Dear Japanese lawmakers,
In mid-March, I opened up my newspaper to find an article about the government granting one-year temporary resident status to Noriko Calderon, an ethnic Filipino girl. I was shocked by the news because Noriko was born and raised in Japan. And just like most of her ethnic Japanese counterparts, Noriko said she loves her native country. Still, the Japanese government treated her like an "alien." As far as I am concerned, Noriko is not a foreigner, and she shouldn't need any special permission to live in Japan. Sure, her parents are from the Philippines, so she is of Filipino ancestry. But for that matter, all the children born to Japanese parents in Brazil, the U.S. and the Philippines are of Japanese ancestry. Does that make them "aliens" in their countries of birth?
People of Japanese ancestry, or nikkeijin, have been accepted as full members of other societies. According to the Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad, there are about 2.6 million of them living in their adopted countries. Some have even become lawmakers in their country of birth or adoption. But the contrast with Japanese attitudes is sharp. The government here maintains a racist and xenophobic system under which people who fulfill every internationally accepted qualification for citizenship are denied it.