DFA to help Pinoy family facing Japan deportation

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Thursday said it is ready to help the Filipino family facing deportation in Japan. The DFA issued the statement after the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau told the Filipino couple Arlan and Sarah Calderon to leave Japan, with or without their 13-year-old daughter Noriko, otherwise they would be detained. “The DFA and other concerned agencies are ready to extend humanitarian and other (forms of) assistance to the Calderon family, including their re-integration into Philippine society, contingent on the results of the proceedings under way in Japan with respect to that country’s implementation of its laws," said DFA undersecretary for migrant workers affairs Esteban Conejos Jr. in a statement on Thursday. The Immigration Bureau had also told the couple that their provisional stay, which has been extended four times since November 2008, will no longer be extended. On the other hand, the couple’s daughter, Noriko, who has been raised in Japan and speaks only Japanese language, has been allowed to stay on “humanitarian grounds." Noriko was born in 1995 in Japan after her parents in the early 1990s entered the country using other people’s passports. She currently attends a junior high school in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture. The Immigration Bureau reportedly tends to grant special permission to undocumented families whose children are already in junior high school, as it is considered “inhumane" to deport a child who can only speak the Japanese language and has spent more than six years in the Japan’s education system. Since 2006, the Filipino family has been asking the Japanese government to let them stay together in the country, but the Supreme Court turned down the plea last September. According to Conejos, the DFA is “closely monitoring" the Calderon’s case. “The Philippine Embassy in Tokyo is in touch with the family on the matter of their residency status," he said. According to Japan’s Immigration Bureau, there are about 113,072 illegal foreign residents staying in the country as of January. The Commission on Filipinos Overseas’ stock estimate in 2007 showed there were 202, 557 Filipinos in Japan, but it did not say how many were undocumented. In 2007, some 7,388 foreigners received special permission to stay in Japan while 39,382 were deported in 2008. - GMANews.TV