And what better way to encourage them than to fingerprint and photograph them the minute they get off the plane. For their own safety, of course (don't laugh, the Govt has actually said that). Anyway, here is the promotional video for the new advertising campaign (via Debito):
Of course this doesn't just apply to tourists, but also to non-Japanese long-term (even permanent) residents, every single time we cross the border. It's dressed up as disease and terrorism control (because of course Japanese don't catch diseases or commit terrorist acts, oh no) but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is is really just a bit of rather childish xenophobia designed to pander to the right wing. There was even some local nonentity baseball ex-player promoting it by saying it would be great to cut down on all this foreign crime...
Welcome to Japan indeed.
2 comments:
On the face of it this isn't any different from the USA and UK. So why should Japan do anything different in the fight against the hordes of evildoers who wish to rob us of our freedooms, such as being able to travel without having to tell anyone why?
More seriously, have you noticed anything different in the UK when you have visited in the past few years?
On the face of it this isn't any different from the USA and UK
Actually there is one major difference which is causing quite a lot of upset. This Japanese policy applies to people who already have long-term visas and even permanent residents. So mixed-nationality families are going to be split up at the border, with one parent having to go and queue up elsewhere for photographs, fingerprints and an immigration interview asking them why they want to go home...
[I don't think it is reasonable any more to hold up the USA and UK as examples of how civilised countries should behave. But as an EU citizen I have not been inconvenienced travelling to/from the UK]
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