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JAPAN’S GREETING TO FOREIGN ARRIVALS: FINGERPRINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHING


Originally published November 18, 2007 at 12:00 am
Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama says fingerprints and digital facial photos can
help nab terrorists traveling on fake passports.


The kind of greeting a foreigner receives at immigration upon arrival at an
international airport can be a good, if imperfect, indication...


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By
Bruce Wallace

TOKYO — The kind of greeting a foreigner receives at immigration upon arrival at
an international airport can be a good, if imperfect, indication of the country
that waits on the other side of the barrier.

London’s Heathrow? Long queues and lousy service.



New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International? Crumbling infrastructure and
over-the-top bureaucracy.




Some Middle Eastern airports? Slow-moving lines that can be circumvented with
the right connections and cash.


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Now the Japanese government has created new immigration procedures for foreign
visitors that critics say are all too revealing about official attitudes toward
foreigners.

On Tuesday, Japan will begin fingerprinting and photographing non-Japanese
travelers as they pass through immigration at air and sea ports. The government
says the controls are a necessary security measure aimed at preventing a
terrorist attack in Japan.

The new system is modeled on the U.S. program instituted in 2003 that requires
most travelers coming to the United States to provide fingerprints and facial
photos when they apply for visas. But the Japanese system goes further by
requiring foreign residents — in addition to visitors — to be photographed and
fingerprinted.

There are exceptions: diplomats, children younger than 16, U.S. military
personnel serving in Japan, and long-term residents of Korean and Chinese
descent whose presence in the country largely is owed to Imperial Japan’s
overseas conquests. But all other foreigners will be scanned each time upon
entry.

Critics say the data collection is a dubious terrorism-fighting measure, instead
reflecting the government’s desire for closer surveillance of foreigners.

“The Japanese government has a long history of not wanting long-term foreign
residents, and they really feel they need more control over foreigners,” said
Sonoko Kawakami, of the Japanese chapter of Amnesty International. “The
government just wants to gather as much information as possible on people.”



The only terrorist spectaculars in Japanese history have come from homegrown
groups: Japanese Red Army radical leftists in the 1970s and ’80s, and the Aum
Shinrikyo religious fringe, which carried out the sarin-gas attacks on the Tokyo
subway in 1995.

But officials say Tokyo’s support for the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
makes Japan a target, and taking so-called “biometric data” such as fingerprints
and digital facial photos is the only way to nab terrorists traveling on fake
passports.

At least that has been the contention of Japan’s justice minister. He even
offered a bizarre personal anecdote to explain how easy it was for non-Japanese
to sneak into the country. “A friend of my friend is a member of al-Qaida,”
Kunio Hatoyama told foreign reporters in Tokyo, saying that the man had entered
Japan numerous times using fake passports and disguises.

Hatoyama later backtracked slightly on his story, distancing himself from his
connection to al-Qaida and raising suspicions that he had embellished his
anecdote to press the case for fingerprinting foreigners. But the justice
minister has long been among those senior public officials who believe Japan is
too open to overseas workers. When he became justice minister in August,
Hatoyama made clear he had no intention of proceeding with earlier plans to open
the doors to more unskilled workers.




That, he warned, could lead to an increase in crime.

Statistics, however, show that crimes committed by foreign visitors are falling.
And despite alarm about particularly sensational crimes that attract media
attention, Japan’s overall crime rate is declining or flat.



That hasn’t stopped some senior Japanese politicians from stoking anti-immigrant
fires by claiming that foreigners living in Japan are committing a higher
proportion of crimes, sending bureaucrats in search of ways to weed out the
“good” foreigners, presumably those with money to invest, from “bad” ones, such
as the Chinese pickpocket gangs that get so much media attention here.

The new immigration system appears to be one answer. Fingerprinting is actually
a resumption of a system that was abandoned in 2000 after strong protests by
long-term Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese residents who resented being
fingerprinted in their own country. A jittery, post-Sept. 11 America provided
the initiative for the Japanese to revive it.

The law instituting the new regime passed Parliament last year with little
outcry. The Federation of Japanese Bar Associations was a lonely critical voice,
complaining that fingerprinting people who had been granted residency was an
infringement on civil liberties. But the government avoided a repeat showdown
with the Koreans and Chinese by exempting them from the new requirements.

The fingerprinting issue underscores the Japanese dilemma in dealing with
foreigners. In this age of increased global mobility, the threat of terrorism,
while remote, is plausible.




But the Japanese government needs more foreigners. Japan has low unemployment by
global standards and faces a demographic crunch as its population ages and work
force shrinks.

And Japan still is searching for ways to address its tourist deficit at a time
when well-heeled travelers have a widening array of Asian destination choices.


Bruce Wallace


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