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“Fan” (a pseudonym) came from Vietnam three years ago as a technical intern trainee. He was taking a chance. He knew nothing about Japan, except that wages, even for the unskilled, are higher than at home – much higher. And he’s not unskilled – he was studying architecture. That could wait. His family needed money now, and Japan seemed the place to earn it.
The Technical Intern Training Program, set up in 1993, had lofty goals it is frequently charged with not living up to. Its avowed purpose is to equip young workers from developing countries with skills and work experience they can take home with them, enriching both themselves and their respective countries. All too often it serves as a veneer for exploitation. Overworked, underpaid, underprotected and in extreme cases persecuted, they cope as best they can, sometimes sticking it out, sometimes vanishing from sight, living and if possible working in the country illegally. Going home, for those burdened by heavy debts incurred to finance their passage here, is not an option.
For all its problems, the program grew especially rapidly from 2017 to 2019. The number of trainees soared from 274,000 to 410,000. Then came coronavirus – the worst problem of all. Spa! (Jan 26) reports on the plight of foreign workers stranded, working reduced hours if working at all, by the pandemic.
Fan is one of them. Married, father of an infant daughter, he left home figuring on working hard abroad for a few years to build up savings on which to found a solid livelihood. Menial work in Japan, he’d heard, pays some 150,000 yen a month, as against an average Vietnamese monthly wage of 30,000 yen.
The broker charged the equivalent of 750,000 yen. Fan borrowed and paid. He was young and strong. He’d dig himself out of the hole. It would take a year and a half, he calculated. Back home, he’d complete his studies and set up as an architect.
The factory job he was assigned to in fact paid not 150,000 yen but 100,000. The workers’ dormitory was threadbare and crowded. Worst of all, Fan tells Spa!, was the “violence.” The boss bullied the underlings, the underlings bullied each other – often under orders from the boss to do so, for sadistic pleasure or under severe stress or for whatever reason. Fan’s broken Japanese often left him bewildered. Slow to respond, he was bullied the more, he says. It got to be too much for him. The terms of the program forbid changing jobs. Last September he did what the justice ministry says 12,000 other trainees have done – he disappeared.
A friend put him up. He was now in the country illegally. He found a job via a social network site – demolition work in Yokohama. The factory closed due to the virus. He found another job – assembling solar panels in Kumamoto. Now he was doing comparatively well, earning 170,000 a month. A stupid episode undid him. He was arrested for not wearing a seatbelt while a passenger in a friend’s car. He soon found himself in a Fukuoka immigration department cell for illegal residents.
Not for long – a rare case of coronavirus to the rescue. The cell population had to be thinned. Fan was allowed temporary conditional release. A non-profit support group helps keep him afloat. But unable to work, unable to go home, he remains in painful limbo. His wife mails, “The child is sick, send money!” What money?
© Japan Today
15 Comments
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Mr Kipling
They know the situation they are coming to. They are coming for money, only the money and no other reason. This I fully understand and support. Japan on the other hand is shooting itself in the foot by bringing in “cheap” workers from an alien culture. Japan will be paying much more in the future when they have a large underclass of low paid, discriminated and angry immigrants.
gokai_wo_maneku
If you read more widely, you can find that there are many more situations where the trainees are actually trained, live in good conditions, are paid as promised, and return to their home countries after 3 or 4 years to a well paying job. Only the bad situations, and they do exist, make the news.
kaimycahl
@Mr. Kipling WAIT ONE MINUTE!! Yes they know the situation they are coming to and that is to earn money. Pay them the negotiated money that they were promised when the contract was signed. They cannot help it if for some other reason the company sponsor short change their pay or just drop them off on the streets.
quercetum
I read about a mother who tried to kill her son with a hammer but come to think about it, there are actually many more mothers who don't even try to kill their sons. We never hear about them. You will also find that there are more children who are not abused than those who are abused.
Isn't the discussion on those who are in bad situations?
andy
First of all ,To Overstay in japan is the worst choice and Very wrong path.
These days,Finding proper job without visa is slim to none in japan.
Even ,people with proper visa and The japanese struggle to find a proper and well-paid job. Let alone overstayers.
sakurasuki
Japan make complex rules for these people, so there will be cost involved since there is services that need to be used to take care all of that . These trainee even can not change employer easily just like normal citizen. While they being charged for everything including pension, insurance and taxes. When they go out of job, not the government that really take responsible for them instead another samaritan.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2020/07/16/general/tokyo-temple-pandemic-vietnamese-workers/
Aly Rustom
To any foreign trainee, DONT come here. Its not worth it and the Japanese workplace is a nightmare
Mr Kipling
There are return flights to Vietnam even now. They can leave anytime.
gaijintraveller
Mr Kipling, I have no idea what you do or what your working conditions are, but do you have any idea what an interns working conditions can be like?
Did you borrow money to come and work here? Did you even need to borrow money to get here? I suspect that the people who lent him the money are even less scrupulous than US student loan companies. I suspect it is more along the lines of sarakin loans.
I am assuming you are working in Japan? Are you paid as promised? Are you bullied?
Please let us know what you would do if your company did not pay you your agreed salary? Would you move to another company, return to your country whatever it may be, or just grin and bear it, which is the only choice the interns have. Their visa does not allow them to change job and they don't have the money to return to their country. Even if they do return their country, they will have a debt they cannot repay as they probably can't even pay the interest.
Sometimes it is good to have some sympathy for those less privileged than yourself.
Mr Kipling
gaijintraveler..... my working conditions are pretty good. Thanks for asking.
I have sympathy for them but also for the Japanese whose salaries are weighed down by these imported cheap workers. They will never be fully accepted here and will in the future become an underclass riddled with anger, crime and resentment. Japan is going down a wrong path as did much of Europe and is now paying the price.
gaijintraveller
Mr Kipling, I suspected your working conditions were pretty good, which is probably an understatement. These people are doing jobs Japanese do not want to do. Many are in the countryside. If they are treated properly, I doubt many would get angry, resort to crime and resent life in Japan. After all they came to Japan, to learn, to make a living, to improve their family's life.
Most can speak Japanese, many are trilingual speaking English, too.
It may be true that they will never be fully accepted in Japan, but how many foreigners are fully accepted?
You have sympathy for Japanese whose salaries are weighed down by imported cheap workers. Do you have sympathy for Japanese who might believe their salaries and terms of employment are inferior to those of gaijin sharing their workplace who cannot even speak Japanese but have benefits such as paid for luxury central Tokyo housing and paid for education at international schools for their kids?
The trainee system is misused in many, but not all cases. There are a lot of trainees near where I live yet I have never heard of crime committed by them. I suspect many are treated well and fairly, but others are basically trafficked, and that is where the problem lies.
The criminals are the traffickers, not the trafficked.