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UPDATE: Saturday, June 12, 2010      The Japan Times Weekly    2003年9月27日号 (バックナンバー)
 
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SLEEPLESS IN SETAGAYA

Permanent? No, just not moving

By ROBERT HALLAM

* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

A friend who returned home to Canada several years ago used to joke that I would never be able to settle here until I got rid of a suitcase that I always kept packed and ready for a quick getaway.

Well, despite the suitcase, which is still ready and waiting, according to the Justice Ministry I am a fixture, rooted, a permanent resident.

When I changed my status a lot of people back home thought I was renouncing my citizenship and turning my back forever on England. I come from a relatively small, insular town in the north of England where views of the outside world can be somewhat homespun and parochial, where visa means the bit of plastic that you use to buy things with when you are broke and where expat means a former New England Patriots player -- parochial maybe, but home to some fanatical and very knowledgeable sports fans.

So I understood their misgivings, although I was disappointed that they thought I could be so disloyal to dear old Blighty.

I told them that it was a natural progression from temporary visa through spouse or child of a Japanese national status to permanent resident. That it wasn't a "quickie" citizenship of convenience so that I could play soccer for Japan, get a sumo pension or become a heavyweight ta- rento. But the more I explained, the more I realized that it was about convenience.

It is more than three years since I bowed to my wife's wishes and changed my visa status.

As I have a natural aversion to filling in forms and dealing with bureaucracy in any language, my wife offered the carrot, that such a change would make it easier for me to get a housing loan -- I didn't really understand this because I had a loan that was going to take me 123 years to pay off and I didn't think that I needed another one -- and the stick, that this was something that she wanted to happen.

But after learning that becoming a permanent resident would mean no more visits to the immigration office, apart from whenever I needed a re-entry permit -- if you have a valid visa why do you need a re-entry permit? -- I didn't need any inducements, or threats.

So perhaps you can imagine how pleased I was and proud of the wisdom of my decision -- OK my wife's decision -- when I heard that the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau was moving to the warehouse district in the nether reaches of Tokyo Bay. And although the facilities at the new office -- restaurant, convenience store, kids' corners, a detention center for overstayers waiting deportation and color-coded departments so that we simple-minded aliens know the correct line to toe -- are a supposedly vast improvement on the gun-metal gray of that bastion of red tape in Otemachi, it's in the back of beyond in Minato Ward.

I've heard people say that it was probably located so far off the beaten track so that its inaccessibility would persuade people not to even try extending their visa or applying for a re-entry permit. Speaking as an old bureaucrat, that's an old bureaucratic trick: The more difficult and complicated it is to apply for anything -- benefit, loan, subsidy, grant -- the fewer people will apply.

And banishing aliens to the outer limits is nothing new nor is it solely the province of Japan.

The London immigration office serving the majority of Southern England where most visa-requiring aliens live, work and study is two train journeys and a bus ride from Central London in the wilds of South Croydon -- another world altogether.

It is aptly called Lunar House.

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 27, 2003
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