Nigeria Abroad
In 2019, a Nigerian migrant died while on a hunger strike at a center in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The 40-year-old asylum seeker was protesting being detained for over three years, and his death, as well as well those of 14 others, sparked outrage and drew international attention to the country’s harsh immigration policies.
Consequently, Japan’s Ministry of Justice set up a subcommittee which proposed to change extant immigration law, part of which criminalized refusal for deportation. In the same 2019, Japan had granted asylum to less than 1 percent of refugees and asylum-seekers who applied, despite having the third-largest economy in the world.In 2019, a Nigerian migrant died while on a hunger strike at a center in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The 40-year-old asylum seeker was protesting being detained for over three years, and his death, as well as well those of 14 others, sparked outrage and drew international attention to the country’s harsh immigration policies.
“Germany, which has a similar GDP, took around 53 percent of refugees in the same year,” a Foreign Policy report notes. “Japan needs the labor and population growth that immigrants could offer. With an aging population and a rapidly decreasing workforce, classrooms in some rural parts of the country are empty and many farms are deserted.”
Still, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s cabinet last month approved revisions to the country’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act—an amendment expected to be passed into law shortly. The amendment would remove an existing provision that suspends a deportation order while an asylum-seeker appeals a decision or reapplies for recognition.
Rejected applicants who refuse a deportation order would be transferred into the criminal system. With the law’s revisions, asylum-seekers could apply only twice before receiving a deportation order, with penalties imposed upon refusal. Also, the new amendment does not add a limit to the indefinite period of detention for asylum-seekers who have been issued deportation orders, despite condemnation from the United Nations and from human rights groups.
Lawyers and groups assisting asylum-seekers in the repeal or reapplication process would be considered “accomplices in crime,” according to a source cited by Foreign Policy.
Part of the implications of the new amendment include that children of immigrants born and raised in Japan who haven’t been granted residency; spouses of Japanese nationals; and people who have lived in Japan for decades—could be affected.
“Some provisions in the amendment leave much to the discretion of immigration authorities. One mechanism allows certain detainees to be released if they can pay up to 3 million yen, or around $28,000; eligibility is determined by the authorities,” the FP report notes.
Many members of the opposition have come out against the amendment and Japan’s refugee policy more generally.
“To make it very simple, it’s the wrong direction,” said Michihiro Ishibashi of the Constitutional Democracy Party. “They are supposed to improve the immigration policy or refugee recognition schemes in Japan, but, on the contrary, they are trying to make it tougher. I am personally very much ashamed that our refugee recognition is only 0.4 percent—20 to 30 people each year. We really need to take more responsibility for this.”
Given a culture of national purity, the Japanese public is unwelcoming to immigration and racism thrives.
The death of the unnamed Nigerian, alongside those of 14 others who were all on hunger strike over degrading detention, had sparked a flicker of hope, especially with the changes that followed amid the heat of international backlash against Japan. Sadly, if this law comes into force, such situations could repeat—especially for a country that pays little heed to human rights outcry. For a moment, those deaths later seemed to have had some meaning.
