Volunteer Recruitment

When I was a university student, I participated in a student internship in San Francisco and learned about immigrants and refugees for the first time. I wondered, "Are there people like that in Japan?" I learned about APFS while researching immigrants and refugees in graduate school and decided to volunteer. Now, rather than thinking from the perspective of whether or not to accept immigrants and refugees, I have a strong desire to learn about the current situation.

I am responsible for publicizing the group's events and preparing applications for provisional release.

Since I started volunteering with APFS, I have been able to deepen my interactions with students from other universities who share the same concerns. I think I can gain experiences that I would not have been able to gain by studying at my desk. I would be happy if I could find more people in Japan to work with me.

I started volunteering in the summer of 2013. I had already learned about APFS's activities through newspaper reports in the 1990s. I was impressed that there was an organization in Japan that supported foreigners, especially those on irregular employment. At the time, I was too busy to participate in the activities, but now that my children are older, I began to wonder if there was something I could do to help.

I am helping Mr. Kato. I am creating documents for provisional release of people detained at the Immigration Bureau, handling specific visa application procedures, meeting with detainees, and creating and sending out printed materials for public relations. I think my next challenge will be to study the practical aspects of immigration control.

I feel sympathy for the recipients of support who were born in Japan but may be deported because their parents overstayed their visas, as this overlaps with my time as a foreign student. I feel that the rights of foreigners are fragile. In the past, Koreans and North Koreans in Japan were forced to have their fingerprints taken for their alien registration cards. This was eventually abolished after the shared awareness that it was a humanitarian issue. I don't think the national system will change unless we demand our rights and raise our voices like this time. Residence status is the foundation for foreigners' lives. APFS has been working head-on at the forefront of the conflict between the state and individuals over residence status. I admire the figure of Director Kato who is risking his life for this activity, and I volunteer with the hope that I can be of some help. There are still many people with roots in foreign countries, and this number will continue to increase. I hope that we will see a society where foreigners are not simply viewed as objects of control.

In my third year of university, I attended a lecture where I listened to the stories of people who were undocumented residents. At first, I wondered why they supported people who were illegal. I thought I wouldn't understand unless I actually got involved, so I decided to participate. What I learned from participating was that although Japan is a developed country, it is still a country where foreigners have a hard time living. I studied abroad in the UK and felt alienated as a foreigner myself, so now I hope that foreigners living in Japan will not feel that way and that we will have a society with diversity in culture and values.

Currently, I am preparing mailings and doing translation work. Before I went abroad, I also tried crowdfunding as a PR person.

When I lived in New York, I was overwhelmed by the dynamism of the international atmosphere, but at the same time, I realized how difficult it is for people of many nationalities and ethnicities to live in the same place. I felt that racial discrimination, clashes of values, and implicit segregation, which are the same as in the 1960s, still exist in a country that is called a major immigrant nation. At the same time, I thought that it must be even more difficult for foreigners to live in Japan, which is also said to be a mono-ethnic country. When I returned to Japan and looked up information about immigration on the Internet, I learned about APFS. I started volunteering to learn about the situation in Japan and to help people coexist.

I handle administrative tasks, translations, help with events and awareness-raising activities, and create newsletters.

There is a reality in Japan that cannot be seen or touched in everyday life. You can learn the importance of seeing things from multiple perspectives and the need to think flexibly.