Despite both domestic and international criticism, Japan remains on course to enforce stricter rules on people seeking refugee status on June 10.

Critics say the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law could force asylum-seekers to return to their home countries where they face persecution.

Under the previous law, deportation orders were suspended if the individual’s refugee status application was pending.

The revised law will allow the government to deport individuals who are waiting for a decision on their application if it is their third attempt to gain the status.

Exceptions are allowed for applicants who produce documents showing “reasonable grounds” to be recognized as a refugee.

The Diet passed the legal revisions last year despite a fierce outcry from opposition parties.

At the ordinary Diet session in 2023, the central government said the number of foreigners who refused deportation or repatriation orders increased to 4,233 by the end of 2022.

It also said some of them have repeatedly applied for refugee status just to stay in Japan.

Japan is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which defines a refugee as a person who has fled his or her home country because of fears of persecution on racial, religious or other grounds. Refugees must not be repatriated to countries where they face persecution, according to the convention.

Japan has faced international criticism over its low rate of granting refugee status. Calls have grown that refugee screening process should be reviewed, not the law.

Some courts have recently overturned the government’s rejections of refugee status applications.

In January, the Nagoya High Court ruled that a 45-year-old Rohingya man, whose refugee application had been rejected four times, should be recognized because “objective facts exist that would put (him) in fear of persecution.”

The court criticized the government for “lacking an understanding of the situation of those who apply for refugee status.”

The man from Myanmar lives in Nagoya with his wife and two children, both in elementary school.

“If I had not gone to court and had been deported, my family would have been torn apart,” said the man, who now has permanent resident status.

“But who would be held responsible if someone else who is a refugee but not recognized is deported and something happens to the person?” he asked.

In December 2023, the Tokyo High Court overturned the government’s decision and recognized a Ugandan man as a refugee.

In May this year, the Nagoya District Court recognized a Syrian man as a refugee after the government rejected his application.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the refugee recognition rate in 2022 was 68.6 percent in the United Kingdom, 45.7 percent in the United States, and 20.9 percent in Germany. Japan’s rate was 2 percent.

In 2023, Japan recognized a record high 303 refugees, bringing the rate up to 3.8 percent.

However, excluding Afghans, many of whom worked for the Japanese government before the Taliban returned to power, only 66 people were recognized as refugees, and Japan’s recognition rate was less than 1 percent.

A 22-year-old Kurdish man who resides in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, lives anxiously.

An estimated 3,000 Kurds from Turkey and other Middle East countries live in Kawaguchi and Warabi, another city in the prefecture.

Many of them have applied for refugee status multiple times.

The man was only 11 years old when he came to Japan with his mother and younger sister, following his father.

He attended public elementary and junior high schools in the city and has many Japanese friends.

But he does not have residence status and is preparing to apply for refugee status for the third time.

The government intends to grant special residency permits for family units with children under 18 who were born in Japan and are attending elementary, junior high and senior high schools.

The permits will not be granted if the parents had entered Japan illegally.

The Kurdish man has a younger brother who was born in Japan. But the family has not heard from the government if the boy is eligible for the special permit.

“Everything I have is in Japan,” the man said. “I want a status of residence and to continue living in Japan.”

Eriko Suzuki, a professor of immigration policy at Kokushikan University, said that Japan in recent years has expanded its acceptance of foreign workers while strengthening control and monitoring to remove “undesirable foreigners.”

“The revised law is one such example, and its enforcement could result in repatriating people who should be protected,” Suzuki said. “The UNHRC Special Rapporteur has criticized the law as failing to meet international human rights standards.

“A system should be established whereby a third-party organization independent of the government is involved in the screening of refugees whose lives are at risk.”

(This article was written by Kazumichi Kubota, Takuya Asakura, Tomonori Asada, Sokichi Kuroda and Saori Kuroda.)