Your Excellency, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Mr. Yamahana; Ms. Hiroko Nakayama, Mayor of Shinjuku ward;
Professor Yoshiaki Ishizawa, President of Sophia University; fellow
speakers; Excellencies; distinguish delegates; ladies and
gentlemen.

It is a great honor for me to be with you today, and I wish to
express my profound gratitude to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
for their gracious invitation to take part in this distinguished
forum.  Each year at this time, since assuming my current
mandate in 2008, the Government of Japan has given me the marvelous
opportunity of coming to Japan and visit a different city for this
auspicious occasion – in 2009 in Nagoya, last year in
Yokohama, and today here in Tokyo.

I would also like to thank our hosts, the Shinjuku ward and the
Sophia University, who together with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and my colleagues at IOM, organized this "2nd International
Workshop on Acceptance of Foreign Nationals and their Integration
in Japan" with the focus this year on "future policy of Japan for
foreign nationals."

I want to take this occasion to record my enormous gratitude to
the Government and people of Japan for their extremely generous and
consistent financial support of migration activities around the
world including the support to IOM.  Since 2005, and I can say
this with great pride, we have been associated with Japan in a
number of initiatives, and Japan has provided us more than USD 200
million.  We were together as partners in Haiti after the
earthquake that killed 300,000 people.  You were with us as
well to address the flooding in Pakistan last August.  And in
both cases, as I visited those countries just after the tragedy, I
saw very talented Japanese, very dedicated Japanese nationals from
your voluntary force and otherwise at work.  So thank you very
much for that.

I want to also say how pleased I am to welcome my colleague from
Metropolis here today.  We have worked together in partnership
for a number of years now and look forward to continuing
that.  So welcome and thank you all for your support and
engagement in what has become a global "mega-trend" – human
mobility.

In addressing the future policy of Japan for foreign nationals,
I will confine myself to two key points only, and I apologize that
I don't have my usual PowerPoint here to guide you.

The two very simple points
are:

1) the inevitability, the necessity, and the desirability of
large-scale migration; and

2) the importance of "high road" scenario that will best serve
Japan's national interests and those of foreign nationals as
well

Therefore the most relevant question for us is the one you've
posed today, i.e. how should we be organizing ourselves to manage
these migration flows in a humane and orderly fashion.  I will
come back to those in the end.

I. The inevitability of mass migration: setting the
scene

A. Today's migration realities

1. We live in an era of the greatest human mobility in
recorded history, not percentage-wise but numerically
– one billion people on the move.  There are more people
on the move than ever before at any time.  The UN figure
speaks of volumes – 214 million international migrants, 740
million internal migrants.  In other words, in a world of 7
billion people, one out of every seven of us is in some form of
migratory status, including my own family, which is spread across
four continents.  If the migrants could put themselves
together as a nation, they'd overtake Brazil as the fifth most
populous nation, and they would have a GDP the size of Austria's or
Sweden's.  I don't have an immediate Asian example because
people are doing so well here economically, it won't quite match
that.

2. Moreover, today, a migrant, or anyone, knows
instantly what is happening at any time anywhere in the
world.  Consider these statistics.  There are
today 1.9 billion people who have access to the internet; that was
only 390 million in 2000.  There are 247 billion emails sent
every day.  There are 500 million subscribers to Facebook,
about 300,000 to Twitter and both are growing.  Migrants know
where the jobs are; they know where the troubles are; they
communicate with their family and friends with great ease. 
And so it is in some ways a new world.  And I am so pleased to
hear from all of you this morning, particularly the honorable
Mayor, how you are dealing now addressing the question of
multiculturalism and adaptation to one another.

It's no wonder that migration has emerged as a key global issue
– no longer the sole concern of limited number of countries,
as it was claimed, rightly or wrongly, for most of the previous
century.  It is at the heart of all government policy these
days.  The overwhelming percentage of migrants are people who
move for economic reasons, and moving several times, to find a
job.  We must ask ourselves whether migration for economic
reason may not be just as justified and worthy of support as
flights from political persecution.

Today, migration affects every country in a variety of ways
– security, culture, economy, identity.  Migration
challenges the very feudalistic composition of the nation
state.  We all have multiple identities these days.

B. The drivers of migration

While it is true that the communication, information, and
transport revolutions have indirectly fueled mass migration in this
century, it is three other factors that will perpetuate large-scale
population movements for much of the 21st century, and will likely
to continue to attract the attention of policy makers and
researchers.

The first factor is demography.  And I
speak very guardedly knowing that we have one of the best-known
demographers with us today in the person of Professor Kito. 
So I am going to be very careful of what I say, but you will
correct me.  The populations in the industrialized world are
steadily growing old.  They are having fewer children. 
More people are dying than are being born.  There is a
negative replacement rate.  There is also a shrinking labor
force, yet another is a growing retirement age population. 
The difficulty of ensuring adequate social security entitlements
and affordable pension schemes is all the more acute.  It is
forecast that by 2015, one out of every four persons in Japan,
would be, like yours truly, more than 65 years of age.  And if
it hadn't been for migration, much of Europe would have had a
declining population already.  By contrast, until the 19th
century, Europe has been the primary source for migration.  To
use Rainer Munz's phrase, "we have reached a point of demographic
stagnation."

The second factor is labor market demands that
cannot be met by nationals.  Foreign workers often boost
productivity through the injection of expertise.  Moreover,
national labour requires foreign workers if the labour force is to
grow and keep at pace with market demands.  Migrants already
account for a rising share of the workforce in rich countries and
an even larger share of the population increase there. 
Migration is already changing the face of many industrialized
countries.  And in a real sense, the very composition of many
nation states is changing before our very eyes, and this requires a
certain adaptation through programmes to introduce our people to
multiculturalism.  Thus migration, seen against this backdrop,
is inevitable, is necessary, and is desirable.  If we accept
this premise, then the challenge before us all is very clear and
well stated in your theme.  How do we organize ourselves to
ensure orderly and humane migration in response to the contemporary
challenges.

And the third factor is closely related, which is a
widening north-south disparity.  Given the demands
for labour in industrialized countries, at all skills levels, and
the high and growing youth unemployment in the south, there is no
reason to believe that the "push-pull" factors driving migration
will lessen any time soon.  So one cannot close ones
doors.  One has to keep them open even if it is done on a
selective basis, because there are large percentage of birth rates
in the south, jobs to be filled in the north, and a very slow rate
of job creation in the south.

II. Managing migration: need for a ‘high road"
scenario

A. Counter-intuitive "low-road" tendency

Given all the above, I'd like to say that my second point is
that you can either go a "low-road" scenario or you can have a
"high-road" scenario in managing migration.

Many governments are reacting to the global economic recession
counter-intuitively by tightening visa regimes and migration
policies.  In doing so, they risk transforming the economic
crisis into a migration crisis.  They risk for short-term
political gain causing long-term social and economic damage. 
Others are passing national laws that would criminalize migrants
who do not have proper papers.  These and other anti-migrant
policies constitute a "low-road" scenario, an approach that would
deny today's realities, including demographic and labour market
trends, and a widening north-south economic and social gap.

The "low-road" scenario is one of business as usual, status quo
with regard to migration management, an approach that is based on
stereotypes, fear, and short-term political expediency. 
Characteristics of a "low-road" scenario include:

• a narrow migration policy, highly restrictive, and limiting
  migration to the extent possible
• absence of a comprehensive legal framework or national
  migration policy
• national laws that tend to push migrants back, some of whom may
  need refugee protection, denying them any recourse to more humane
  solution
• a single ministry or a single government agency is placed in
  charge of migration and very little communication across the board;
  if you give exclusively to one ministry they will have specific
  emphasis; if you bring several ministries together, they will come
  out with a more balanced policy
• no regular institutionalized dialogue with countries of origin
  of transit
• little or no government effort to do what the Mayor of Shinjuku
  ward is doing, i.e. to inform and educate the public about the
  positive contribution that migrants make, the benefits of
  migration, and the dangers of human trafficking, and national laws
  that push even more migrants into the hands of traffickers and
  smugglers

B. Elements of a "high-road" scenario

The "high-road" scenario on the other hand calls for a
comprehensive, rights-based approach to migration management.

First of all, governments on the "high road" examine, pursue,
and keep open all possible migration management options, and they
pass laws that facilitate the entire range of labor migration
possibilities.  Facilitation as well as control of movement,
short-term as well as long-term relocation, circular migration,
labor migration for all of skills levels, not just high-skilled,
but also entry and stay for purposes of family reunions, study,
business, and tourism, coordinating the diaspora to support
countries of origin.

Second is a "whole of government" approach to migration
management where ministries come together - interior, foreign
affairs, justice, social affairs, human rights, to come up with a
balanced policy that serves both the national interest and respects
the rights of migrants.  All aspects of the migration cycle
are addressed.  No single ministry or country can effectively
manage migration alone.  Governments also will find it
important to bring others in, the local communities, NGOs, private
sector, academes, media, so you also have, in addition to "whole of
government" you have a "whole of society" approach, a structured
programme for capacity building.

Third, governments will want to participate actively in one or
more of the various "regional consultative processes" on
migration.  These covered the world bringing together
destination, origin and transit countries regularly together. 
The "Bali Process" brings countries together around
counter-trafficking, "Colombo Process," around labor migration, and
at the global level the "Global Forum on Migration
Development."

Fourth and finally, the "high road" scenario calls for serious
efforts on the part of the governments to inform and educate the
public about migration and migrants in order to abolish harmful
stereotypes, together with cultural orientation, language training,
etc.  And I am very pleased and honored that we were able to
have a modest role in Japan's pilot resettlement programme, now in
its second year whereby 30 Myanmar refugees are brought from the
refugee camps at northern Thailand to come to Japan each year for
three years.  We were involved in the pre-departure language
training, so that when they come here, they have a certain comfort
level and can participate.  The pilot resettlement is a real
breakthrough and I congratulate Japan for what I think is an
excellent initiative.

III. Conclusion: parameters that respect national
sovereignty and individual rights

If migrants feel that they belong, they will develop a sense of
pride.

Let me close quickly as I see I am beyond my time.  While
there is no magic formula nor one that is universally applicable, a
responsible migration policy is one that contains parameters along
the following lines: on one hand, a policy that respects national
sovereignty in determining who enters a county and that those who
do will uphold and respect local custom and laws, and on the other
hand, a policy that respects the age-old desire of people to
migrate to seek better life – mankind's oldest poverty
reduction and development strategy, and the person's expectation
that his / her rights as a person will be honored and
respected.

Thank you very much.