Japan lets foreign students drain away due to immigration law

The number of foreign students in Japan totaled 117,000 in 2004 but the figure for those who obtained work visas amounted to only 5,264, showing that the percentage of foreign human resources staying in the country remains negligible.

The rise to 117,000 resulted largely from a plan the government drafted in 1983 to increase the number of foreign students to 100,000. However, Japan's immigration and refugee law in principle denies visas to non-Japanese workers without special skills.

Isao Nakagawa, a professor of politics and economics at Takushoku University who specializes in movements of international manpower, said Japan should aggressively accept foreigners who are highly capable in special subjects, to maintain domestic technologies.

He said Japanese companies will accelerate moves to shift production bases to other nations as a shortage of manpower becomes more serious due to the trend toward fewer children, adding that the trend will have a serious effect on employment for Japanese people.

Work visas are issued to applicants in 17 fields. Foreigners wishing to work in technical fields must be graduates of special colleges or have experience working in specialized areas for more than 10 years.

Dancers and other entertainers can acquire work visas if they have been working for more than two years in their home countries. More than 80 percent of about 158,000 foreigners coming to Japan on work visas in fiscal 2004 were those in the entertainment sector.

Kentaro Iemoto, who at 24 is president of Tokyo-based information technology venture company Clara Online Inc., said he remembers the frustration he felt in 2004 when the Immigration Bureau refused to issue a visa to a South Korean engineer he wanted to hire.
Officials said the applicant did not fit into the IT business because he was not a graduate in the field of science.

The Korean graduated in literature from a university in his country but became a specialist in communications while serving in the military.

Iemoto said the Korean could have immediately proved useful to his company, which has 38 employees including 15 foreigners.

The director of Tempstaff Universal Co. in Tokyo, 41-year-old Kazuyo Nozawa, said foreign students virtually have to seek part-time work in order to live in Japan, where prices are higher than in their home countries.

"They're pretty much forced into going to school, working (part-time) and returning to their quarters," Nozawa said. "Some of them grow tired (of that kind of life in Japan) and go home."
She also said many Japanese employers prevent foreigners from signing up for the social insurance system because they do not want to shoulder part of the cost of the insurance. They have not extricated themselves from the idea of paying low wages to foreigners, she added.
Tempstaff held a seminar for foreign students in Tokyo in February to teach them about Japanese "customs."

"If you arrive at work at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m.," a speaker told them, "Japanese think you have no will to work."

While taking notes, a Chinese graduate school student aspiring to become an engineer said, "I'd like to live in Japan for the rest of my life if I get a job either at Toyota Motor Corp. or Honda Motor Co."

Iemoto said that a business can grow fast if employees from various countries put their efforts together.

He said he does not pay any particular attention to nationalities when he hires employees since his company has business transactions with many foreign countries, expressing belief that the government's strict traditional view about foreign workers and specialized skill sets is not in sync with the times.

Nozawa said she thinks the government is wasting human resources that could be assets for Japan, including foreigners equipped with knowledge that they acquired in their home countries.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060404/kyodo/d8gpg3qo0.html