Print
this page
Email
this page Newsletters - Urban Families
Japan: Nagoya (The fourth largest city in Japan)
Migrant workers and their children
Many of us have experienced the feeling of helplessness of not being able to speak a word of the language in a foreign country. But what about not being able to communicate in your own country in your own language?
This is what many children of illegal migrant workers, who were brought up in Aichi, Japan, faced before 2002, as the Aichi government didn’t allow them to attend the region’s schools. They spent much of the day in the local parks without any supervision, as their parents worked at night. Their mother tongue became Japanese, but with a very limited vocabulary, and they received no education and very little knowledge of their own culture. When their parents were caught by the police, and returned to their own land, the children faced many problems adapting to living there.
There are around two million registered foreigners in Japan, mainly second, third and fourth generation Koreans, and newcomers from China, South Korea, Brazil, Peru and the Philippines. About one per cent of the labour force is made up of foreigners. In Nagoya, Aichi, there is a big Philippine community, many of whom work as unskilled labourers in factories to earn money to send back to
their impoverished families. The Japanese government won’t give visas to unskilled workers, so these Filipinos and Filipinas come to Japan on short-term study or sight-seeing visas, stay in Japan over their term and so become illegal overstayers.
Many of these overstayers have been working illegally in Japan for a long time. They get married and have children, who, as soon as they are born, become illegal. The Nagoya Youth Centre, which is run by the Chubu Diocese of the Anglican/Episcopal Church in Japan (NSKK) decided, in 1998, to set up a school for these children. It is run with a Philippine curriculum, to prepare the children should they be returned to the Philippines, but with added Japanese language lessons and social studies to help them cope with life in Japan.
The Nagoya Youth Centre campaigned for the children to be allowed to go to normal Japanese schools, and in 2002 the Aichi government finally gave permission. However, because these schools only provide a Japanese education, some parents still prefer to send their children to the Church’s school so they will be able to find employment in the Philippines should they return there. As many of the parents of these children cannot pay school fees, the school is run on donations from the Mothers’ Union, fund-raising bazaars, the NSKK provincial office in Tokyo, and supporting individuals.
The Nagoya Youth Centre also provides other help: student-volunteer home tutors for the children of overstayers who go to Japanese schools and are having problems with their studies; advice to the students and parents on choosing schools and careers; and loans for uniforms and textbooks.
All the overstayers have the day-to-day stress of never knowing when they will be caught and returned to the Philippines, where they would not be able to make a living, let alone support their families. Therefore, the biggest support the Nagoya Youth Centre provides is a place of safety. Although the police or immigration might freely enter a small NGO, and make arrests, if they entered the Nagoya Youth Centre or other churches where the Philippine community comes together, they would have the full force of the NSKK against them.
Please pray for this important work of the Nagoya Youth Centre and Chubu Diocese, all its supporters, the foreign community in Japan, and particularly overstayers and their children.
Top
