Our Petition to Ease the Japanese Entry Ban

Yuki and Hannah0 Comments

Let students and workers into Japan

Recently, we wrote a petition together outlining why we believe the Japanese government should ease its current entry restrictions. The restrictions impact Hannah and many other foreigners negatively. We wanted to gather these people together so our voices could be heard. Hannah wanted to explain how the current travel restriction has affected her life, especially regarding her offer of employment in Japan. Many others are in similar situations, therefore we believe that coverage of the negative impact of the entry ban on peoples’ lives is valuable. It could eventually push forward policy to ease them for workers and students. 

Note regrading residents

While we speak specifically about workers and students, we know that permanent residents, including spouses and children of Japanese nationals are also affected. These people should most definitely be given first priority in entering Japan. We’ve also had contact with people who lived in Japan for several years and left Japan before the travel ban. Now they can’t come back to Japan even though they’re paying for housing and they have family there. We think this is highly unfair.

By speaking about the effects on workers and students we don’t intend to minimize those separated from their families and homes. It’s cruel that persons in this category have come under any restriction at all, and we hope that all of them can return and be reunited. 

The current situation

The reason why we started writing our petition is we wanted to change the Japanese government policy about the travel ban. Hannah was supposed to come to Japan this spring but she is still stuck in the US. She had to look for full time work, which is pretty stressful when you already have a job in Japan and the current job situation is like it is. In the US, the unemployment rate is the worst it’s been in almost a hundred years. 

We completely understand that the Japanese government is doing their job, trying to handle this pandemic situation and protect Japanese citizens from Covid-19 in the best way possible. However, they should start considering letting foreigners in the country who hold student and working visas. They play an important role in Japanese economy and society. The government has kept Japan’s border closed for far too long. 

There’s a recent article in the Japan Times exposing how the travel ban is affecting the lives of foreign students. We think that the work this author is doing is important. (We’ll link it at the end.) We hope that media continues to speak about how this ban is impacting people.

Our response

So Yuki started writing some emails about the travel ban in Japanese to several branches of the Japanese government. He explained why he believed the restrictions were too strict and how they had impacted Hannah. Unfortunately, we haven’t received any replies.

We really didn’t want to give up on reaching out to the Japanese government so we decided to write a petition on Change.org together. We made a good team. Hannah wrote an english part and Yuki did the Japanese part. What we’re saying in the petition is common for many other foreigners and the goal is to unite those people together. Additionally, we hope many others read it, empathize with us and sign to make a change! 

Our own reach is limited, but with your help more people will come to know about this issue. As awareness increases this could influence the government to change their policy.  We’re sure together we can make our voices louder! 

Here is the link of our petition! Please check it out!

We got interviewed by Nikkei Asian Review. Thank you so much for everyone who has signed and shared this petition! Also, thanks to everyone for sharing their stories. The situation is slowly getting better! Let’s be persistent! We are with you!

Here is the article from Nikkei Asian Review posted by FRANCESCA REGALADO on August 5, 2020 15:30 JST.

Yuki and Hannah 

Thank you for reading this post! Please share this and sign if you agree with us. we hope you have a nice day!