The Mainichi reports in the article, Cracks show in 'coexistence' dream as laid-off migrant workers no longer seen as 'saviors': "On a late December day in Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture, the morning quiet was shattered when a pair of Brazilian sisters assaulted and robbed a local businesswoman. Both sisters had recently been caught in the wave of temporary worker layoffs that has washed through Japan's manufacturing sector.Some 17 percent of Oizumi's 42,300 residents are foreigners, mostly Brazilians, the highest rate of any municipality in the country. Even in a town with such a high foreign residency rate, the ideal of "coexistence" is far from being realized, a truth which forms a dark subtext to the robbery.The sisters, both wearing black balaclavas that revealed nothing but their eyes, attacked their victim in silence. "I thought I was going to be killed," said the 58-year-old victim of her terror at that moment. The woman left her house on Dec. 22 for her liquor shop next door, which she co-owns with her husband and which deals in imported food items aimed at the local Brazilian population. Her handbag contained about 7.6 million yen that she intended to bank. In the short distance between her home and her business, the sisters-in-law struck.They did not get far with the money, however. The victim's husband, along with a Brazilian man and woman who happened to be passing by, heard her cries and grabbed the robbers before they could make their escape. The sisters-in-law, a 33-year-old Oizumi resident and a 40-year-old from Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, were arrested on the spot.According to a lawyer and others involved in the case, the younger of the pair was laid off from an auto parts plant in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, a week before the attempted robbery. Her partner in crime was scheduled to be laid off from an electronics parts maker in Kuki, Saitama Prefecture, on Christmas Day. The sisters-in-law are reported to have said they attempted the robbery because it is difficult for Brazilians to find new jobs, and the two wanted money to return to Brazil.The younger woman, who speaks almost no Japanese, is married to a Brazilian of Japanese descent and has two boys. During her capture, she aimed some barbed words at the Brazilian man who had come to the victim's assistance. "You have children too, don't you?" she snapped in Portuguese. "Why are you helping a Japanese person?"The Brazilians who came to work in Oizumi, where Fuji Heavy Industries and Sanyo Electronics each have factories, were hailed as the town's "saviors." Their route to the town and its factory jobs was set up by the Tomo District Employment Stability Council, a body created in 1989 by small and medium sized companies in eastern Gunma Prefecture to take advantage of immigration law reforms the next year. Until that time, 3D jobs (dirty, dangerous and demanding) that Japanese tended to avoid had been filled by illegal workers from places such as Pakistan.The Stability Council's policies were formulated to make working in the area an attractive proposition. Their first principle was to bring not just individual workers to the area, but entire families. In addition, if one employer was forced to restructure and lay immigrant workers off, the council would support the workers in their search for a new job. Member companies secured homes for the workers, and supplied them with household necessities such as refrigerators and futons.In the first year of the program, the council sent rented buses to Narita International Airport to pick up groups of new workers coming from overseas. A council representative would stand at the arrivals gate with a sign saying "Welcome" held over his head.At its peak, the Stability Council had a membership of 84 companies, but the warm receptions and employment guarantees were not to last. The Tomo District Employment Stability Council was disbanded in 1999."The companies all switched to temporary staff agencies for their workers, because it's easy to lay them off," says 68-year-old Takeo Yamaguchi, a former board member of the defunct Stability Council.The community of those with Japanese ancestry is changing, too. As of the end of last year, there were some 5,000 Brazilians living in Oizumi, and shops doing business in Portuguese were thick on the ground. The thriving community might have been called a paradise for Brazilians of Japanese descent, especially for those third-generation Brazilians who could not speak Japanese.However, the paradise has begun to show serious cracks since the current economic crisis hit. In Ota, the city next to Oizumi, 69-year-old Jinji Tanii, a first generation Brazilian of Japanese descent, owns a temporary worker company for Brazilian workers. Tanii did have 700 workers on his roster, but over November and December of last year, 300 were laid off and 50 more will lose their jobs by March.Five days after the incident in Oizumi, a second generation Brazilian of Japanese descent registered with Tanii's agency broke into a convenience store in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture and was arrested. The man had been looking for work, but eventually ran out of money. Before his attempted break-in, the man's gas and electricity had been shut off, and he was using candles to light his home."It's hard to believe we were just celebrating the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil," says Tanii sadly. "Even if one speaks of 'co-existence' with the Japanese, it's just a lot of empty talk."In December, the month of the attempted hold-up, the Oizumi branch of a travel agent specializing in South America was deluged with calls for tickets home. The agent has booked flights out of Japan for some 900 people in January, three times the usual number."The continued existence of the community of those with Japanese ancestry here is in real danger," says the travel agency branch manager, 38-year-old Kiyohito Arnaldo Shiowaki, a Brazilian of Japanese descent.Before the attempted robbery, the younger of the suspects had lived with her family in an apartment for two years. The 60,000 yen per month duplex residence came with a barbecue area. The landlord was the woman the sisters-in-law tried to rob."The first and second generation Brazilians who came here 20 years ago worked hard to build up the trust of this community," says the woman. "It's too bad that the people who came after are destroying it."Since the attack, the businesswoman and her husband have increased the number of security cameras around their liquor shop, from 16 to 24."