On Nov. 20, Japan's new immigration policy will begin treating all foreign nationals, including long-term residents, as suspicious aliens to be fingerprinted and photographed every time we re-enter the country. Offensive, retrograde and discriminatory though such a policy is, its implementation now seems a foregone conclusion. What I want to know is whether the immigration department will have the effrontery to continue charging us for re-entry permits.
The re-entry permit has never served any legitimate purpose and -- at ¥10,000 for a multiple re-entry permit -- amounts to nothing more than an additional tax on foreigners. On top of that, it entails yet one more desk at immigration before which we have to wait in line to fill out forms containing such monumentally pointless questions as "Why do you need a multiple re-entry permit?" I always have to restrain myself from writing "I give up; why do I?"
Given that I have a valid work visa in my passport and a gaijin registration card (without which I can't legally set foot outside my door) in my pocket, why do I need any re-entry permit at all? The single advantage deriving from a re-entry permit has been that it allowed the holder to join the faster-moving lines for re-entering Japanese citizens, rather than having to trudge through the snail-paced non-Japanese lines.
This recognized us as returning residents with de facto rights similar to those of Japanese citizens. Once those rights are stripped away by this discriminatory new policy, what justification can there possibly be for the additional inconvenience and expense of a re-entry permit?
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