Quick heads up!
Hey everyone, I wanted to share a little info with you. As of November 2nd, Japan has reestablished a policy of fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners who enter the country or foreigners who leave and return to the country. This was passed by the Prime Minister despite a 90% public opinion poll against the initiative. Prime Minister Hatoyama literally said, "A friend of a friend" was an operative in Al-Qaeda and that he entered Japan disguising himself with mustaches and beards... which of course couldn't fool an electronic fingerprinting machine! Furthermore, he said that the Al-Qaeda 'friend of a friend' had given warnings about Bali bombings in 2002... Erm... excuse me... so a 'friend of a friend' warned about the bombings in Bali... and you didn't act on them... and what is the Prime Minister of Japan doing with a friend who is a friend of an Al-Qaeda operative? Honestly, that seems to be the stupidest cover story to defend a piece of entirely unnecessary legislation I've ever heard of. Does he not realize that in addition to being entirely unbelievable, that story also makes him look HORRIBLE in the process? I'd also like to note that Japan has not had a SINGLE act of terrorism committed by foreigners since World War II... and what happened in World War II were acts of war, not acts of terrorism.
The above bothered me... but not enough to act until the Nara JET midyear seminar last Thursday when I learned that the Japanese government was cutting subsidies to the JET Program. Starting next year prefectures will no longer receive subsidies for the hiring of JETs. So far seven of Japan's forty-five prefectures have announced they are leaving the JET Program due to its high cost. In a few years cities and other municipalities will also lose their subsidies. Once I learned that the JET Program was losing funding at the exact same time the Japanese government will be spending gross amounts of money on this biometric data collection program, I really have become outraged. There is an online petition asking for the repeal of the biometric data collection law, which I urge you to sign here: "Abolition of Non Japanese fingerprinting program"
This is what I wrote:
I am an American citizen living in Japan. I am offended that the Japanese government would consider funding such a project at a time when they are cutting funding to the JET Program (as well as to education in general), which provides children in schools and entire communities with international cultural exchanges that would otherwise be impossible. Japan has not suffered a single terrorist attack from foreigners since World War II. The public policy of cutting funding to educational intercultural exchange, while at the same time spending vast sums of money to implement a biometric data collection scheme seems highly xenophobic. Japan needs to teach its children to cooperate and interact with the international world, not fear it!
The above bothered me... but not enough to act until the Nara JET midyear seminar last Thursday when I learned that the Japanese government was cutting subsidies to the JET Program. Starting next year prefectures will no longer receive subsidies for the hiring of JETs. So far seven of Japan's forty-five prefectures have announced they are leaving the JET Program due to its high cost. In a few years cities and other municipalities will also lose their subsidies. Once I learned that the JET Program was losing funding at the exact same time the Japanese government will be spending gross amounts of money on this biometric data collection program, I really have become outraged. There is an online petition asking for the repeal of the biometric data collection law, which I urge you to sign here: "Abolition of Non Japanese fingerprinting program"
This is what I wrote:
I am an American citizen living in Japan. I am offended that the Japanese government would consider funding such a project at a time when they are cutting funding to the JET Program (as well as to education in general), which provides children in schools and entire communities with international cultural exchanges that would otherwise be impossible. Japan has not suffered a single terrorist attack from foreigners since World War II. The public policy of cutting funding to educational intercultural exchange, while at the same time spending vast sums of money to implement a biometric data collection scheme seems highly xenophobic. Japan needs to teach its children to cooperate and interact with the international world, not fear it!