The Jesuit Social Center Migrant Desk in Tokyo is discussing ways to collaborate with the Vietnam Jesuit Province, after seeing a sharp increase in the number of Vietnamese workers entering Japan under the guise of trainees. Within the last three years, the number of Vietnamese living and working in Japan has grown to more than 200,000.
In September 2017, Fr Ando Isamu SJ, Head of the Migrant Desk and Jessie Tayama of the Jesuit Social Center, met with Vietnam Provincial Fr Vincent Pham Van Mam SJ, and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Do Manh Hung of Ho Chi Minh Archdiocese and Fr Joseph Dao Nguyen Vu SJ, Secretary of Vietnam’s Episcopal Committee for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, to explore possibilities for collaboration.
In January and February, Fr Isamu spent five weeks in Vietnam gathering concrete information about the fast growing phenomenon of young Vietnamese looking for jobs in Japan. A great number come from the rural areas of middle-north Vietnam, where Japanese companies recruit them, offering them attractive opportunities to be able to pay back heavy debts they incur in order to reach Japan, after receiving some training in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh.
From the meetings, Fr Isamu and his team were able to gather ideas about how to push the collaboration forward. For example, during his visit in Japan, Bishop Do said that the best thing to do would be to convene a pastoral network composed of diocesan priests, religious men and women, and lay Vietnamese migrants in the country.
“This pastoral network can welcome new migrant workers and students in Japan, and help them settle and integrate into Japanese society and the Church’s life and activities,” he explained.
Bishop Do thanked the Jesuits in Japan for caring for Vietnamese migrant workers through the Jesuit Social Center. “I wish that they will continue their generous support to enable Vietnamese communities to grow in faith and social capabilities,” he said.
The Jesuit Social Center Migrant Desk has offered to help Bishop Do in his plan to set up a centre for Vietnamese people in Japan who are in need of pastoral care, social services and legal advice. The centre hopes to have a team of priests and religious, social workers and lawyers to attend to these needs.
Bishop Do intends to set up a centre in Vietnam as well to assist Vietnamese who want to emigrate to Japan, and for this he will need someone from Japan to help train the centre’s staff. Another area for collaboration is staff training.
As Bishop Do said, collaboration is a way of “better listening to the signs of the times”, and he sees this as an opportunity to present to Vietnamese migrants and ordinary Japanese “a face of God and of the Church, full of love through sincere concern and charity”, and to promote and encourage priestly and religious vocations among the young volunteers serving migrants.
Read Fr Isamu’s interview with Bishop Do here.