# Cops to crack down on illegal foreigners in Tokyo

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-10-19T10:12:54Z


The Japan Time'REGAINING PUBLIC SAFETY'  - Cops to sniff out illegal foreigners in Tokyo 

By HIROSHI MATSUBARA, Staff writer 

Immigration authorities, police and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Friday they will take joint action to halve the number of foreigners without visas in the capital within five years. 

The Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau, the bureau's Tokyo branch, the metropolitan government and the Metropolitan Police Department issued a joint statement saying they would cooperate more closely toward this goal. 

They believe that half of the estimated 250,000 undocumented foreigners in Japan live or work in Tokyo. 

"An increasing number of visaless foreigners engage in serious crimes, and it is pointed out that the problem is closely linked to organized crime by foreigners," Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa asserted during Friday's news conference.This is all part of Governor Ishihara's ethnic cleansing of Tokyo thing. He's blaming all of the horrible crimes on "foreigners" and using that to ramp up police force and will probably lead to increased intrusions of privacy.

I do know that there have been increased activity of foreign organized crime groups in Japan, but his talking about "criminal DNA" in foreigners is horrible and will just help justify people in looking away when heavy handed police tactics are used on foreigners in Japan. Bad bad bad...





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Japanese Policy, Japanese Politics, Privacy