On 20 November 2007, Japan reinstated its fingerprinting requirement for foreign residents as part of a counterterrorism measure. The bill had been passed in the Diet with little fanfare and received minimal coverage in the Japanese media. A small group of mostly North Americans, Europeans, and Australians worked with a handful of Japanese activists to organize a campaign against the bill in collaboration with Amnesty International Japan and the Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan (SMJ). Although this group contacted numerous proimmigrant and foreign-resident organizations and human rights activists, surprisingly few showed up for the rallies that the group organized in August and November 2007 to protest the measure. Most significant was the relative lack of participation by the largest foreign-resident groups in Japan: Chinese, Korean, Nikkei (ethnic Japanese) Brazilians, and Filipinos.

In many respects, the reinstatement of the fingerprinting requirement, with the stated aim of preventing the entry of potential terrorists and criminals into Japan, was consistent with developments in other industrial democracies to control their foreign populations following the 11 September 2001 attacks.