According to Mainichi Daily Newspaper, Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) suggested Japanese government to start easing up the barrier of permanent immigrant policy to prevent from the further population decrease (the decrease of workforce in Japan).
The Japan economy is suffering from the lack of workers due to the very low birth rate in Japan.
Lately, Japan started accepting Indonesian nurses. Also they have been doing "trainee" programs.
But these programs were limited to the temporary workers.
Now, the Japan's biggest business leaders are suggesting pernament immigrants.
Keidanren suggests Permanent Immigrants for Japan's population issue - 経団連：移民受け入れ提言…人口減対策 定住前提に
http://mainichi.jp/select/biz/news/20081013k0000m020124000c.html
For your information, Nippon Keidanren is Japan's biggest business leader's organization which former leaders include Toyoyta, and Sony's former CEOs.
When I came back to Japan last year from LA. I was very surprised that Japan starts accepting more foreign workers.
I think the USA may be the most "closed" country in the world.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
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4 comments:
It will be interesting to see the various levels at which foreigners will be able to permeate the workforce. Since Japanese language skills would be necessary, It's hard to imagine things will go smoothly if some kind of language requirement isn't instituted.
Also, America does have a lot of problems, but I don't think it's the "most closed country in the world."
> billywest
Yeah, I'm interested in that too.
But I can say that Japanese language requirement won't be that necessary after seeing people working here.
And I changed my last sentence to "may be"
From a purely economic viewpoint, setting the bar higher in terms of any qualification (language or otherwise) is disadvantageous for Japanese businesses who are mainly looking for employees to fill the bottom rung at the lowest price.
The problem of language in a new culture is always solved in subsequent generations anyway. Anyone who has children here and raises them will have children who will speak Japanese. There was an article about Brazilian Japanese parents finding their kids spoke Japanese better than Portuguese and the parents had problems communicating with their own kids. It's the same in the U.S. with kids of other immigrants. The kids speak English, but the parents rarely become fluent.
I don't understand the comment about the U.S. possibly being "the most closed country in the world". The facts would certainly not support that considering the U.S. has historically accepted more immigrants than most other countries and has some of the most lax citizenship rules compared to other countries. Adding that comment to the end undermines the credibility of the author's other comments.
If you're going to make such an assertion, then you have to provide facts that back it up or it just looks like a prejudicial statement.
Hi orchid64,
I can also see this policy could be more for higher educated high-paying foreign workers in Japan.
Of course, I am not from Keidanren, so I don't really know if they said so to look for cheap labor or the high-educated.
But if Japanese government could open the immigration policies to high educated engineer (which Japan started lacking right now), they won't be low paying jobs.
So there won't be competition for low wage, and they will pay social security tax to help elders.. and such.
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And I see the problem of cultural gap between foreigners and Japan.
So that's the one of the reason why I started this blog as a part of my projects....trying to make the gas small since I am pure Japanese who can speak English.
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And, about the US immigration policies, I saw how difficult for foreign college-educated workers to get work visa in the US last several years.
I am actually one of them. I got 50K+ job offer from various INS-qualified companies, but I couldn't get work permit due to the restriction.
And I saw how easy to get work permit in Japan as long as you are English teacher.
I am working on a project right now, so I don't have time to find and show you the numbers, yet...
Again, thank you for your comment.. and I'm sorry that I don't have time to answer all of your question.
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