"Ernest Schaal" <eschaal@max.hi-ho.ne.jp> wrote in message

> I don't know what you mean by the term "non-national,"

Not a  national. Foreigner.

> I don't know what you mean by the term "non-national," since it is not a
> recognized legal term.

Nationality is not a recognized  legal concept ?

>Are you confusing the term "national" with
> "resident"?

If you don't like "national", let's say "person of that nationality".

Maybe you're unable to understand the difference between citizens that have
citizen rights in their country , and people that have a nationality but no
citizen rights (or not all of them)  : children, people condemned to no
longer have such rights, person of the nationality of a country that has no
citizens.

It's sure the status of the child is discussed in certain countries, and
there are tries to give them a legal existence other than "special pet"
belonging to their parents. But that's not in Japan, not in Thailand. So
it's irrelevent here.

> > The legal status of children is different to that of adults. A child
>> cannot
> > leave his/her family, migrate on his/her own to another country, make a
> > living, etc.
>
> This does not seem to be an accurate portrayal of the law.

Ah yeah ? What's not accurate ? You mean the Japanese law says children are
independant from their families ?

> Don't get hung up on the guardian situation,

The girl's legal existence in Japan is daughter of a Japanese citizen. It's
more than a "guardian situation" debate in your village.

> because sometimes the guardianship is changed for legal purposes, such as
immigration
>matters.

In Japan ?
I think that was Mike Cash that explained how uncommon it is for Japanese
judges to take a decision of removing a child from parents even in cases of
extreme abuse.

> > It's the Japanese guy and his wife that asked the visa for their adopted
> > child.  The *right* is that of the Japanese guardian.

The right of the Japanese father in his own country.

>>His right to have his
> > child in his country, so he can do his duty of educating that child.
>
> Where do you think that this "right" exists? I think you are making up law
> here.

I make up the law when I say parents have parental rights ?

> As to being coherent or incoherent, the law doesn't always seem coherent
>to laymen, it doesn't always seem coherent to some lawyers.

In my country, we have the same system of Roman law as Japan. It is meant to
be globally
coherent,  incoherencies and loopholes have to be corrected by the
lawmakers. It happens all the time laws are supressed or changed for better
coherency. In that context, anybody that finds an incoherence in Japanese
laws, even a foreigner living in another country, can indicate it to a
Japanese lawmaker that may propose a change. That's not that the Japanese
lawmakers or government care about what I or the Thai girl think, but it's
considered general interest (=the interest of Japanese citizens, their
children and their civil servants) to have a coherent system.
Lawyers are not a very important part of the system.

CC