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Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Japan starts own crackdown v. illegal Pinoys
SOME 36,000 undocumented Filipino entertainers in Japan are in danger of getting deported as Japanese authorities has reportedly moved to round up illegal migrant workers in the country.
Already, reports of harassment allegedly committed against Filipina entertainers working in nightclubs around Tokyo have reached the Senate.
According to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), as of 2001, there are 240,548 Filipinos in Japan.
More than a hundred thousand of them are documented workers, 65,647 were married to Japanese nationals and became permanent residents, while 36,379 workers, mostly entertainers, are undocumented.
The data was culled from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, an agency under the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
The Philippines sends an average of about 70,000 entertainers annually to various Asian countries, but about 95 percent of that goes to Japan. From January to July of this year alone, the POEA said 44,549 entertainers flew to Japan.
According to the report, the Japanese Immigration of Central Japan, headed by Hideo Sakanaka, has been conducting raids and arrests in nightspots, singling out Filipino overseas performing artists (OPAs) for possible deportation.
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration officer-in-charge Delmer Cruz said they have yet to receive any confirmation of the report from Owwa's welfare officers in Japan, but assured that immediate action would be taken to protect the workers should the report check out.
"We are going to call our welfare officers and we would have an answer very soon," Cruz said.
Cruz said the matter would also be brought up to the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) for proper coordination with other concerned agency.
It was Senator Teresa Aquino-Oreta who came out with the report that Filipinas, illegally working as entertainers in Japan, are being allegedly harassed during the raids conducted by local authorities.
This, she said, was part of Japan's fresh campaign to arrest and deport illegal migrant workers, targeting Filipinos.
She said Sakanaka has dispatched inspection teams to search out nightclubs mostly in Tokyo, seeking out OPAs who do not have travel documents and valid working permits.
However, Oreta said that many of those Filipinos arrested and deported early this year complained that they had valid work permits, contracts, and travel documents.
Despite that, she said they were arrested, jailed, deported, and then banned from entering Japan for five years. Joshua Dancel
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