Mie Governor's foreign-worker survey labeled discriminatory by advisory panel

An expert panel advising Mie Prefecture’s governor called a recent survey on foreign employee hiring discriminatory and urged the results be kept confidential.

Governor Katsuyuki Ichimi of Mie Prefecture ordered a survey of roughly 10,000 residents to gauge public opinion on whether the local government should keep hiring foreign nationals, deliberately leaving out foreign residents from participation. After the poll was conducted in January and February, an advisory panel of experts assessed the questionnaire and deemed it potentially discriminatory, warning that it might encourage prejudice among respondents.

The panel advised that the survey’s results should not be disclosed and will present its conclusions to the governor as early as next week. Ichimi has indicated that his final decision on re-imposing a Japanese citizenship requirement for prefectural employees will weigh the survey’s outcomes alongside other factors. In April, a third-generation ethnic Korean living in Mie filed a petition seeking to keep the results private, leading the panel to invoke the prefecture’s anti-discrimination ordinance in its deliberations.