A/HRC/17/33/Add.3 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, conducted an official visit to Japan from 23 to 31 March 2010 at the invitation of the Government. In Tokyo, Nagoya, Toyota and Hamamatsu, the Special Rapporteur met with ministers, officials of central and local governments, international organizations, lawyers, schoolteachers, academics, members of civil society organizations and migrant women and men, and their children. He also visited the Higashi-Nihon Immigration Centre in Ushiku and foreign schools and met with migrants’ associations. 2. The Special Rapporteur expresses his gratitude to the Government for its cooperation and to the various organizations that provided support for his mission, in particular the International Organization for Migration and civil society organizations. II. General background: the migration phenomenon in Japan 3. At the end of 2009, the number of registered foreign residents in Japan was 2,186,121, which amounts to 1.71 per cent of the country’s total population of 127.5 million. While the number of registered foreign residents decreased by 0.03 per cent from the end of 2008, it has been on the rise since 1999. Chinese nationals are the largest foreign community (680,518) residing in Japan, followed by South and North Koreans (578,495), Brazilians (267,456), Filipinos (211,716) and Peruvians (57,464).1 The number of migrants in Japan is extremely low compared to other industrialized countries: 13.5 per cent in the United States of America, 13.1 per cent in Germany, 10.7 per cent in France and 7.4 per cent in Italy.2 4. In Japan, migrants are referred to as either “old comers” or “newcomers”. “Old comers” are mainly Chinese and Koreans, and their descendants, who came (or were forced to come) to Japan before or during the Second World War and remained after the end of the war. “Newcomers” refers to those who migrated to Japan more recently, mainly since the 1980s. 5. In the late 1970s, Indo-Chinese from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia sought asylum in neighbouring countries, including Japan. In the 1980s and 1990s, owing to the economic boom in Japan and the difficulty for domestic companies to secure workers, the number of migrant workers increased significantly, mainly originating from South-East Asia and Latin America. The major amendment to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 1990 allowed the Japanese descendents (up to the third generation) to acquire the longterm residential status without restrictions on employment in Japan. Owing to a strict migration policy which did not provide for a wide range of avenues for labour migration, however, many migrant workers entered with a short-term visa or under the residential status of entertainers or trainees, and became “overstayers”. As of January 2010, the estimated total number of irregular migrants in Japan is 110,000, owing to the vigorous nationwide track-down measures implemented over the past five years. 6. The considerable increase of migrants in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s generated challenges with regard to their access to social services, health, housing, children’s education, fair conditions of employment and their participation and integration into local 1 2 Japan. “Immigration Control 2010”, Ministry of Justice. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2008 Revision,POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2008 (2009). 3