OSAKA — Members of an Osaka group supporting children of illegal immigrants in Japan will deliver to the United Nations letters from children facing deportation with their parents but who wish to remain in Japan to continue their studies, group members said.
The group will dispatch today two of its members to Geneva to deliver the letters to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the members said.
The deportation of children by Japanese immigration authorities deprives children of their right to education, the members said in a news conference, adding that there are 20 such children who are asking the Japanese government for special visas.
The group will urge the committee to recommend to the Japanese government that it grant the visas.
Zho Pengyu, 15, who is from China and entered a public senior high school in Osaka Prefecture in April, read out his letter at the news conference, saying, "I am hoping to study hard and go on to a Japanese college. My whole life exists in Japan."
The members will deliver letters written by 12 Peruvian and Chinese students who attend elementary, junior and senior high schools in prefectures including Osaka and Hyogo in western Japan.