As Minister Kimi Onoda accelerates a tougher foreign-resident policy and the opposition pushes back, Takafumi Horie's 'hardworking foreigners are effectively Japanese' remark split opinion over criteria and coexistence.
Several unrelated foreigner-related stories hit the boards at once: a Peruvian man without a medical license allegedly performed a delivery procedure in Fukuoka, a Chinese graduate student got a suspended sentence for a TOEIC impersonation scheme, a naturalized citizen proclaimed 'no god but Allah' at a Shinto shrine, and Ibaraki Prefecture launched a ¥10,000 bounty for reporting illegal foreign labor. Commenters channeled the cluster into broad frustration with lax enforcement, lenient courts, and immigration policy.
Atsushi Kondo, a Meijo University law professor and member of an Immigration Services Agency advisory panel, told the House of Councillors Judicial Affairs Committee that if a rising foreigner ratio is the concern, Japan should make naturalization easier so 'they count as Japanese.' Japanese forums reject the idea sharply, comparing it to 'putting a Japan label on Chinese goods' and 'a bargain-basement sale of citizenship,' citing the European migration debate as a cautionary case.