A/HRC/17/33/Add.3
Global Square in 2007, a space of 900m2 where foreign residents hold a “National Day”
every Sunday afternoon to introduce their home country and culture.
D.
Proposed new migration policy
32.
In June 2008, the political party in power at the time submitted the Draft Migration
Policy Framework to the Prime Minister’s Office, aiming at presenting a draft migration
bill in the 2009 Diet session, which bill was not adopted due to the change of Government
that took place in 2009. The major points of the proposed policy were:
(a)
Promotion of multicultural coexistence and the integration of migrants
through comprehensive measures of social integration;
(b)
Creation of an agency for migration, responsible for managing migration
control, nationality and social integration measures;
(c)
Abolishment of the Trainees and Technical Interns Programme, replacing it
with an Employment Programme;
(d)
Partial introduction of nationality based upon jus soli;
(e)
Promotion of family-based migration;
(f)
Acceptance of migrants through economic partnership agreements; and
(g)
Promotion of “humanitarian migration”, including third-country resettlement
of refugees and protection of refugees from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
33.
The new Government has not taken these proposals forward. If adopted, these would
have represented a notable step forward in ensuring respect for migrants’ rights and their
integration in the host society.
V.
Major challenges in the protection of the human rights of
migrants
34.
Despite some positive measures adopted at the national and local level in recent
years, the Special Rapporteur found that many challenges remained to be addressed by the
Government in order to effectively protect the human rights of migrants and their children.
A.
Lack of comprehensive immigration policy
35.
While Japan started receiving migrant workers 20 years ago, it has yet to adopt a
comprehensive immigration policy that goes beyond managing the entry and stay of
migrants. It currently lacks a policy that demonstrates a real commitment to eradicate
discrimination against migrants and provides for long-term programmes designed to create
necessary conditions for the effective integration of migrants into the Japanese society.
Presently, only ad hoc provisional measures are implemented to assist certain categories of
migrants as needs arise. However, migration has become a permanent reality in Japan, as it
is in all other industrialized countries. As such, there is a critical need for a long-term vision
and policy that creates conditions which enable migrants to meaningfully exercise their
rights and potential as productive members of the Japanese society.
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