Number of foreigners overstaying visas in Japan nearly halves in 5 years

Tuesday 17th February, 09:21 AM JST

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samsarks at 12:58 PM JST - 18th February

Beelzebub says"Last night's NHK had a segment on Indonesians admitted to work at rest homes, "3K" jobs that have increasingly fewer takers, even with the spiraling unemployment. It seems Japan can't quite make up its mind on how to deal with these urursai Mongolians, Nigerians, Indonesians, and Lower Slobovians. But I fail to see how enforcement of draconian laws controlling the movements of foreign nationals will improve the life of the average citizen.

I dont think Japanese have problems with the countries you listed above and your so called"lower slobovians" .they have problems with you urusai Americans and europeans who think even without a college degree and been unable to say a single jp sentence correctly deserve a better place or job in Japan.such ignorant and arrogant people come on JT and write this stuff.let me tell you i am from your so called "lower slobovians" but i am highly educated and i work comfortably in an office in a jp company.Is it not such a contrast,that you teach english ?I think you can do better,pls comment constructively
samsarks at 01:13 PM JST - 18th February

Beelsebub says"Last night's NHK had a segment on Indonesians admitted to work at rest homes, "3K" jobs that have increasingly fewer takers, even with the spiraling unemployment. It seems Japan can't quite make up its mind on how to deal with these urursai Mongolians, Nigerians, Indonesians, and Lower Slobovians".

I dont think jp has a problem with the countries listed above and your so called "lower slobovians".They have a problem with some of you urusai Americans and europeans who think even without a college degree or your inability to say a simple sentence correct in jp should have a place or good job in japan.such ignorrant and arrogant people come on JT and display it.I am from your so called lower slobovians but I must assure you that i am highly educated and work comfortably in a jp officeand i think they dont have a problem with me.Is it not a contrast that you are teaching english?I think you can do better,comment constructively
taiko666 at 01:32 PM JST - 18th February

samsarks: Beelzebub is not criticising people from those countries, rather Japan's attitude towards them. However, he may or may not be correct in his assumption about Japanese attitudes. Personally, I think the J-Gov has exactly the same attitudes to all gaijin, regardless of origin.

But you seem to be making assumptions of your own; namely that all Americans and Europeans in Japan teach English, can't speak any Japanese, and think they have some special right to be in Japan. This suggests your own arrogance.

We're all gaijin together, and we all have to conform to the same strict immigration policies.
moonbeams at 02:54 PM JST - 18th February

timeon, you don't know how lucky you are.

Japan currently offers 1 and 3 year work visas. Your visa expires one month before your contract ended. So, you will get a new visa one month before your job ends. This will give you the freedom to change jobs or remain in the country worry free for 11 months if you should choose to do so.
moonbeams at 03:04 PM JST - 18th February

samsmarks,

It seems Japan can't quite make up its mind on how to deal with these urursai Mongolians, Nigerians, Indonesians, and Lower Slobovians.

Beelzebub was using sarcasm to illustrate the stereotypical foreign attitude of stereotypical Japanese attitudes to foreigners, as taiko666 pointed out.

By the way, I'm proud of the work I do as an English teacher. I'm happy that I have a chance to reach thousands of young people and hopefully inspire a little self confidence in their hearts. Oh, I have a degree, but so what?
samsarks at 03:31 PM JST - 18th February

there was a mistake in my first entry and was corrected in the second one by using the word"some of you urusai ......Also.I am not against teaching but i was taking it one on one with him on his comments
Sarge at 04:15 PM JST - 18th February

timeon - Your mistake was going to Shinagawa the other day instead of waiting until, say, a week before your visa expired in April. You could have received a visa from April 2009 to April 2010.
Nessie at 07:41 PM JST - 18th February

Looks like the fingerprinting law works. Now for the other half.

Bush, I would say that the loser half will learn from the winner half, so this will be the highwater of enforcement, as illegal immigrants learn how to dupe the system.
sharky1 at 08:01 PM JST - 18th February

And this contributes greatly to decreasing crime rate by foreigners
timeon at 08:28 PM JST - 18th February

Sarge, your point makes sense in the Japanese bureaucracy, but I thought that they would give me the visa until the expiration date of the contract I showed them. that should be normal, me thinks. Obviously, I was wrong and you are right... By the way, the reason I went now was that the office of the uni asked me to do it early, because of their bureaucratic issues. And I was happy to avoid the crowd
PepinGalarga at 08:40 PM JST - 18th February

last time i had to reapply didnt have to go to Shinagawa, just went to a regional office and it only took a couple hours time. may go for the permanent resident thing next time.
nanotechnology at 10:41 PM JST - 18th February
Nanotechnology,
- 3) there is bounty. Since 2004, for every foreigner who is overstaying in Japan you report to the authority, you will be given 300,000 yen bounty.*
Are you serious? I could have made a butt-ton of money in Yokosuka. I have to agree that one of the reasons for the decline is likely the Japanese economy.

Taka

Taka, Actually I am not sure if at this very moment, the bounty-system is still in place or not. Visit or call your nearest immigration bureau and ask for more information regarding this bounty. But be prepare of the guilt. The gaijin whom you will be reporting will be languishing in the jail for 1 year before deportation and will be fined with 3,000,000yen.

Since 2004, in Tokyo alone, more than 1,000 additional police and personnel were dispatched to look for illegal gaijin. Click here: http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/TOPICS/2004/04021003.htm
ThonTaddeo at 04:23 AM JST - 19th February

Nanotech, do you have a source for the police confiscating things in the apartments of visa violators? That's pretty scary stuff.
GW at 10:27 AM JST - 19th February

nanao

read yr link, I dont think I ever heard of that stuff, Japanese version of witch hunting, pretty scary, but at the same time looks like most are just pencil pushing beaurocrats so this may be just an amakudari scam for most involved.

Does anyone else ever recall this program in the news?? I mean having retired cops out hunting illegal foreigners in the city........ I never heard of that one, what the hell wud they do if they found one
Rekishika at 06:36 PM JST - 23rd February

When I read the articles, I don't read it as meant to say that the fingerprinting is responsible for the decline in visa overstaying. What I read is that that declined. And yes, they also say that fingerprinting was responsible for refusing entry of 846 people, to which they suggest that this helps stem the re-entry of those deported.

Interestingly enough, they say that 846 people have been refused entry based on biometrics. They do not state how many of those were correct...

We can, however, say something about the numbers. To understand this, it's important to understand that these kinds of devices fail in two kinds of ways. They can either identify someone as a person they are not (also known as a false positive), or fail to identify someone as a person they are (false negative). Setting one affects the other, if you try to lower the number of false positives, then you increase the number of false negatives and vice versa.

With fingerprint scanners, in tests it is common practice to set the devices so that the false positive rate is 1 in 10000. (see for instance NIST's 2003 Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation (http://fpvte.nist.gov/).

Taking the year mentioned (November 1st, 2007 - October 31st, 2008, there have been a total of 8,647,575 (http://www.tourism.jp/english/statistics/inbound.php). Divide by 10,000, and you get a number of likely false positives of 864 (...).

This doesn't prove anything of course, but I find the figures too closely related to be more than a coincidence. There is only a gap of 18 people (2%) between the expected number of false alarms and the number of people deported based on fingerprint scans.

Until I see evidence proving otherwise, I submit that the most likely explanation of the number deported is that the fingerprinting system merely succeeded in having 846 innocent people deported.