Japanese

"Red-tape"

When I heard the news, I could hardly believe that the Immigration Bureau made such a senseless judgment and I became shameful as a Japanese. A 13-year-old Thai girl, who lost his father by the traffic accident just before she was born, and lost her mother to a serious illness in May 2005, came to Japan in February, last year to rely on her grandmother who married Japanese. After that, grandmother's Japanese husband adopted the girl and applied to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau for "permanent resident status" in Oct. 2003, which allows her to reside in Japan within 3 years. She made this application while she was updating 90 days of short-term stay visa. However, the Ministry of Justice Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau turned down the application due to the reason that her case does not fulfill the qualification that the adopted child who is given permanent resident status should not be older than 6 years old. Furthermore, though she made re-application in this February, they dismissed it again in July. In the meantime, her short-term stay visa expired and she was almost ordered to leave Japan. I suppose there is an acknowledgement in the base of the judgment of Immigration Bureau that the increasing number of the illegal workers caused growing incidence of crimes, and therefore they did not want to set a new precedent, which leads to deregulation. However, we cannot understand why they can process things in such a businesslike manner without thinking of the significance of the result which the judgment bring about even though there is a fact that the adoption by a Japanese was already accepted by the family court and it is clear that this girl will not be able to survive without relatives after go back to Thailand. It is not only for the Ministry of Justice but also for all Japanese government offices that the top priority is given to maintain their own organization and profits of the beneficiaries of the service are always overlooked. By having collected about 6000 signatures of the people from the school and neighborhoods, justice minister ordered Immigration Bureau to reexamine the case and because of that, she could stave off a deportation. But probably, it has also influenced on the background that development of information technologies, such as the Internet, makes formation of public opinion easier. Though they act boldly to individual, once the fact come out in the wash, cowardly on the trend of public opinion is truly red-tape like behavior. (End)