By KAZUMICHI KUBOTA/ Staff Writer
August 4, 2023 at 14:47 JST
The building that houses the Immigration Services Agency of Japan (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The government is considering granting residency to the children of foreign nationals who grow up in Japan but who later are threatened with deportation together with their parents, sources said.
Dubbed a humanitarian move, it would target children who are born in Japan, may speak Japanese as their first language and may have thrived in the Japanese educational system.
“In many cases, (the children) are not at fault,” Justice Minister Ken Saito said recently.
Concern surrounds those children whose parents are judged to be in Japan illegally. Currently, these children receive the status of “provisional release,” which grants them temporary release from immigration detention.
They cannot work, and they need approval to travel outside the prefecture where they live.
As of the end of last year, there were 4,233 foreign nationals who refused to return to their home counties after receiving a deportation order, according to the Immigration Services Agency.
Of these, 201, or fewer than 5 percent of the total, were children under 18 who had been born and raised in Japan.
Saito referred to the matter in June when the Diet enacted a revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, which allows authorities to deport a person seeking refugee status after their application is rejected twice.
“We would like to come to a conclusion (about their protection) as soon as possible,” he said.
The government is considering under what conditions it would grant children special permission to remain in Japan. For example, it might take into account the parents’ living conditions and the children’s ages.
During deliberations in the Lower House on the revised immigration law, the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan demanded child protection be included in the law.
In response, the ruling coalition proposed stipulating that “children’s interests” be taken into consideration when determining whether to give special permission to stay in Japan.
However, the negotiations fell through, and the final version of the revision did not include such wording.
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