Silviase/jgov_v1.4_full_ann huggingface dataset:
institution, and it has been pointed out that Japan should also eliminate such classification.

Also, with respect to educational institutions teaching Japanese language, based on the facts that about 70% of persons who pass through such educational institutions go to colleges, etc. in Japan, and that colleges and companies tend to make much of the Japanese language capability of foreign college students, there is a stronger tendency to place a pre-college student as a step towards college student in connection with increased acceptance of foreign college students.

On the other hand, the number of overstayers having the status of “Pre-college student” formerly greatly surpassed the number having the status of “College Student”, however, it is decreasing year by year and was smaller than the number of overstayers having the status of residence of “College Student” after the year 2006.

Taking the foregoing situation into account, the classification of status of residence for activities by foreigners to receive education in Japan should be eliminated, and “College Student” and “Pre-college Student” should be integrated. On the one hand, the status of residence should be integrated, however, requirements for landing permission as the “conditions provided for by a Ministry of Justice ordinance which shall be provided for in consideration of factors including but not limited to the effects on Japanese industry and public welfare”, should be in line with the type of educational institution for which proper residence control should be implemented.

On the other hand, educational institutions are required to carry out proper entrance examinations and enrollment control, and to provide the Immigration Bureau with information on the residence situation of foreign college students, while the Immigration Bureau should carry out proper residence management based on the information provided by educational institutions and accurate fact-finding research. If, with respect to an educational institution specified by the notification by the Minister of Justice, facts that make the educational institution inappropriate as the accepting educational institution from the viewpoint of ensuring proper residence management come to light, strict measures, such as deletion from said notification, are necessary.
# Data Section 4 Litigation Relating to Immigration Control

## Section 1 ☐ Summary

Most administrative litigation, etc. relating to the Immigration Bureau (hereinafter referred to as "Immigration Control Relative Litigation") are litigations demanding nullification of a deportation order issued to foreigners illegally residing in Japan, or those demanding reversal of non-recognition as a refugee. The number of cases of litigation brought and newly accepted has been increasing rapidly in recent years, and the number of accepted cases in 2008 was 336, which stood at a record high. In particular, the number of acceptances relating to deportation procedures was 234, which represented a 48% increase as compared with the previous year. (Table 51) Also, the number of completed litigations by year was, in cases of merit, 190 cases in 2006, 257 cases in 2007, and 355 cases in 2008, thus it is increasing year by year.

As a background to this increase, the reform of the judicial system can be cited, which aims to ensure prompt proceedings by proper and sufficient procedures. In particular, the “Act for Partial Amendment of the Administrative Litigation Act” was put into force on April 1, 2005. This aimed to define a more effective remedial procedure for the rights and interests of people in connection with administrative litigations, the amendment of which involved the establishment of a system of provision (suggestion) of information on the statute of limitations, etc., extension of the statute of limitations, simplified and easy-to-understand eligibility for defendants in nullification litigation, etc. and so on. Such amendments can be regarded as the background to the increase in the number of newly accepted cases. Also, efforts are being made to further accelerate court proceedings as a whole due to the “Act for Prompt Proceedings” which was promulgated and came into force in July 2003, and which can be regarded as the background to the increase in the number of completed cases.

Further, the Immigration Control Relative Litigation of recent years observes new types of filing for litigation, such as obligating special permission for residence, obligating provisional permission for residence, issuance of detention orders, and their injunction and provisional injunction. The circumstances in which obligating litigation and injunction litigation were made statutory and a provisional remedy system prior to judgment on merit was defined by the “Act for Partial Amendment of the Administrative Litigation Act”, where litigation systems of these types were actively utilized, can be regarded as the background.
Table 51 Trend in number of filed cases of Immigration Control relative litigation (cases of merit)(as of the end of 2008)

Object of claim and the number of filed cases by years

(Cases)

Object of claim	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Administrative case	Procedures for deportation concerned (Demand for canceling; confirmation of invalidity, etc.)	109	143	164	158	234
Status of residence examinations concerned (Demand for canceling disposition of disapproval; confirmation of invalidity, etc.)	6	8	21	17	17
Certificate of eligibility (Demand for canceling disposition of non-issuance; confirmation of invalidity, etc.)	7	17	6	18	8
Procedures for refugee status concerned (Demand for canceling; confirmation of invalidity, etc.)	25	52	59	82	72
Others	19	28	2	3	4
Sub-Total	166	248	252	278	335
Civil case	17	25	11	2	1
Claim of the protection of personal liberty	2
Total	183	275	263	280	336

## Section 2 ☐ Major Court Cases

## Court case 1

With respect to issuance of the certificate of eligibility, a person who applies for issuing the same is required to prove requirement of issuance. Therefore, if the application for the certificate of eligibility is insufficient and requirement of issuance are not proven, the Minister of Justice or the Director of the regional Immigration Bureau delegated by him/her is not obligated to hear circumstances from an applicant or his/her agent, or to ask them to submit additional material.

【Hiroshima High Court Judgment on April 25, 2008】

## Court case 2

The ministerial ordinance for landing criteria requires foreigners intending to receive training, etc. at organizations in Japan to receive prompt landing examination after preparing material to prove their own conformity with the criteria, which aims to provide convenience for foreigners by publicly announcing the criteria for landing permission.

Therefore, provisions of the foregoing ministerial ordinance do not confer statutory status or legal position on the accepting organizations in question, enabling them to continue accepting or mediating trainees, etc.

It may be true that commitment by accepting organizations of misconduct pertaining to training for aliens in the past three years, in turn, has resulted in non-conformity with items (viii) and (ix) in the right-hand column, “Training”, in the Appended Table I (4) of the Immigration Control Act under
【Nagoya District Court Judgment on January 31, 2008】

## Court case 4

Taking also the fact that the appellant continued to postpone a formal marriage with a Japanese woman X without any reasonable reason into account, it must be said that the appellant overstayed in Japan for employment purposes exceeding his period of stay and continued to overstay, even during the period of living together with X, for the purpose of working in Japan to send money to his home country, without giving priority to the creation of a stable marriage life with X by eliminating the state of overstay in Japan.

Hence, even though facts that the period of their living together itself was relatively long and that it was recognized that the appellant associated with parents and a sister of X like family are taken into account, the appellant and X at the time of decision of this case were in a relationship where the appellant continued to overstay to send money to his home country continuously and X economically depended on the income of the appellant for the repayment of debts arising from lavish expenditure, and it cannot be said that their relationship had substance as a marriage, the essence of which was to live together with an honest will for the purpose of ever-lasting spiritual and bodily connection.

【Tokyo High Court Judgment on March 19, 2008】

## Court case 5

In nullification litigation in connection with a disposition of non-recognition as a refugee, the reason for which is that a person does not fall under the category of refugee, it is reasonable to interpret that the applicant is responsible for demonstrating that he/she falls under the category of refugee.

However, it cannot be denied that, in certain cases, evidence simply demonstrating eligibility as a refugee is scarce. Even if that is the case, at least, persons themselves who are recognized as a refugee are fully aware of facts relating to their eligibility as a refugee and capable of submitting evidence by stating such facts, and it is rather difficult to imagine a case in which it is totally impossible to submit evidence supporting the truth in their statement with respect to their eligibility as refugees. In that sense, it may be said that the issue of demonstration relating to eligibility as a refugee requires multilateral study by reason of the nature of cases in connection with the judgment on existence of evidence or difficulty of demonstration, and on the credibility of statements by persons concerned. However, the issue is not governed by principles that are different from ordinary civil litigations. Therefore, it cannot be said that the burden of demonstration by the foregoing applicant for refugee status should be alleviated only in respect of his eligibility as a refugee.

【Osaka High Court Judgment on June 12, 2008】
# Data Section 5 Organizational Expansion and Staff Enhancement

Owing to significant changes in the circumstances affecting immigration control in recent years, in response to an increase in the quantity and in the complexity of immigration duties, measures have been taken to improve and expand the organization and staff for immigration control.

At the end of FY 2008, immigration control administration work was carried out by about 3,400 officials at the Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice and other immigration control offices. Due to a wide range of problems in immigration control, further improvement and expansion of the organization and staff are still necessary.

## Section 1 ◆ Organizations

## 1 Outline of the Immigration Control Organization

The organization that is responsible for immigration control duties is the Immigration Bureau, which is designated as an internal bureau of the Ministry of Justice. There are eight regional blocks, each of which has a regional immigration bureau as a local branch office of the Ministry of Justice. Each regional immigration bureau manages the district immigration offices and branch offices (including branch offices within the district immigration offices) under its jurisdiction. The Ministry of Justice also maintains three immigration centers as detention facilities. The organization as a whole performs various duties associated with immigration control such as immigration examinations, residence examinations, deportation procedures, and refugee recognition procedures in accordance with relevant laws and ordinances.

The Immigration Bureau, regional immigration bureaus, district immigration offices, branch offices, and immigration centers are collectively referred to as the “immigration control offices”. (Charts 22 and 23)

Chart 22 Immigration Bureau organizational chart
## 2 Major Expansions of the Immigration Control Offices

With respect to the expansion and enhancement of organization in FY 2009, the Yokohama District Immigration Office of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau added one chief immigration security officer to cope with the increase of deportation services as the result of expansion of accommodation capacity in connection with relocation to a new office, and abolished the security department to establish the planning, management and research department, and the detention
The foregoing is in line with the basic policy, “Branch offices of regional immigration bureaus should be reorganized from sea-type to inland-type, and reduced”, as shown in the “Basic Plan for Downsizing and Streamlining of National Administrative Organizations” decided by the Cabinet in April 1999. It is necessary to continue rationalizing and streamlining organizations by maintaining branch offices of the “General Immigration Control Office” type that comprehensively perform immigration examination, residence examination and collection of information relating to persons violating the Immigration Control Act.

## Section 2 ◆ Staff

## 1 Immigration Control Staff

In immigration centers and regional immigration bureaus, immigration inspectors and immigration control officers are assigned as staff who are engaged in immigration control duties. In addition, officers of legal affairs engage in general administrative duties and specialists of legal affairs, including doctors, are also assigned.

Immigration inspectors are responsible for (i) examinations and hearings on landing and deportation,

Immigration control staff

(ii) issuance of written detention orders and written deportation orders, (iii) provisional release, and (iv) investigation of recognition of refugees and statuses of residence. They are also engaged in examining statuses of residence as assistants for the Minister of Justice.

Immigration control officers are responsible for (i) investigation of violations concerning entry, landing or residence in Japan, (ii) detention, transportation and deportation of foreign nationals in order to execute written detention orders or written deportation orders, and (iii) treatment of inmates in immigration centers and detention facilities and guards of these detention facilities. They fall under police personnel in relation to the National Civil Service Law and the Law Concerning Salaries for General Service Personnel. As they are often involved in dangerous tasks, they are regarded as public security service staff.

Immigration control officers are divided into seven ranks (keibikan, keibicho, keibishicho, keibishi, keibishiyo, keishucho, and keishu, in order of descending superiority) in order to clarify the chain of command for group operations for detection.

Individual immigration inspectors and immigration control officers perform their duties independently as specialists in immigration control and therefore, the specialist system was introduced. These officials are required to have legal knowledge necessary for their duties as well as a balanced point of view
from an international perspective and the ability to interact with foreign nationals flexibly while giving consideration to their diverse cultures, customs and religions and their human rights.

## 2 Staff Increase

The number of immigration control staff was 3,565 in FY 2009, up about 26% (732) from FY 2004 (2,833), five years ago. During this period, the number of cases handled by immigration control offices remained at a high level, and the immigration control duties have been getting more complicated and difficult due to the necessity of implementing stricter immigration examinations to prevent terrorism and illegal entry, coping with forged or altered documents that have become increasingly more sophisticated, strengthening residence management related to foreign residents after entry and enforcing strengthened detection of illegal foreign residents, some of whom are potential criminals. (Chart 24, Table 53)

Chart 24 Changes in the number of immigration control office personnel
Table 53 Changes in the number of immigration control office personnel

(People)

Division Fiscal Year	Secretaries in the Ministry of Justice	Regional Immigration Bureaus	Total
Secretaries	Inspector	Control officer	Others	Sub-Total
1985	169	155	703	658	55	1,571	1,740
1990	166	154	777	673	46	1,650	1,816
1995	163	165	1,152	869	38	2,224	2,387
1996	161	166	1,182	915	34	2,297	2,458
1997	161	166	1,203	931	31	2,331	2,492
1998	159	166	1,202	956	29	2,353	2,512
1999	159	165	1,204	978	27	2,374	2,533
2000	157	164	1,196	998	26	2,384	2,541
2001	156	155	1,211	1,017	26	2,409	2,565
2002	154	146	1,268	1,070	25	2,509	2,663
2003	152	144	1,272	1,101	24	2,541	2,693
2004	142	142	1,343	1,183	23	2,691	2,833
2005	131	122	1,433	1,266	20	2,841	2,972
2006	129	122	1,494	1,367	8	2,991	3,120
2007	128	121	1,580	1,431	8	3,140	3,268
2008	127	129	1,626	1,523	8	3,286	3,413
2009	126	130	1,737	1,564	8	3,439	3,565

In FY 2009, 199 persons were additionally assigned as immigration inspectors and immigration control officers. An outline of the staff increase is as follows

## (1) Strengthened Immigration Control of the Regional Immigration Bureau such as the Narita Airport District Immigration Office

The “Basic Act for Promoting a Tourism-Oriented Country” was put into force in January 2007, and the “Basic Plan for Promoting a Tourism-Oriented Country” was decided in June of said year by the Cabinet aiming to “increase the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan to 10 million by 2010”. As it is expected that further active campaigns to invite foreign tourists will be developed in the future, it is necessary to make efforts to shorten the waiting time for examination by flexible allocation of staff or other measures and, at the same time, to implement strict immigration examination as countermeasures against terrorism and illegal residents.

For this purpose, in FY 2009, an additional 28 and 10 immigration inspectors were allocated to Narita Airport District Immigration Office and Chubu Airport District Immigration Office respectively, where connection facilities from domestic lines to international lines were improved, and an 28 additional immigration inspectors were allocated to regional immigration bureaus, etc., governing regional seaports and airports. Further, in order to deal quickly with immigration examination for large cruise ships, etc., that were increasing specifically in the Kyushu and Okinawa areas, an additional 9 immigration inspectors were allocated to the Fukuoka Regional Immigration Bureau.
In July 2008, the gist of the “300,000 Foreign College Students Plan” was decided by concerned ministries and agencies. Since it is expected that foreign college students accepted from foreign countries will increase in the future, an additional 12 immigration inspectors were allocated to Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau as pre-entry examination staff for these foreign college students.

## (2) Strengthened Residence Management System of the Regional Immigration Bureau such as the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau

As the number of foreigners residing in Japan increases year by year, adverse effects due to deceptive stayers, who adopt the external appearance of normal residents by deceptive marriages, but who actually engage in simple labor exclusively or commit crimes by enrolling in or cooperating with criminal organizations, have become a serious problem.

In recent years, as a result of the increase in the number of resident foreigners, the number of cases of application for permission of permanent residence is expected to increase. As staff for implementing proper examination without overlooking applications, among very many applications, by deceptive stayers who adopt the external appearance of normal residents by deceptive marriages, etc., an additional 25 immigration inspectors were allocated to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau.

## (3) Strengthened of Detection System at Yokohama District Immigration Office

Yokohama District Immigration Office, which intends to move to a new office in FY 2009, is responsible for the Keihin Industrial Area, and bustling shopping and entertainment districts such as Yokohama City and Kawasaki City, and governs Kanagawa Prefecture which is highly attractive for illegal workers. However, the District Immigration Office could not necessarily implement deportation procedures sufficiently, including detection and taking suspects in from concerned agencies such as the police, since its facilities were small. Movement to the new office will release the District Immigration Office from physical restrictions, and make it possible for the District Immigration Office to implement wider detection activities, etc.

Concurrently, additional personnel were allocated as follows: 28 immigration control officers for research and detection of violations at said District Immigration Office, 5 immigration inspectors as examiners for proper and prompt processing of violations, and 32 immigration control officers as detention and supervisory staff for the expanded detention facility and staff for realizing its efficient operation, which aimed to enhance and strengthen the detection system at the said District Immigration Office.

Further, cases of illegal embarkation and disembarkation using ships occurred in recent years
mainly in the western part of Japan, and problems of crimes, etc. committed by illegally entering persons became a serious matter. As stricter countermeasures against illegal embarkation and disembarkation using ships had become an urgent task for the purpose of not damaging the effectiveness of immigration procedures utilizing personally identifiable information, which was introduced in November 2007, an additional 12 immigration control officers were allocated to Fukuoka Regional Immigration Bureau.

## (4) Strengthened Refugee Adjudication System of the Regional Immigration Bureau such as the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau

The introduction of the refugee examination counselors system in 2005 enhanced the equity and neutrality of the refugee recognition procedures, but the number of applications for refugee status suddenly increased from 384 in 2005 to 954 in 2006, and reached 1,599 cases in 2008. In 2009, 9 additional refugee examiners were assigned to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, and 1 additional refugee examiner to the Nagoya Regional Immigration Bureau, to ensure quick and proper examination of these suddenly increasing applications for recognition as a refugee.

## 3 Training

As the number of foreign nationals entering and departing from Japan has been increasing year by year and the types of residence have diversified, the volume of services has increased and the contents have become more complicated and difficult. It is therefore indispensable to enhance the skills and abilities of the officers of the Immigration Bureau, and so we are in the process of enriching and reinforcing our training

Training

In addition to systematic training for newly employed persons, middle-level persons and managers implemented by the Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice, which is a training organization of the Ministry of Justice, the Immigration Bureau implements various kinds of practical training for the purpose of enhancing the professional knowledge of staff: training for persons engaged in the detection of document forgery, training for persons engaged in entry and residence examination work, training for persons engaged in refugee recognition work, training for immigration security officers and persons engaged in security and detention, training for persons engaged in information system operation, etc., and so on. In addition to the foregoing, the Immigration Bureau makes efforts to give staff a wide range of knowledge and experience by having them participate actively in seminars that are held by inviting outside lecturers: seminars