Visa warning to women issued

BANGKOK: -- The Foreign Ministry has warned Thai women not to seek student visas as a pretext for overstaying and working in Japan if they do not want to face harsh punitive measures.

Japanese immigration has in recent years tightened measures against illegal immigrants or would-be overstayers, including those with student visas.

It has applied hefty punitive measures on local schools taking in fake students, the Thai embassy in Tokyo reported to the ministry.

Early this month, a language tuition school held a Thai woman for one night after her visa was not extended due to her absence from class. A man claiming to be the woman's husband sought the Thai embassy's intervention and a consular official in Tokyo finally negotiated for her release and saw her off to Thailand.

``We would like to beg and warn those with immoral objectives to think about the 95% real Thai students and tourists experiencing more difficulty in getting visas approved,'' a senior official said.

Tokyo has not reciprocated Thailand's visa-free 30-day entry for Japanese citizens while its cumbersome visa process has caused inconvenience for legitimate travellers, including businessmen.

However, the Thai government has so far been unable to strike a deal for a business-friendly visa policy at trade talks on the so-called Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement.

Around 5,000-10,000 out of a total of 50,000 Thai travellers to Japan each year end up in prostitution or illegal work.

Last year, about 5,000 Thais, most of them sex workers, were repatriated from Japan to Thailand. Fifty Thai women also died of HIV/Aids in Japan.

--Bangkok Post 2005-03-20

TOKYO : WHEN WILL I SEE U AGAIN?

The Japanese are pretty harsh. Last Fall my GF and I transited through Narita on our way from Saipan to LOS for a vacation. We tried to get a shore pass for her so we could go in to Narita City for a few hours. She was denied and the Japanese were brutal about it -- yelling at her in the public immigration area and otherwise being very stinky. They held us there for an hour while they made computer entries, copied all of our documents and made pen and ink entries in a couple of giant, bound logs. They finally drove my GF to tears with their mean, insensitive treatment.

This was totally unnecessary. We had onward tickets, she had proof of her job here in Saipan and there was no reason to suspect that she would be an overstay risk. (She just doesn't look the part....)

It was a shocking, humiliating experience.

As a result, I will never visit Japan again.

The Japanese are particularly crudely racist, in what I regret to say I've discovered is an Asian trend for racism.

"Steven"