Police not told of 4,600 missing foreigners

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Companies and organizations employing foreign trainees and technical interns failed to inform police that such employees had gone missing in 4,628 cases between 2002 and 2006, about half the total of such cases in that period, it has been learned.
The visitors were accepted as part of a program that allows foreigners to work in Japan for a certain period after receiving technical training.
With some of those who went missing becoming involved in serious crimes such as robbery, the Justice Ministry has ordered the firms and groups that employ them to notify the police without exception when their trainees go missing.
The program was introduced in 1993 to provide an opportunity for foreign trainees to learn about Japanese technologies.
According to the ministry, 9,607 of the 374,845 people taking part in the scheme between 2002 and 2006 went missing.
The trainees receive only a small allowance, and a number of them have been found working illegally at other companies.
When the police receive a request to search for a missing person, this information is shared by police forces across the country and can be used for questioning or initial investigations of incidents and accidents.
However, they were only requested to search for 4,979 of the missing trainees--about 52 percent--over the five-year period.
According to the National Police Agency, there is an increasing trend of trainees becoming involved in crime, with 585 such people committing crimes in 2006--up 27 on the previous year.
Some of the crimes committed by these missing people have been especially brutal.
A Chinese man stabbed a woman and stole cash from her in a Yokohama apartment in April last year, while another Chinese man was found to be the ringleader in a series of robberies in which about 43 million yen was stolen from locations such as dental surgeries in Saitama and Chiba prefectures in 2004.
The ministry determines the rules of compliance for the companies and groups that take on foreign trainees and interns.
Its operational guidelines state they should report the disappearance of a person to immigration authorities, but do not state that they should notify the police.
Immigration authorities, even after receiving such information, do not supply it to the police in the majority of cases.
Even new guidelines announced by the ministry Wednesday do not state that these employers should notify the police when recruits go missing. The guidelines instead instruct them to notify the police through regional immigration authorities.
"We intended to have these companies and organizations [that recruit foreign trainees] notify the police [of missing people]," a spokesman for the ministry's entry and status division said. "We didn't expect so many cases of nonnotification."
"Because missing trainees can't formally be employed in other work, there's a chance they may turn to crime," said Kiyoshi Yasutomi, a professor at Keio Law School and expert in immigration administration.
"Another problem is the fact that the police only have data on about half of those missing, and can't respond quickly when a crime takes place," he added. "Communication channels between the police and immigration authorities must be improved."
(Dec. 30, 2007)