Photo/Illutration Some of the refugee examination counselors hold a news conference in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on May 30. (Kazumichi Kubota)

New facts related to the bill to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, which is being considered by the Upper House, have cast serious doubt over the assumptions on which the proposal is based.

The bill should not be enacted without clarifying the facts and their implications.

Under the current law, foreign nationals overstaying their visas cannot be deported if they are applying for recognition as refugees. The bill is designed to allow the government to deport illegal immigrants seeking refugee status after two rejections of their applications.

The government claims the limit to the number of applications that can be made is necessary because some foreign nationals illegally staying in Japan abuse the system to avoid deportation.

Errors or lapses in the screening of asylum applications, however, could lead to the deportation of people who deserve protection as refugees to a country where they can face persecution.

Remarks made by two refugee examination counselors involved in screening applications for refugee status have raised serious questions about the process. As they testified as unsworn witnesses at the Diet, they claimed there are actually few asylum seekers who should be recognized as refugees.

In 2021, Fusako Yanase, honorary chair of the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan, a nonprofit organization devoted to supporting refugees, said only six out of the some 2,000 refugee applications she had examined warranted protection as refugees.

Yanase made the remarks at the Diet as a witness during deliberations on an aborted bill similar to the one now being considered.

Last week, Akihiro Asakawa, the author of books on immigration control, said he had screened some 50 refugee application documents per day.

These remarks have prompted opposition lawmakers and lawyers well-versed in refugee recognition issues to voice doubts about the neutrality and fairness of the process.

Refugee examination counselors are private-sector experts who, working in a team of three, check appeals on refugee applications rejected by the immigration control authority and write their opinions on the cases for the justice minister.

The Immigration Services Agency has disclosed that Yanase was responsible for a quarter of the some 4,700 cases handed in 2022 and one-fifth of the approximately 6,700 rejected applications in 2021.

This indicates that a small number of specific individuals among 111 refugee examination counselors handle disproportionately large numbers of cases.

In a May 30 news conference, six of these counselors referred to a lack of transparency in the operation of the system. They said there are applicants who should be recognized as refugees even after their applications have been rejected several times.

One serious problem with the bill is that its necessity and reasonability is based on the assumption that many refugee applications are cases of misuse and abuse of the system.

The agency’s report on issues concerning the law published in February quoted Yanase’s remarks saying that the ratios of accepted refugee applications are low because there are few legitimate refugees among applicants.

In an Upper House Judicial Affairs Committee session this week, Justice Minister Ken Saito admitted that Yanase’s comments were part of the reasons behind the proposal to revise the law.

Clearly, a rival bill submitted to the Diet by a group of opposition lawmakers, primarily from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, is more convincing and reasonable than the government’s bill.

The opposition proposal calls for entrusting the work to screen applications for refugee status to a committee independent of the government.

The justice and immigration control authorities have a duty to respond to questions raised about the refugee recognition process even by some of the refugee examination counselors involved.

The Upper House should seek the opinions of a wider range of people involved in the process to conduct a fundamental review of the bill.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 1

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