From July 2012, Japan's Ministry of Justice assumed control over the system of registering resident aliens. With the new system came new nomenclature for the cards foreigners are required to carry on their person at all times: the old "gaikokujin toroku shomeisho" (certificate of alien registration) became the new "zairyu kaado" (resident card). The cards carried the bearer's immigration status, such as "permanent resident," "spouse of Japanese," "student" and so on.
Not long afterward, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Dec 30), counterfeit resident cards, produced to a high degree of sophistication, began appearing. Unlike the cards issued by the Japanese government, the imitations did not incorporate an embedded IC chip. But they did have a hologram and most indicated the bearer to be a permanent resident of Japan.
Now, such cards have been arriving from abroad in the mails. Interestingly, the current laws, while stipulating that possession of falsified cards or supplying them to others is illegal and subject to punishment, do not specifically prohibit the cards' import. For this reason when the customs authorities spot such cards in the mail, they are not authorized to confiscate them; instead they simply notify the police or Immigration Bureau and then allow the mails to go to their intended recipients.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police told the newspaper that they can make an arrest at the time the phony cards reach the intended recipients or when they are passed along to third parties, but strongly feel that the only certain way to ensure the cards don't fall into the wrong hands is to "halt them at their point of entry."
In the first half of 2014, the authorities reported a total of 87 cases of fraudulent resident cards or passports, as opposed to 51 over the same period in 2013.
The unanticipated loophole may come to impact on the fundamentals of the registration law as it currently stands.
"Using the Internet, a photograph of the intended bearer's face is sent to the counterfeiter, and the card ordered in China," explains a source in the MPD's Investigation Section 1, which is in charge of organized crime. Last September a Chinese national, a male in his 20s, had related his story to police following his arrest on suspicion of having violated the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act.
According to police, the man's forged card was received from a manufacturer in China the same month it was ordered, sent by international post to an ethnic Chinese man in his 30s who had previously naturalized as a Japanese citizen.
The police suspect the man had served as a go-between for the sending of other forged documents.
Initially police had supposed that the counterfeit card in possession of the suspect had been produced in Japan. But the MPD had previously filed charges against a group of some 20 Chinese engaged in card counterfeiting, and the others were said to have fled the country. It was not long after that that police became aware of the growing number illegal cards being mailed from abroad.
"We suspect that the same perpetrators who had early fled Japan are now producing the cards in China," a police source was quoted as saying.
The Justice Ministry has a system that enables authorities to check card registration numbers via the internet. However the forged cards bearing authentic numbers are said to be selling for 30,000 yen -- about twice the price of cards with nonexistent numbers -- which further complicates the process of verification.
Currently the law requires employers of non-Japanese to refer to the immigration status on the resident card and check their passport before they can be hired, but employers have no easy means of ascertaining whether a resident card is genuine.
"This might very well develop into a breeding ground for illegal sojourners and unauthorized workers," a police supervisor told the Sankei.
© Japan Today
