protested the “unilateral publication” of the opinion. But this is a matter that has a direct bearing on the human rights of foreign nationals in Japan.

It is impossible to create an immigration control system that is supported internationally without heeding the voices of the international community.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 28