Immigration in Japan

Résumé du document

For several decades, Japan has been the only industrial country in the world that did not rely on immigration. Among the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, Japan has the lowest percentage of immigrants. The Japanese government has recently launched various measures to favor the return of Latin American immigrants living in Japan to their countries of origin. The Japanese ambassador in Peru said that currently there are some 60,000 Peruvians living in Japan and he recognized that the situation of the Latin American immigrants is quite difficult in all countries. It is the same plight in Japan due to the effects of the financial and economic crisis. That's why Japan proposes to issue $3,000 for a plane ticket to some foreigners who have lost their jobs because of the current crisis. The government's motivation is three-fold: ease pressure on its own labor market, help the foreign workers to get home, and possibly reducing a great portion of people off the unemployment rolls. In reality, this comes within a long trend: Japan's net migration since the Second World War has been approximately zero.

Extraits

[...] In fact, some social and economic factors push Japan toward a less strict immigration policy, while other factors, such as a sense of ethnic homogeneity, are prompting Japan to adopt stricter immigration controls. In a nutshell, we are going to explore this Japanese equivocation firmly rooted in History A historical view A famous anecdote must not be ignored namely that in 1641 Japan's shogunate designated an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour as the only place where foreigners could live. This event corresponds to the period when Japan closed to the outside world. [...]

[...] Meanwhile, the numbers of Chinese, Filipino, Brazilian and others are rapidly increasing because of Japan's economic growth since the Plaza Agreement in mid-1980, and they are called comers”. Today, some 313,000 Brazilians live in the country, mainly in the provinces of Shizuoka, Aichi and Gunma. They are the third-biggest foreign community in Japan. The number of Nikkeijin (ethnic Japanese migrants from Latin America) grew to 300,000 by the end of the 1990s, following a 1989 shift in immigration law that created a special visa category for ethnic Japanese. Also increasing are Chinese nationals registered in Japan, many of whom are trainees and students. [...]

[...] They found opportunities mainly in agriculture, fishery, construction, food manufacturing, textile, machinery and metal. The other channel is was- the recruitment of Nikkeijin, who were given access to residential status with no restriction on employment. The most important visible impact of the legal reform was the influx of Japanese Brazillians. On a global scale, the Japanese government has not yet ratified the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers (ICMW) and Members of Their Families adopted in 1990. [...]

[...] There is little appreciation for what is called multicultural society and not a big respect for people with mixed cultural. This common view justifies the prejudice and discrimination against zainichi Koreans and other non-Japanese who resided in Japan. Indeed, foreigners are often viewed negatively, particularly in relation with crime. Immigrant crime has often been sensationalized by Japanese medias, with stories of terrifying crimes being committed by immigrants far out numbering the stories on the positive impact from immigrants. Several themes have emerged in Japan's immigration policy in recent years. [...]

[...] It recently called for a more active immigration policy to attract highly skilled non-Japanese workers, whose present number the Keidanren puts at a mere 180,000. In addition to that, Japan now spends 7.5 percent of its GDP to fund retirement and health benefits for the elderly, but this amount will rise to 12.5 percent, the highest in the world. This is a problem for OECD countries in general: Aggregate unfunded pension liabilities are $34 trillion and the cost of associated health care is estimated at another $30 trillion. [...]