An Enclave of Brazilians - New York Times Article

Norimitsu Onishi’s New York Times Article An Enclave of Brazilians Is Testing Insular Japan described the status of Japanese-Brazilians living in Japan. It explained how despite the similar appearance of these immigrants to the Japanese nationals they are still on a separate level. I was shocked to read that it is not mandatory for foreigners to go to school in Japan. This makes it even more clear that the Japanese are really only looking for labor workers and are not interested in integrating the foreigners in to their society. Onishi concedes that indeed, “Children who do not attend Japanese schools tend to become isolated for Japanese society.” It is therefore not surprising that even though the Japanese-Brazilians were given permission to re-locate to Japan two decades ago, they are still very excluded from Japanese society.

Although Americas policies on immigrants has it’s flaws I think that it is much better at integrating foreigners into our society. We have restrictions for refugees and immigrants but also have a distinct sent of rules and a process for people to gain citizenship. Japan could stand to have schools like the INS rather than separate schools for people who speak different languages or have different backgrounds. Foreigners need to be able to become accepted in Japan, especially if the country wants more people to move there in order to work its booming industry, and I think a good place to start is with the school systems.