Refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos will no longer be permitted to bring their family members to Japan after March 31, 2004, the government decided at Friday's Cabinet meeting.
According to the Cabinet Secretariat, the government decided to terminate the policy, which has been in place for more than two decades, after concluding that the political situations in the three countries have stabilized.
Some 11,000 refugees from the three countries have settled permanently in Japan between 1980 and 2002, of which about 80 percent are Vietnamese, the secretariat said. There were about 150 such refugees admitted each year over the past five years, it said.
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