Episode 88: Japan's plan to clamp down on asylum seekers
A bill is working its way through the Diet that will make it even harder for asylum seekers to attain refugee status in Japan. Japan is a country that is good at many things, but accepting refugees is not one of them. In 2019, just ...
Japanese society warms to asylum-seekers despite the government's cold shoulder
Hilmneh Tegegn came to Japan from Ethiopia 11 years ago seeking refugee status here and seemed to do everything right. After more than a decade of waiting, he finally got a visa — to the United States.
Asylum-seekers in Japan are stuck in bureaucratic limbo
At the end of June, a Nigerian man in his 40s died at an immigration detention center in Nagasaki. According to a support group, the man had been on a hunger strike to protest his lengthy confinement, which had continued for more than three ...
French restaurants look to asylum seekers to fill jobs but face bureaucratic delays
Restaurateurs in France want the government to speed up its asylum process and make it easier to identify suitable staff to help them fill thousands of jobs they say are increasingly snubbed by French workers. The hotel, cafe and restaurant union GNI-Synhorcat says some businesses ...
Scientific study finds asylum seekers boosting European economies
Asylum seekers moving to Europe have raised their adopted nations' economic output, lowered unemployment and not placed a burden on public finances, scientists said on Wednesday. An analysis of economic and migration data for the last three decades found asylum seekers added to gross domestic ...
ICE sending 1,600 immigration detainees to federal prisons, triggering outcry among rights advocates
U.S. authorities are transferring into federal prisons about 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, officials told Reuters on Thursday, in the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees amid a Trump administration crackdown on people entering the country illegally. An ICE spokeswoman ...
9% rise in overstayers detained over six months puts spotlight on 'provisional release' program
The rise seems to correlate with a Justice Ministry crackdown on “provisional releases,” which detainees allegedly abuse to earn money before deportation.
Japan's refugee-screening system sets high bar
Last year, Japan granted refugee status to just 20 out of a record-high 19,629 applicants. After the figure was released in February, global and domestic coverage was noticeably polarized. Some slammed Japan's strict asylum policy, saying that the world's third-largest economy has failed to meet ...
U.S. stalls over Canadian request to rewrite asylum seeker agreement
Canada wants to change a bilateral agreement to allow it to turn back thousands of asylum seekers walking across the border but the United States is not cooperating, according to a Canadian official with knowledge of the discussions. Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, or ...
Japan saw record number of refugee applicants in 2017, Justice Ministry says
The ministry attributes the surge to a rise in economic immigrants — what the government calls those who apply for refugee status to land jobs.
Work permits for asylum seekers are to be limited on the back of a sharp rise in the number of applicants who are believed to be just seeking jobs.
In 2017, JT readers helped aid refugees, educate children and preserve Laotian forests
Donations made last year by readers of The Japan Times have been used to help asylum-seekers start a new life in Japan, to support the empowerment of female Syrian refugees, to offer basic education to children in the Philippines and to preserve Laotian forests. In ...
