I acknowledge and sympathize with the pain this will cause, but in regards to Japan itself: Good for them. Not because it is a rightward shift, but because it is a shift toward pragmatism in the face of the inherent tension between respect for all people and respect for one's own people and culture.
> I mean, sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences of an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
They're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
>Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
I'm not following your argument at all, if they had taken no immigrants, the GDP would just be even worse then, and Canada would be even further behind.
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
None of this happens in isolation. If you flood a country with a torrent of migrants, everything else just doesn't continue as is with that one thing happening on the side.
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
If I understand, GDP didn't grow nearly as fast as the population. The economy technically got bigger, but once you divided it across millions more people, GDP per capita shrank while living costs, especially housing, surged. Bigger pie, but even more people splitting it, so a smaller average slice.
That seems to show in the data. Canada screwed this up and brought in way too many people, way too quickly, without anything close to the housing, infrastructure or investment needed to support it. Since the cuts started in 2024 and were pushed further by the new government, GDP per capita has started growing again and rents are cooling, which seems partially explained by those immigration cut backs.
What I can't find in the data is evidence that this explains why Canada lagged behind countries like the US. Most of that gap seems to come from high-tech industries. Meaning Canada just doesn't invest in itself enough, and cheap migrant labour doesn't explain why it failed to build the industries that actually drove growth elsewhere.
Per capita. GDP is not meaningful for the average person most of the time. Norway has a very high GDP per capita, but a lower GDP than Canada. Would it make life better for them if they suddenly had double the GDP and double the population? Probably not really, might be more crowded.
Canadians might be able to produce more innovation if there wasn't so much inflation and tax burden due to high immigration.
> the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
Yes, physically that's a good description of the natural flow of things. No, it makes no sense for successful nations to suffer for the benefit of unsuccessful nations, generally speaking. What they should provide is aid, with varying specifics on what that means (e.g. it could be as simple as favorable trade).
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
How are those nations suffering, when the reason that they're destinations is because they have a surplus of resources (I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place)? As long as a significant number of the immigrants aren't committing crimes and play by the rules the citizens go by to the best of their abilities, why is there an issue? Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
> I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place
You literally just did, only in that comedically intellectual vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
You're conveniently omitting the fact that they relied on massive external aid, security alliances, education expansion and more. China in particular rose up thanks to state-led industrial policies and having a heck of a lot of people to do stuff for cheap. And none of those countries were poached of their resources and their populations oppressed for decades/centuries.
Also funny you say people should improve their lot, when that's exactly what they're trying to do... somewhere where there's actually decent opportunity to improve said lot since that's generally absent in a "hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump" (shaped by a history of colonial poaching, proxy conflicts, etc; these are relevant facts that people like you try to sweep under the rug). The majority not looking for handouts; they looking to make a life for themselves and their family.
> You should be extraordinary [...]
Sorry to tell you that a genuinely free labour market means more mobility, not less. What you're describing is a highly regulated labour market with strong border controls. Get your definitions straight.
And yes, if some individual/group commits crimes, then sure they should be sent back or jailed like any citizen. But if they're making a honest living and paying their social dues then leave them the hell alone, regardless of how they arrived in the first place.
Yeah there are people out there who think only they have the right to be in a particular space, because birth or skin colour or whatever other attributes they use to set themselves apart and above. Virtually indistinguishable from the Nazis, slavers and every other group that considered themselves superior to another group that doesn't meet their criteria for inclusion; only difference is there are now laws and the world is watching closely for gas chambers and the like nowadays, so they find loopholes in said laws to continue dehumanizing and excluding others. You sound very much like one belonging to the former group.
ROFL. Again, this nonsense is so hilariously played out. Pathetic.
Anyway, good luck with noise like that. It's good for a laugh. Like I have to confess that I'm not sure if you're having a laugh and this is a parody, and I hope it is.
Nations demonstrably are suffering, though. You may make arguments about what you think is/isn't part of the core issue (economy, jobs, welfare, cultural displacement, crime, xenophobia, etc), but the result is simply observable in hundreds of millions of voices.
I am not a free market absolutist - I don't think I implied that anywhere.
That's a vibe, not an argument. And the data doesn’t line up with your catastrophe story. Migration tends to raise global output and, on average, has positive effects on destination GDP per capita over time[0]. It turns out that immigrant effects on native jobs is near net zero, as there are small losses or gains depending on skill mix in the various local labour markets. Actually new immigrants have a greater effect on the jobs of old immigrants[1] (news to me, but makes sense). Similarly in welfare, there's pretty much negligible impact in more advanced economies, leaning positive over time especially when immigrants arrive as working-age adults, which is the norm[2].
I could go on, but I think that's enough research out of me. You don't have to be a "free market absolutist" to see that the reality is far more mixed than “nations are suffering.” Yes, poorly designed immigration policies can lead to problems. No, there's nothing authoritative to backup claims that immigration is broadly destructive, which makes those voices uninformed. Or prejudiced.
It's OK if they choose to seek other avenues for dealing with that problem. The easiest solution is often not the best, and sometimes there is no net-positive path forward.
Sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences.
Though I would debate the idea that immigration is an "easy" solution. Perhaps the way it's frequently being done, with a lack of social integration, etc. But that's just bad policy.
You’re fear mongering. The sky is falling if they don’t take in a foreign population to exploit for cheap labor.
Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US. It was just a demographic shift. You might have your opinions guided by colonialism and capitalism more than you think.
You continue to claim calamity and seem to think one possible path is the only one or even preferred. Perhaps a natural reduction in the population would be a good thing for easing climate change.
My above comment just quoted you and included a link to an article about irony - bit hard to see where you're seeing continued claims of anything in that.
It's baffling to me how we come up with economic justifications for forced mass immigration. Mass immigration of mainly non-western low skill / low education people is causing a catastrophic economic burden on western Europe. Unemployment rates of those are much higher than natives, even when you look at 2nd or 3rd generation.
Not to mention that most European capitals have become poverty ghettos where the original inhabitants don't recognize their own country any longer.
There are not enough low skilled jobs. There is not enough housing. There is not enough infrastructure.
Mass immigration is the most disruptive disaster that was ever forced upon western Europe (forced, because there has been a large democratic majority AGAINST this type of immigration since decades).
Very sad state of affairs. Good on Japan that they see the danger and try to do something about it before it's too late.
This is all... just nonsense? Like what is your source for any of this, some rightwing boomer facebook group?
Nothing has been forced upon Western Europe - we have aging populations and shrinking demographics, so a need for people to plug the holes in the workforce.
There is no illuminati-type conspiracy here. Japan has lost 5 mil people or so since 2010, and the median age is like 50. At some point there will be nobody to work and pay tax, no doctors or nurses to take care of the elderly What's the plan exactly to deal with this, what's the magic solution that doesn't somehow involve immigration?
Having the population shrink and just letting the wheels fall off is vastly superior to ethnically cleansing your own country by importing a bunch of foreigners. At least you can rebuild from the first scenario.
It's not a theory, let alone a conspiracy one. It's a plain and simple fact. It's why we're having this conversation in the first place. Britain went from 88% native British in 2000 to 73% in 2025. They will become a minority in their own country in the next 50 years. Similar has happened in Sweden, Germany, France, many others.
What are you even trying to imply by posting that link?
I'm straight up saying that linking demographic shifts to some grand plan has already been recognised as a racist conspiracy theory.
Britain is a good for example: they (and France) spent the 20th century doing anything and everything to prevent their empires crumbling. One such thing was easing movement of people with their old colonies to maintain influence.
Turns out things can happen without little green men being involved.
Okay, so you acknowledge that orchestrated or not, the native populations of European countries are going extinct and ultimately are going to be replaced. Japan doesn't want that, as it's an existential issue for their nation. I would argue possibly THE most existential issue a nation can face.
I would personally argue that it IS orchestrated, as this massive change happened in 50 years after 1000+ years of no change, but it's not relevant to the actual outcome. Call it a racist conspiracy theory all you want, people are becoming immune to that strategy.
I do not acknowledge that, how do you get to "extinction" from "demographic shifts"? That is quite the impressive leap.
The reason for Japan's (brief) attempt at immigration is they recognised their demographic decline as an actual existential risk. They've chickened out because it proved sufficiently politically unpopular - this is not the same thing. Good luck to them dealing with their demographics in some other as-yet-unknown way.
Yes it's clear you've been drinking the koolaid. And no, people have migrated around for thousands of years, that's simply not grounded in reality. How do you think humans got from Africa to the rest of the planet? Or does that not count as migration because it's somehow too far in the past?
I don't know how else to refer to a conspiracy theory that's primarily driven by fears/hatred of others based not on their merits and values but their ethnicity/race. If you have another preferred term that accurately depicts this I'd be happy to use it instead.
White population of London fell from 97,7% in 1961 to 53,8% in 2021, probably below 50% now. What's happening to Britain is the same thing that British did to indigenous populations during colonial times.
Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable, but denying simple statistics from governmental agencies in democratic countries is... well... very close to a conspiracy-theory
You're missing the forest for the trees. I don't care if it's some kind of evil orchestration. That's the least of my worries. What I want is for it to be stopped. And that desire has an overwhelming democratic majority in most European countries AFAIK. Or is democratic decision making only important when it's an outcome you agree with?
If "an overwhelming democratic majority" want it stopped and it presumably hasn't, then that implies there's must be a conspiracy acting against said majority. Or how do you square this circle?
In any case, there is no country in Europe in which anti-immigration parties have an absolute majority (> 50%), let alone an "overwhelming" one [0]. So to answer your question: yes, democratic decision making is important to me, especially such that it actually reflects the will of the electorate and not some wish a minority within it has.
> then that implies there's must be a conspiracy acting against said majority.
Or that immigration simply isn't their most important policy, even though they support stricter measures.
Imagine you have a choice between two parties: party A wants to detonate an atomic bomb in the capital but also create well-funded animal shelters. Party B opposes the destruction of the capital city, but they want to turn all puppies in the country into kebabs. What do you vote? You don't want to eat ground puppies, do you?
If these are the only party choices an electorate has, it seems to me they have bigger problems. And so option C, the people don't vote, hence giving neither party a mandate to do what they want?
I really struggle to see how an example this obtuse has any analogy to reality.
There is nothing pragmatic about kicking out the workforce you imported because of a shortage of native labour. The pragmatist stance would be to accept those differences, and focus on addressing/alleviating them. Cutting your nose to spite your face is more idealism than pragmatism.
This is a shift away from pragmatism; pragmatism would be acknowledging Japan's economic need for immigration.
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
Pragmatism could just as easily be a decision by the public collectively to have more babies. There’s nothing about immigration that makes it inherently pragmatic. It could be, with the agreement of the electorate, away to compensate for the electorates decisions to have fewer babies. But it’s not up for us outside of Japan to lecture them on whether or not they are being consistent on this.
This is a government that needs anything to distract from its failures indeed. But that's not changing unfortunately - given there seems to be no real direction to fix the economy that is currently in a gutter, I think it's pragmatic to restrict immigration. Crime is skyrocketing, both Japanese and immigrants - even the Yakuza are getting into scam operations on Katagi, i.e. normal people. This basically never happened before and is a turning point. It's what happens in a bad economy and will just continue to get worse.
Low wage immigrants will not be able to fix the economy (demographics related decline is still decades away, yes it is important long term but not if the fundamentals don't improve). They will increase crime though since that's just what happens when you are poor in a bad economy. There won't be culling of poor locals but restricting inpu where possible, immigration, seems ok given the overall picture.
Not sure where you got the idea that crime is skyrocketing in Japan, but government crime rate statistics show a plummeting trend since the already-low 2000s, with a very minor uptick in the past 2-3 years.
I doubt that. The population is aging, and there are serious shortage of blue collar workers
Japan is facing a significant shortage of long-term care workers. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimates that the country will need approximately 2.4 million care workers by FY2026 and 2.72 million by FY2040 (about 250,000 and 570,000 more, respectively, than the 2.15 million employed in FY2022)[1]
Think of the US - the reduction of low wage immigrants has been a large factor in our economy lately. Food prices have gone up, and in the long term there's fewer young families getting added to the social security system.
While it's cute to think that suddenly these jobs are going to Americans, but these are mostly undesirable jobs that pay less than typical jobs. To the extent that they even get filled by native workers, it drives real wages down and not up.
Meanwhile, only allowing immigrants from the top of the income bracket crowds out the top side of the job market.
It restricts immigration to cities where the high wages are, ie. Tokyo which is itself already too crowded, and forces foreigners living in less populated parts of the country to leave, further depopulating it.
That makes sense (and seems undesirable). It's my understanding that Japan has a lot of near-ghost-towns with empty houses they badly need people to live in and improve (and presumably spend money in the area).
If there were a significant amount of such people coming in it would push up the cost of living for the average-(or below-average)-income Japanese citizen.
Look at any of the Western cities that became attractive for retirement or "investment properties" for wealthy international folks... it makes everything more expensive for everyone already there.
If the concern was just about preventing things from changing for existing citizens, restrictions across the income band would seem to make much more sense.
Given that that this policy is targeted against low-income foreigners I was under the impression it was meant to prevent downward wage pressure. Given the current political climate it may be more socially focused than I originally thought.
Requiring proficiency in the language is reasonable, but requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane. That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
The US has something like this, but the income threshold is lower.[1] US immigrants in most categories have to show that they will not become a "public charge", that is, need US welfare benefits.
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Technically true, extremely misleading. The law placed vastly fewer restrictions on who was a legal immigrant for much of that period. Of course, it is true starting in 1921, and 1924, legislation was put in place to limit immigration by "undesirables" such as Asians, Italians and Slavs.
Curious...which one of those regimes do you want to bring back?
I'm not sure people should be forced to live with those they feel xenophobia towards, even if one grants that the feelings of xenophobia have no basis in reality.
> Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years.
About ten and a half million of those in 15 years, from 1900 to 1914. Against a 1900 US population of about 76 million.
> The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
> Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York.
Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
> And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York
The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
> and Chicago today.
Chicago Democrats were immigrants around the relevant time. Chicago Republicans were from older stock. Both were corrupt.
> Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
Assimilation was the effect of immigration restriction, whether or not that was the motivation. It broke up the chains of migration that facilitated maintenance of separate cultural enclaves.
> Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
> The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall ("Following the 1854 mayoral election and the resulting mayoralty of Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over a century through its organized network of loyal, well-rewarded, and largely Irish Catholic district and precinct leaders.").
To be clear, the point isn't that they were Irish. As far as I can tell, Ireland isn't more corrupt than other western european countries. It was the political dynamics that arose from the presence of a large culturally distinct immigrant population.
> Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
Greetings from Canada. I live in Montreal. We have more of a Mafia problem nowadays than New York (no RICO here), and we were comparable in the 1930s. Bootleggers, remember? Where do you think they were running the booze from? Same "market", same mob. Yeah, they managed to dominate everybody else. That's what I mean about "niches". In fact they did it worldwide, and according to Wikipedia they're prominent in Australia, too. These are transnational groups. The Mafia is also big in Sicily. Are you going to say that's because of (checks notes) Sicilian immigration? Specifically because of a huge wave around 1900?
We also have Hell's Angels here. Ethnically "white". No immigrant identification whatsoever, totally acculturated... although I assume some of them moved here from the US. Pretty racist and anti-immigrant, actually. Cool fact: I used to live two houses away from Sonny Barger in beautiful Oakland, California. OK, it wasn't actually that cool. Those guys were really noisy. But I assure you they did not come through Ellis Island.
Apparently Winnipeg has First Nations gangs (Indians to you). Kinda the opposite of immigrants.
... plus a grab bag of others, some of them organized by immigrants. Yes, organized crime tends to segregate itself ethnically, so if one group gets the upper hand, you're likely to see its ethnicity as the face of the problem. But all ethnicities get to play, and they will expand into any available vacuum. If you hadn't had the Italian Mafia (worldwide), you'd have had something else (at least regionally).
And it's not always ethnic. Apparently there's a gang in BC that actually calls itself the United Nations.
> Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789.
It sure was by 1854, eh, according to your own quote? That was 38 years before Ellis Island opened. Before the specific wave of immigration that you're claiming caused the problem. Goalposts. You are moving them.
> Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era
... and preceded it. Your own link says "Of the 28 most influential Chicago aldermen of the 1890s, 24 were Irish.". I don't think they teleported from Ellis Island and took over in under 8 years.
Every place has organized crime. But the scale is not the same. You should research the italian mafia problem that existed in NYC. It was a completely different league than anything in Canada or Australia.
As to Ellis Island—I was using it as a label to refer to the pre-1920s wave of immigration generally. It was opened in the 1890s in response to waves of immigration that started in the 1830s. The film “Gangs of New York” is set from 1846-1863.
Now do a realistic summary of what it took to pass these checks, eg how details of a medical inspection or what level of resources (inflation adjusted) were required. Equating past practices with current standards is a bait-and-switch.
... as determined by an on-the-spot interview. Which was admittedly done in a very bigoted way.
> had passed a medical inspection
... which took about one minute to check for red flags. If you had red flags, they diverted you to quarantine. They were mostly looking for TB and some eye disease.
> had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
... by which they meant having as much as $25 on hand (call it $1000 in 2026, though that's a bit high), and convincing the interviewer that you could probably get a job. That convincing step did include claiming, in a way the interviewer found credible, to have skills beyond the "day laborer" level. But only just beyond.
> I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Good news: the medical requirements now are equivalent, the financial/self-support requirements are now much, much higher, and the vetting is vastly more thorough.
The US requirements are so much lower that calling them similar does a disservice.
The proposed requirements in Japan require earnings to exceed Japan's average and also for them to have an equivalent of 30 years of pension payouts saved up.
The US requirements are not as specific, but for comparison one of the numbers is that that families need to have an income requirement 25% higher than federal poverty guidelines, which very low compared to average US incomes.
they don't require 30 years saved up, only showing (somehow) that you will be able to generate such a pension equivalent over time. I suspect that will be very squishy in practice.
> “ive me your tired, your poor,
> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
> I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
The U.S. was founded as a nation of immigrants, and has a cultural history of being exceptionally immigrant-friendly (compared to other nations), especially with regard to immigrants without much means.
I don't believe other nations have any obligation to follow this example. On the contrary, they should be able to set whatever immigration policies make sense for them. But this model of letting in poor immigrants, letting them do the work that nobody else wants to do, and letting their kids become net contributors, does seem to have benefited the U.S. greatly over the past few centuries.
I dunno... 1790 Naturalization Act says only white people could become citizens. Sounds like they were friendly towards immigration from very specific countries.
Roosevelt's 1915 Americanism address also reveals this:
He says americanism "is a matter of the spirit and of the soul". In the very next paragraph, the so called "hyphenated americans" are condemned. This is perfectly reasonable.
In 1923, the supreme court decided an indian was not eligible for naturalization and citizenship because he was not white.
So arguably the US was a white ethnoatate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, just over half a century ago.
I mean yes, obviously: the nation was founded with a giant genocide of native peoples.
I do imagine original white people were perhaps more keenly aware of the fact that this land was not originally theirs, and that other people should be let in and given a fair shot, even if they're poor.
I was merely making the argument that U.S. immigration policy has historically not been very classist (even if it was immensely racist), and not caring about the wealth of the incoming immigrants has worked out immensely well for the country over its lifespan.
I agree, but unfortunately, looking at the news from Japan, far-right support rates are higher than one might expect.
So it's true that those in power are harming innocent people in order to maintain their power, but it's also true that Japanese people believe they are being harmed by foreign immigrants.
And some of it is actually true. Of course, conversely, there's also the problem of many Japanese companies hiring Southeast Asian workers at low wages and mistreating them.
But whether it's me as a Korean or Japan, both tend to have a certain authoritarian mindset instilled based on "ethnic" identity. So one aspect of this policy is "we only welcome rich foreigners who spend money and leave," and the media responds accordingly.
Strictly speaking, if you look at these policies strengthening restrictions on foreigners from a third-country perspective, you can see them from the angle of far-rightization. That is, sanctions against outsiders for the sake of internal cohesion[1]. But considering the severe aging population in Japanese industry right now, it's effectively cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face.
However, East Asians receive a somewhat different education from you, so that's how it is.
The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen, which benefits financial companies and exports but sacrifices the Japanese people—the incompetence of the regime is the problem. But because it's hard to grasp all of that complex background, people want to attack something else that's near them.
And also, because the morality of some underdeveloped countries (I know it's an example...) differs from that of developed countries, friction often occurs. Just as the sense of time differs between agricultural regions and cities, for instance.
> The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen
i think you are right, there is a lot of over-tourism (and from some places 'rude' tourists that are really aggravating to people) but that is also being caused by weak yen in the end...
whats the saying? everything is downstream from economics?
telling a person that has build a successful life after eight years, is assimilated and speaks the language and can support themselves that they have to leave on completely absurd conditions that virtually nobody could meet, including native citizens, is cruel by just about every definition of that term.
Those people have only ever paid in, have much better options than Japan at this point economically given how far the country has fallen behind, and the logical terminus of this is basically being some kind of ethic chauvinist second world clown country.
If you're even turning skilled tech workers and law abiding people away your immigration problem is solved by virtue of being poor in another 10-20 years
No one is forcing them to leave. They can continue to live and work in Japan on their current visa, and renew it. Japan is simply raising the requirements for permanent residence using the traditional ten year path. To be clear, there are numerous paths to permanent residence that are much easier than the traditional ten year path. (Your favourite LLM can tell you all about it.)
> completely absurd conditions
The new requirements are not this. In short: (1) modest Japanese language requirements, (2) more pension (or personal) savings, (3) higher salary.
> If you're even turning skilled tech workers ... away
They are not. As I understand, Japan does not limit the number of skilled visas, such as engineer, humanities, or manager. Also, many of those foreign tech workers will make more than 10M JPY per year and can easily qualify for something called the "Highly Skilled Professional" (HSP) visa. Depending upon your "HSP points", you can get permanent residence after one or three years without any of the other requirements.
The real issue is the people who have lived and worked in Japan for a long time, but don't earn large salaries. Japan is basically closing the door for permanent residence for those people unless they marry a local. My hot take: I am OK with closing the door for those people. They are basically earning a lower middle income. I'm not sure Japan wants or needs to have those people as permanent residents. However, they are free to live and work here as long as as they want. After they finish working, they can return to their home country. No one is taking that away.
> good luck caring for those tens of millions of people about to retire.
They will do it by expanding their existing (enormous) technical intern programme. There are already many low(er) skill foreigners working in elderly care.
> No one is forcing them to leave. They can continue to live and work in Japan on their current visa, and renew it.
Totally wrong, people who were eligible for the business manager visa are no longer elgibile with zero warning or grace period granted, so yeah, total BS. If you built a business here, that's been destroyed if you don't have enough money to quality for another business manager visa under the new (ridiculous) requirements.
What about the people who have worked for 10 years , paid all their tax, not broken the law, but don't have 30 years worth of money to live on, do you think they should be rewarded with the rejection of a PR? On what grounds is that fair?
I get the feeling you either have zero connection to Japan, or you do live here and are married to a Japanese, so you're happy to see the ladder get pulled up because "you're ok".
> people who were eligible for the business manager visa are no longer elgibile with zero warning or grace period granted
To be clear, they can continue to run their business for the duration of their visa. It is not an immediate order to leave the country. That is a false statement.
You are right that a significant change was made to the business manager visa. Old rules: 5M JPY was required as "minimum capital". New rules: 30M JPY is required. The primary reason for the change was to close a loophole that many mainland Chinese used to get a business manager visa to move their family to Japan. (There is no group of people less liked by Japanese people.)
I agree: They should have added a carve-out for legitimate small businesses. Alternatively, they should have created a programme to lend money at a reasonable interest rate and X years to become compliant. There are many non-Japanese restaurants that are run by first generation immigrants from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. However, the actual number of small businesses that have been "forced to leave" as a result of this change are as yet unknown.
There were a few very noisy folks that the mainstream media reported about over and over. However, they should try to borrow money from friends, family, or a bank. Personally, I contacted one of them via WhatsApp to offer to lend money to make the 30M JPY requirement, but I never heard back. After that, I assumed that they were "blowing smoke" (bullshit). Interestingly, for all the ones that were very publicly complaining about the changes (that I saw), none of their businesses have closed. I guess they made it work.
> What about the people who have worked for 10 years , paid all their tax, not broken the law, but don't have 30 years worth of money to live on, do you think they should be rewarded with the rejection of a PR? On what grounds is that fair?
The financial situation of the Japan central gov't is the same or worse compared to ten years ago. They don't want to grant permanent residence to people who are less than middle class. It is very likely that these people would consume in public benefits during retirement far more than they ever paid into the system. I think Japan is being financial prudent about what foreigners they allow to "stay forever". So, yes, I agree: They "pulled up the ladder", economically speaking.
Another myth of the traditional (my term) ten year permanent residence route: It is not guaranteed to be granted even if you followed all of the known and public rules -- good salary, paid all taxes (incl social), no traffic violations/arrests, etc. They look at your integration into Japanese society. If your Japanese language is poor, they frequently reject. If you are unmarried, they also frequently reject. If you belong to no civic orgs or never volunteer, they also frequently reject. If you don't have multiple personal recommendations for PR from Japanese citizens and/or other PRs, they also frequently reject. There are many, many Reddit and blog posts about such rejections.
Finally, have these changes affected you? You seem very emotionally charged in your posts about the matter.
> I am not sure in understand the issue, if Japanese want this, what’s the problem?
The problem is I’ve built my life here and they keep treating foreigners as a lesser life form. People here can unironically be standing next to me bitching about foreigners. Then turn to me and say something like “not you, you are fine.”
Clearly Japanese feel like they don't want immigrants or want very few of them, which is fine.
With these laws, they are pushing 99% of people out while saving face from being called racists.
I think every country should have a right over their borders. Japan wasn't built on multiculturalism like United States or Canada, so I'm not surprised.
That being said, I would probably think twice about traveling to Japan as a tourist.
United States wasn't exactly built on multiculturalism either.
Laws dating back to 1790 restricted naturalization to white people, which arguably makes the US a sort of white ethnostate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and repealing that act appears to be an objective of the american right wing as of 2026.
It really made me question whether it was possible for a third worlder like me to ever become an american.
Plenty of foreigners are in fact quite rude towards their new hosts though. It can and does bring out the worst in people, and I can't say I blame them.
The whole idea of naturalization is to assimilate into the new culture and become one of them. Far too many people just don't put in the effort to do that.
That's the risk you run immigrating to another country.
I immigrated to another country and I went in eyes wide open knowing that at any point I might have to pack up and head home. In fact, it became far harder to immigrate only a few years after I did. Likelihood is that if I hadn't come when I did I never would have been able to.
It took 10 years to finally become a citizen, but I did so the first day it was an option (yes, I counted down the days and sent in the application on day 1), because I knew it was the only way I could safely assume I'd never be forced to leave.
It would be fine if it was a well documented recurring issue that plagued society. As is it, it feels more like a canary in the coal mine, for dirtier times to come.
In practice, most visas are short term, and none of them will allow you to benefit from social aids for very long. At most I imagine you could extend your working visa to 5 years, get sick the first year and be at charge for the remaining 4 years ? There will be ink spent on these cases, but statistically how often does that even happen to need stricter laws ?
The current political climates needs the gov to look "Japan First" and these kind of rule change are very cheap to do, especially as the people directly impacted don't vote nor can complain. It goes well with the very anti-foreigner sentiment, especially as the current wave of tourists is very unpopular despite the money coming in.
The longer view is Japan getting less workers in total, yet more of the worse immigrants as they're calling for people who either don't need Japan (have enough money to go anywhere and don't need to think long term) or are willing to take more risks (high return grifts etc.), in a time where Japanese salaries and productivity are already lower than surrounding countries.
They're basically making a bad situation worse, just for short term political play, giving in on the worse trends.
They don't want to risk someone coming for a job, getting fired and becoming a drain on the social safety net. Able to care for themselves not just now, but for a while. It's a reasonable position.
And Japan isn’t either. They are requiring that by the time you retire you’ll have paid at least 30 years into the pension system or have equivalent financial resources any gap.
To qualify to long term residence means that they worked for years and contributed with taxes during that period, so it’s only fair that they get protection in case they happen to lose their jobs.
For the government, the cost for any worker in the same circumstances would be the same. On the other side, the foreigners cost less to the government overall when they were educated and raised elsewhere.
I’m not saying you are wrong, just that the previous rules are already in place in that very direction, and the changes are being placed instead to please and gain political support.
That's not how good risk analysis works. You also have to consider the alternative that you exclude someone coming for a job they excel at while becoming a net benefit to society just because they couldn't support themselves in an eventuality that didn't come to pass.
Reasonable, but they're going about it in irrational ways. For example, a person on a student visa is allowed to set up a company in Japan, but technically they're not allowed to put in any hours managing it. There's a strict 28-hour/week working limit, and a person is allowed to operate as a sole trader performing very specific tass, but the moment they rent an office or hire an employee they're in violation of their visa.
So while it's very rational to demand strong language skills, and very rational to expect people to go with a certified school given the unique difficulty of the language, potential residents are essentially limited to earning part-time wages (typically much lower than full time) during that period, and virtually barred from proactively engaging in any other kind of economic activity. They could transition to a business manager visa after that, but it will have to be a new business set up from scratch which must include at least one Japanese hire as well as minimum language skills; essentially requiring business activity/know how and business planning which the person was barred from doing during the language acquisition phase.
It's not impossible to meet these criteria by any means, but it actively discourages bootstrapping and efficient use of available time.
The more welfare you have, the better of an idea this is. An aging country especially cannot afford to risk more wards of the state.
> and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years
It's a confusing guideline but this isn't accurate. You need to show an expected future pension (could be savings) equivalent to a salaried worker who paid into an employee's pension for 30 years. That's strict, but there will probably be a bunch of ways to show that.
It's not about being reasonable, it's about having a good reason to kick basically everyone out who isn't 100% Japanese, or who has enough money to prop up their aging population and get almost nothing in return.
> That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
That’s not the standard. The standard is making sure someone is really a huge contribution to the society such that it offsets the burden of immigration.
I wonder how big the population of people that know enough Japanese, would be a huge contribution to Japanese society and wouldn't be able to get a better deal somewhere else really is. Can't imagine it's more than a million people. And putting in the effort seems quite futile as you could lose your status at any point in time for political gain.
The 30 years thing is insane for sure. Making more money than the average might be insane, it depends on how much more (which I didn't spot in the article, maybe I missed it).
the other issue is, there are lots of people who work and help out in the countryside where cost of living (and hence wages) are very low and forcing them to be above the whole average of the county is a bit onerous i think.
probably a better idea is average for the prefecture they live in, but i guess they want to simplify things or discourage ppl from moving to the countryside? idk; most people are in tokyo/osaka to be sure...
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population
In the UK, only 47% are net tax contributors. I can't find what the same statistic is for Japan. I don't believe it's wrong for there to be an expectation that they be a net contributor.
> Across the UK, 53.3% of people lived in households that were net recipients in FYE 2024. This means that they lived in households that received more in benefits (cash and benefits in kind) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect).
Most countries need both VAT and income tax to fund their budget. Importing well off immigrants means they subsidize the VAT part only and likely do not generate income from Japan salaries. This is basically same problem as with digital nomads: they use the infrastructure which they do not fund proportionally compared to regular citizens.
A digital nomad is still economically positive when a) their money circulates locally, eg at cafes and restaurants and b) comes from outside the region. That’s because they’re bringing wealth generated elsewhere (ie, at their employer) into the region.
While you’re correct the state misses out on income taxes, they get taxes on further spending, eg, when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe.
Not specifically about digital nomads, but Amazon used to estimate their salary dollars induce $2.5 of additional local economic activity — as Amazon employees bought from local stores, the store employees did in turn, etc.
>when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe
Nations whose economies depend on foreign tourist spending their money there, are some of the worst developed out there, have a disproportionately high low wage sector, and some of the highest wealth inequalities out there with the lowest opportunities for upwards mobility. Basically a dutch disease.
Developed economies aren't gonna be improved by you moving to buy lattes there while you gentrify the locals in the process and making life more expensive for them. The only ones who will be happy you do this will be greedy landlords.
Developed economies want skilled workers to stay as long term residents and contribute in income taxes, and maybe even become citizens so they can become eligible for the draft in case shit were to hit the fan. Digital nomads are like locusts by comparisons, they come to treat your country like and amusement park while the going is good, but leave at the slightest inconvenience.
> Digital nomads are like locusts by comparisons, they come to treat your country like and amusement park in a race to the bottom while the going is good, but leave at the slightest inconvenience if now the 2$ latte now has to be 3$ due to increased labor protections, when the impoverished country next door sells it for 2.50$.
This assumes they come just to geoarbitrage. Many want to experience a country for its nature, food, culture, people etc.
I work remotely/seasonally while traveling the world to learn local languages, learn about traditional culture, see nature out away from cities (I'm a bikepacker), etc. It is rare that I meet other digital nomads interested in those things; the vast majority really do come just to geoarbitrage. When I meet other foreigners deeply invested in the specifics of the country, they are more likely to be students, pensioners, or the independently wealthy, not DNs.
> While you’re correct the state misses out on income taxes, they get taxes on further spending, eg, when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe.
This only works to some extent, because, again, you can't subsidize budget with VAT only. And a person who is a bona fide employed immigrant still pays more tax in place of "just" a nomad.
They don’t get VAT only, but also income taxes on wages to support that activity and additional rounds of VAT.
Yes — people who emigrate to work there pay more in taxes, but they generally also consume more: the job they’re working displaces a local, they benefit from social medicine, etc. Digital nomads bring jobs from elsewhere to spend locally, while not benefiting from (eg) local healthcare or schools.
> They don’t get VAT only, but also income taxes on wages to support that activity and additional rounds of VAT
They would get the same wages earned on the workload surplus coming from employed immigrants in place of nomads. They also use the same services plus pay income salary. That's the whole point discussed here. Skilled immigration is better than glorified tourism.
That stat is bogus though when used in this context. The least payed workers contribute the most to every day life of society in my opinion and pay the least tax.
If we consider outright slavery, would that statistic count a slave as a "non-contributing" member of society? After all, they must be fed, and housed, but pay no taxes. What a burden they are!
I do. It's like needing a credit check to get a job. It's a horrible death spiral: Japanese jobs can decrease wages from more supply, which can out you under the line, which makes it harder for you to contribute to the economy.
Isn’t this just a reflection of wealth inequality though? A “net negative” tax payer is just working a job that makes one of the net positive payers richer thus still bringing in more income for the country.
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane
It would be insane for a country that is already dealing with an overburdened social welfare system to grant permanent residency to someone who is, say, 60 years old and doesn't have any savings or pension income to support them in retirement.
That's fair, but the stereotypical immigrant isn't near retirement. Positive migration tends to be related to youth, and it's hard to imagine that this will work for most.
Which, fair, it's their right to close the door fully, but lack of immigration and a greatly aged population sounds like a recipe for collapse.
The requirement is that your projected pension benefit, at your current income level, needs to match the average pension benefit for someone who worked for 30 years. And if you don't meet that requirement, whatever shortfall you have can be offset with an equivalent amount of savings.
It does not mean that you need to have 30 years of savings right now. Just that you are on track to get there by the time you retire.
There are a lot of people who won't qualify (and while it certainly sucks for people affected, this is by design) - but those who earn more than the Japanese average should generally qualify.
> have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years
You misunderstand. The Mainichi wrote it better: "Applicants would also be required to have projected pension benefits equivalent to those payable after 30 years of enrollment in the employees' pension program at their income level. If the projected pension benefits fall short, they will be allowed to cover the difference with their financial assets."
> Applicants will also be required to have a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts.
Does this take into account the amount of pension a person would still accumulate under Japanese employment, or will this immediately disqualify anyone under 45?
That’s like 12 x 30 x ¥35000 = 12600000 yen. ＄84000. I don’t know about others, but I consider myself pretty well off and I do not have that kind of money.
That's too low.
The National Basic Pension is around 60,000 yen per month and with traditional employer part on top (not everyone has it), it's 140,000 yen/month. I would think a foreigner immigrant would need to bring the equivalent of around $160k in a retirement savings account or similar.
This is certainly going to conflict with their moves to make it easier to attract aged care workers to the country. Perhaps all the elderly people are expected to patriotically look after themselves?
These are not in conflict. The recent changes make almost impossible for a low-wage worker in the elderly care sector to get permanent residence and hence become a "burden" to society longterm, but on the other hand, specified skilled worker visa (SSW) program expands even more. The gist of it is that the worker can come and work for a specific industry (in reality it almost always means specific company) for a 5 years max and then fuck off back to their country.
They are not naive, they are malicious (to be clear: I'm not generalizing towards all Japanese, just to the ruling majority). Following is only my speculation but I guess the plan is to use short-term workers until promised breakthrough in AI and robotics closes this need altogether.
Watch them learn the hard lesson that automotive companies had to learn with self-driving. The progress looks amazing at the start but those last few unnegotiable percent hide most of the work. Hands are incredibly dexterous, we don't have comparable tech let alone affordable enough to outcompete cheap immigrant labour. Maybe they can automate elderly care fast enough, but it's one heck of a gamble.
It is a gamble, and they are basing the policy positions on like a RIETI Technical Paper about the ARI, or automation risk index.. Which underneath is based on a bunch of surveys of "experts" to give a number on how automatable, specific actions are, then breaking up a job into a list of actions, and scoring the job for the ARI.. But the methodology that those experts used to make up the numbers is entirely undocumented.. and the assumption is that a whole job, can be automated if all its actions can.. and that a whole .. business and workplace, can just be switched, economically to an automated workflow, without any consideration of how it all has to integrate into everything else.. and other non-automated parts..
As for the SSW plan, there are two tiers to the program. Have you actually worked here on a SSW, or just heard about it by rough description?
SSW1 is a max of 5 years, non renewable. Somewhat similar and somewhat different from TITP (training) allows a path to SSW1 readiness and completion of TITP qualifies workers without testing for SSW1, SSW1 is intended to prepare workers for SSW2, which requires documented work and a test.
After 3 years employment as SSW1 (or two years if workers role includes supervisory management and is documented properly) every SSW1 worker is eligible to take a single test for SSW2. The SS2 visa is also a 5 year max but is RENEWABLE indefinitely. This isn't 'permanent residency' but a rolling work visa with it's own eligibility.
Now, if a worker cannot acquire the proficiency to pass the SW2 test before 5 years is over; then perhaps they should return, because they do not seem to be studying the job they are engaged in and not engaging in becoming more proficient in helping their employer's business grow. They may remain at the same job with the SSW2 visa, continue at the same pay, and perform the same work; so there is no motive for their employer to make obtaining the SSW2 visa difficult other than that they may regret having that employee after seeing their work ethic and output.
However the SSW1 and SSW2 visas do not lock you into a single employer. Workers are free to quit and/or find another place to work, are eligible for unemployment if your employer fires or lays you off not-for-cause, and have 90 days to get new employment in either event (quit or fired) with significant systemic assistance (HelloWork among them) for finding a new employer.
The 'specific' company aspect is for the initial application for SSW 'eligibility certificate' but workers are eligible to work for any employer from day one of their visa issuance. Yes, these SSWs are industry specific, as the tests for each type of 'specific skills' is independent and unique, but one can take additional, different industry tests while in country on one kind of SSW1 visa and then apply for 'designated activities' to engage in cross industry work, and this would allow continuation of SSW1 without moving to SSW2 by reapplication for 'eligibility' in the second industry at the end of the 5 year non-renewable SSW1. Some industries have more applicants than allowed visas, some industries never get over about 30% of the needed SSW1/2 workers.
It is not predatory, does not take advantage of workers who are diligent and studious. It certainly is not a route to work-play in a bar and doing casual part time host work. It is for serious workers in specific high need fields who may otherwise lack degrees and professional work experience which would qualify for the higher level visas.
Framing it as abusive or predatory is to not understand the system at all. The principal guardrails are actually on the applying employer, with strong requirements for a third party (Registered Support Organization) to make sure that the work conditions and terms are safe and honest, pay and compensation rates are not lower than standard for natural employees, participation in insurance, tax, retirement, and banking are proper, access to safe clean housing and other necessary social needs are met, such as Japanese language study, social integration and participation ~ neighborhood regular clean up, and local matsuri festival invites.
Sidebar - The clean up might sound like work, but is a time to meet and socialize with your neighbors and be seen as a participant who 'helps out'. There is usually so little actual trash that it's more like an Easter egg hunt than anything else - find a discarded nicotine-gum wrapper or a smashed plastic bottle if you're lucky - my last clean up day we didn't get even half of an office waste-bin worth for the whole block among 20 plus people over 45 minutes. But I do meet new people almost ev...
I have worked for a company that employed workers via TITP and then via SSW programs, I have been a part of the volunteer expat support groups that regularly dealt with the immigration issues, including the ones with the SSW program.
Look, on one hand I'm glad that it worked out for you, that you had enough work-life balance to study and get certified for the SSW2 program and you're content to stay on it until you're physically unable to work anymore or somehow find a way to qualify for a permanent residence under the new guidelines for both you and your wife.
On the other, the story is full of caveats:
- company hiring in that sector has to be well-managed and well-behaved (oversight is often superficial compounded by the fact that in a lot of cases, the hiring company and the employer-of-record are actually 2 different entities);
- you have sufficient time and energy to skill-up after work, especially if it's physical labor;
- you have sufficient funds to skill-up;
- in case you need to change your job, you're not in distress from the current employer or financially.
I don't know what your cultural background is. In my worldview, these programs are inhumane. Humane variant is this: if you (collective "you", Japan) deem the person worthy of coming here and changing the bedpans of your elderly when none of the Japanese youth wants to do it for the same salary, you get the fuck out of the way unless this immigrant breaks your laws, and at that point you deport them. But if they come here and obey your laws they should have the reciprocal security in their old age, not conditional on how well they test on JLPT and for sure not conditional on unrealistic expectation of earning significantly more than an average Japanese worker.
P.S. Socializing is nice. You can still go and pick up the non-existent trash when you're on a Eng/Intl/Humanities visa and even on PR. Just saying.
Valid point, workers must be careful what companies they choose to work for.
Abuses will exist wherever oversight is insufficient.
Planning to remain in Japan after reaching the age of 'no longer able to work' is a condition that permanent resident visa, if the proposed changes actually occur and persist, may no longer provide. Given that, then contributing to the national retirement/pension plan and preparing for naturalization would seem to be the proper route to that long term expectation of reciprocal security.
If the job pay is 'lower than a Japanese worker would accept' then that does indeed classify as abuse of the SSW1 designated rules. As they have been explained to me by legal council, SSW1 rules state explicitly that employees must receive at least as much pay as would cost for a local laborer, in order to not depress local labor values.
If this is the condition that you or persons known to you are working in, that is a reason needed for a change in employment.
A JLPT test is not typically part of the SSW2 requirement, at least for the industries I have studied the test material for, but the tests are in Japanese at about JLPT4/3ish level. Each tests specific vocabulary (the kanji portion) are very specific and one can focus on learning the necessary content which is a much lower threshold than JLPT3, but studying for that does become dependent on the work-life balance aspect. Clear communication with an earnest and fair employer is important for establishing that; and it sounds like you are having some difficulties with this side of things. That is unfortunate.
I don't have any magic tricks for not getting taken advantage of; but know that it appears your experience with the SSW1 is not necessarily typical of the program as intended, and there may be some alternatives to feeling trapped or not valued in the long term here.
Is your 登録支援機関 (tōroku shien kikan) Registered Support Organization an active participant in the necessary oversight, or have they effectively been rubber-stamping the actions that have led to this situation?
That was where I was leaning on the socialization aspect. The RSO has some responsibility in making sure SSW workers are aware of the scheduled community building events in order to facilitate socialization and acculturation - these can always be done independently, but there's an obligation to facilitate these for the RSO.
Having active opportunities to interact (again work-life balance) can be a big help in working toward fluency, which I feel should be a goal for anyone planning a long term habitation in any country. In Samoa this is fa'asamoa, "Fesili muli mai ia mua mai" when arriving follow who came first, the "When in Rome do as the Romans" and in Japanese 郷に入ってはば郷に従う go ni iteba go ni shitagau.
If there is anything you think I might be able to do to help, I am willing to try. もし手伝う事があれば遠慮なくネ
I appreciate your offer but I have always been on the Eng. SOR and I have PR for quite some time now, so all these changes do not concern me immediately. What I argue is that the whole program is riddled with avenues for abuse and very little recourse for a worker. And I have seen first-hand accounts of such abuse and I try to tell you that your positive experience does not invalidate the shortcomings of the SSW visa.
I see. This further confirms what I have long observed. It's almost like there are two Japans; the hectic borderline hostile-to-general success big city, and the rest of the country where everybody generally is trying to help each other out. So I do get your point. There is plenty of room for abuse in the TITP / SSW visa, and these abuses do seem to be happening at scale where black companies contract with RSO to find and supply a stream of workers to one organization which then are subcontracted out. It's deplorable behaviour.
It isn't obvious that the SSW program itself is designed with abuse as an intended outcome. I also don't get the strong sense that these changes to the PR process, at least what actual documentation is on https://www.moj.go.jp, are going to have much real impact other than prompting those with a real long term commitment to life in Japan to look more closely at the naturalisation process and possibly motivate SSW1 workers to be more serious about upskill to SSW2.
Because SSW1 time no longer applies to the 10 year PR eligibility (which can be shorter with "contribution to Japanese society" https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930003503.pdf), this makes staying at SSW1 for longer than 2-3 years a bit wasteful if the goal is PR.
Perhaps there is some room in this system for well-managed RSOs to take a more active role in helping current SSW1 employees take the necessary steps to prepare for transition to SSW2 and perhaps this kind of action is something that rural townships should look at as a mechanism to improve their local workforce options.
I wonder if there's any employers in your extended network who could gain from having access to workers already holding SSW1 visas with 2+ year remaining on visa and helping prepare those workers for SSW2 testing and retention along with long-term work contracts. It would seem to be a real opportunity for companies struggling to meet production objectives due to labor shortages without the potentially high initial capital cost of finding those workers from abroad and the cost of turnover and training that come from short term new workers.
I'm just kinda thinking out loud here; it seems to me that where there are avenues for abuse which appear to offer little recourse for the workers, then there may be an avenue to offer that recourse and in turn benefit from the ready capability and earned loyalty of those workers. Sure, your bed-pan example is a worst case job scenario, but that field of SSW is not restricted to only bed-pan level work, and surely there are companies who need quite a range of ready workforce for many tasks that would fit the same visa which can pay a decent wage for skilled labor which are not 'black companies'.
I'll try to introduce some of this into the discussions at my next informal soudan kikai. The shiyakusho team heree has been great at facilitating the network of contacts and interested parties which has enabled our current opportunities, and been very involved in every step from the moment we showed interest in living out here in the 'inaka'.
You know what creates 100 more trouble than immigrants ? Japan’s birth rate.
You know who have babies? Immigrants.
You know who pays social security for peuple when they get older ? Those grown up babies.
Do the math. Japan has much to teach the world but the most important lesson they are now teaching, is that people are stupid, easily manipulated, excessively xenophobic and absolutely happy to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly if it means not admitting they’re wrong. In Japan, in the US, in Europe and elsewhere.
And yet, according to available statistics, there's no a single western country where Muslim and African immigrants are not an additional financial burden. Even if we forget about safety, crime, ...
Racism, xenophobia, amplified by social media and far right political parties. It’s not too different from the dynamics we’ve seen in the rest of the western world
Global right wing parties are connected by strategy sharing institutes. Souring sentiment towards immigrants is part of the playbook of these political movements. Minor parties in japan picked this up and ran hard with it and started to pick up votes, so the incumbent party shifted that way too. I think it's ultimately all part of shifting social norms towards deregulation and privatisation.
I’m not Japanese, but have family ties to Japan. I frequently compare USA (where I am at now), Japan, and my home country (lets say X).
I think one of the reason why Japan is considering doing these is because a lot of people with specific cultural religious, and ethnic backgrounds are really causing a lot of trouble. They cause a lot of trouble even in my home country where they are the majority (I am an ethnic minority).
I’ve heard anecdotes from my Japanese friends and families and really, its bad. And these people refuse to assimilate, but want to conquer instead.
However, targeting specific racial/religious/ethnic minorities are generally frowned in the modern world, so Japan just create a more “acceptable” filter here to filter out people from these backgrounds, that is, wealth.
We can’t all go along and sing kumbaya to one another, although I personally want to. But the other cultures/ethnicities/religious backgrounds don’t want to.
Yes, I witnessed persecution and death before, managed to escape it when I was really small. this definitely color my perception regarding specific cultural/ethnic/religious backgrounds regardless whether I have a lot of good friends from said backgrounds.
The ones in the news lately are the Kurds which the police can’t touch because of some asylum law running various scrapyards, and the Vietnamese car theft gangs.
> even if that means I will never be able to be accepted there
You need Japanese blood (visibly), culture (language, manner, custom), and nationality to be "fully" accepted. This isn't new and has more to do with Japanese people themselves than with any legal restriction.
Can you name which backgrounds you/Japanese people are talking about?
What confuses me is that Japan is not a very immigrant-heavy country. There's no chance of someone who doesn't represent the interests of native Japanese people being elected any time soon, or ever. So why can't they pass laws codifying the behaviors they want to encourage and ones they will treat as non-assimilation? Why aren't they doing something to address misbehavior directly, making newcomers to the country prove their long-term commitment to their new social and cultural environment, or punishing infractions more harshly so bad actors can't stay in the country? Why are the only two options available to them 'do nothing' or 'blanket punish all foreigners because all foreigners are trouble'?
It is part of Japan being Japan. Japanese being Japanese.
Japan is a shame based culture. A lot of social norms are encoded as part of being Japanese and not strictly enforced. Japan has less lawyers per capita compared to US for example.
Take a look at a lot of the influencers that are causing trouble in Japan. In the US we probably bludgeon (or shoot) those people on the spot and lawyers talk later, but Japan doesn’t do that, not even their police. Majority of Japanese just sit there silently but deep inside filled with disgust.
Besides, once these laws are implemented, soon it will be obvious which groups are “targeted” and it doesn’t look good in the eyes of the international world.
I know that Japan is a lot more implicit in enforcing its culture. But it is not a country that runs on honor alone. It has police, it has prisons, it has courts. The lawyer comparison doesn't tell me much because the US is a very litigious country in ways that go far beyond individual criminal law.
Besides, the implication you made is that a lot of the actions people don't like are already illegal, just not tightly enforced. Especially if you say Americans would shoot the perpetrators on the spot.
Even if they wanted to protect their status quo, they could only apply stricter requirements on residents who haven't received their citizenship yet. Law-abiding immigrants in many countries are used to having to clear higher bars than locals. But at least in this case this would be equitable, only punishing the people who actually do something wrong instead of everyone.
Lawyers per capita results from a structural legal system difference not a "shame" difference. It has adversarial influences but is much less a lawyer-theatrics-dominated adversarial civil-jury-trials-for-all-sorts-of-things free for all.
The US could avoid a lot of inefficiences if they adopted the same.
Okay so which specific cultural religious and ethnic backgrounds are causing trouble and what empirical evidence do you have of this happening on a large scale?
It can take many generations for immigrant family to assimilate into the host country's culture, how do you know they are there to conquer and not just taking time to assimilate?
Why do you think only Japanese people can take care of Japan, do you hold this belief for other countries?
If I were to guess, I'd guess it's Islam. I come from a region where we have a sizeable Muslim minority, and hardly a day goes by without some outrage or the other which hurts their sensibilities (ban calls for prayers? ban praying in the middle of the street during rush hour? serve bacon/ham in school lunches? etc. etc.); regardless of the fact that people have lived this way for millennia, and Muslims just showed up in the last few decades, but insist on bending the rest of the society to their norms.
I live in a region that has a lot of Christians and they constantly try to bend the local laws to follow their religious views, even where it could violate provincial and federal law. They have caused human rights issues in our local government. Is it fair that they do this just because they immigrated here a long time ago instead of fairly recently?
> Okay so which specific cultural religious and ethnic backgrounds are causing trouble and what empirical evidence do you have of this happening on a large scale?
I'm not going to go guessing what the OP meant, if you want to have a good faith discussion about something then you need to be specific. Anyone can make vague claims about people causing trouble, its meaningless.
In a time of declining globalism and growing[1] nationalism[2] and anti-immigration sentiment around the world, I think it is unsurprising that a historically[3] xenophobic culture would move in this direction.
[2]: often used as a tool by oligarchy to shift blame away from themselves, instead towards vulnerable groups, as the cause of rising inequality and various institutional crisis
Let's be honest, the Japanese gov't has killed off every generation since the asian bubble popped in the 90's. Those kids in the 90's that still can't get a job should be in their peak earning years and have strong talent skills, (and having kids) which was all sacrificed. They don't have the skills or tax base they should and they are unwilling to actually fix it because the stock market needs to crash big time and the rich need to pay for it.
I completely agree with your comment about Japan killing every generation since the bubble popped. It has been wild to witness.
The subtle but profound ways those generations have experienced being essentially abandoned by the government and “Japan Inc” will have a lasting impact on Japan for many decades to come.
There are some leaders who actually grasp the problem and actually have decent ideas for solutions, but the will and capacity to execute those ideas just isn’t there.
I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws, in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
Countries have a right to change their laws, but I believe it’s in everyone’s interest for those laws to be changed while respecting principles of predictability and legal certainty.
People planned and rearranged their entire lives around immigration law in force at one point, perhaps 5 years ago, and now a new law is going into force that slams the door shut to having a basic sense of stability, with only a 6 month transition period. It’s cruel. And it sends a bad sign to anyone looking to move.
The USA can afford to be cruel because people will deal with it for high wages. Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large. It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
>I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws
Context for others: Until 2026 Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship. It now has some basic requirements in these areas.
You are really dog whistling here. The changes which almost all agree on, like reducing migrant intake, have been leveraged by the far-right Sweden Democrats party to institute a purge against long term residents of Sweden, including totally law abiding, very Swedish proficient Swedish speakers. In general Swedes don't understand that high skilled migrants, like biomedical and professional people, are being expelled.
This has included an absurdly inflexible agency which blames immigrants for mistakes outside of their control, and the full gamut of Kafkaesque rules. As a result, indigenous high tech industry is increasingly leaving Sweden in favour of EU neighbours.
Anyway what he really really glossed over is that "Arabic" (or the Arabic languages as would be more correct) speakers will also speak Swedish.
At the same time it is very unlikely that the English speaker will learn Swedish, so English speakers are more of a threat to Swedish than Arabic speakers.
I’m not sure I would consider $2k a month in predictable wages “basic,” as you say. If you live outside of the big cities, it’s quite an unnecessarily high bar to meet. If you work in industries where time-bounded contracts are the norm over “tills vidare” employment, it’s also basically impossible to satisfy.
Beyond naturalization reforms, you also have the issue of minimum salary hikes for work permits (with no transitional rules), resulting in regular, integrated workers getting deported. 18 year old kids (of regular, integrated workers) getting deported, as well as regular, integrated workers being deported because they happened to come in on an asylum visa and then changed to a work permit (under a law that was revoked, again, with no transitional rules).
Every time the lack of predictability and legal certainty for these people was an explicit choice.
Swedes barely understand the cruelty that’s happening, let alone the damage it’s doing to Sweden’s reputation among globally mobile workers.
> It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
This such a baffling statement, honestly: that the flourishing economy crucially depends on foreign labour. What happened with the role of the technological know-how, and vast material (and financial) capital? The institutions? All of that is still not enough for prosperity unless you can hire a paperless José for $7.40 per hour, with an implied threat of handing him off to ICE if he raises any stink?
Most of developed economies dont need blue collar foreign labor in the future. Some dont even need it now. There are no industries in uk or france and this labor role is mostly to suppress wages (we ve seen it with brexit and english truck drivers) . For industrial nations like germany before they shot themselves you do need this labor until robots and automation makes them obsolete. Way before 50years and then being a nation with low immigration is becoming a key advantage for a country cohesion and future. Finally every country at 25% youth unemployment (like france and spain) shoould block all immigration beside highly skilled immigrants
Robots and automation won’t replace health care workers. Aging countries will need more of those.
And the unemployed youth would be working those low skilled jobs today if they wanted to, fact is they don’t pay enough for them and if those jobs are automated away they will still be unemployed.
It obviously suppress wages, which is a necessary condition for capitalism. Any country where it costs 10x to build infrastructure because there is no cheap labor will be less competitive.
When a person migrates, I would believe that the origin country has one less population. So why is it good that this person props up population in the destination country instead of in the origin country?
And why does the destination country need that persons labour and expertise, but not the origin country?
If the native population is becoming exterminated with or without migration, what exactly is the "country" that needs to be kept "afloat"? Your stock portfolio? Your treasury bills? Your real estate investment?
I'm having a hard time following the thinking in many of these threads so I'm not sure if you're questioning it genuinely (or hypothetically or sarcastically), but I think essentially yes sadly.
Wealthier areas wonder why it costs so much for house renovations or for daycare or`for farmer's market produce. Or similarly folks move to less wealthy countries as "expats" and hire help, babysitters, tutors. Sense of prosperity seems tied to those things feeling inexpensive and them feeling cheap requires income inequality. There's I think a large amount of feeling poor (or average) when those things are eating your budget. Even though you have them. For example, you pay for expensive childcare so both parents can work, it takes a big bite out of your budget, and so you don't feel wealthy (but you're paying for childcare and your family has an employee). Similarly, you're paying for expensive private school, it eats your budget, you don't feel wealthy (but your child is going to private school).
For those doing well, the surplus goes to what's left—house, education, healthcare (I recall there being a fourth, but I'm blanking). Those things are expensive because they should be, you're wealthy. You're competing with the other wealthy people. I'm stealing this from somewhere, but they're essentially luxury goods—the more money you have, the more (and better quality) you consume. They don't decrease as percent of income as food does.
You don't have a automatic right to live in another country in my opinion. I don't blame Swedes for slamming a door shut that has turned their incredibly safe country into the gun and bomb capital of Europe.
> You don't have a automatic right to live in another country in my opinion.
its true, and thats how things are (legally anyways) but taking that further sometimes i wonder why its okay to freely move from region a to region b inside a country?
wouldn't the same logic apply to people from say east germany moving to the west? or 'annoying liberals' from california moving to north carolina? yes they can add to the local tax base, but if we want to keep things fair we should probably move to restrict everyone to stay in their own places if thats the logic we are following... but maybe i'm not thinking deeply enough...
> turned their incredibly safe country into the gun and bomb capital of Europe.
I learned it here some years ago. I don’t follow Swedish news. Someone or the article title mentioned “grenade attacks in Sweden”. I thought it was parody at first but it’s a thing somehow. Do they think immigration is what contributes? Someone said it was simply the city in question was at the border with other country that’s why grenades are a thing there…
> Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large
I am fascinated by others being fascinated with Japan (meta fascination?). It’s like this mythical land of milk and honey for some. I don’t get? It’s just another country amongst hundred others.
Their big cities are essentially a nerd heaven. Imagine Cyberpunk 2077, but very orderly. It is understandable why it is attracts more attention on HN than... say Amderstam or Jakarta.
As usual, the meme is ever alive around these parts. Anything Japan does is heralded as a good move™ and no impartial discussion can be had without the weeaboos coming out of the woodwork to put a positive spin on it.
But sure, we’ll see if limiting these odious gaijin coming in will solve their stagnant economy, fertility crisis and obsolete business practices. Good luck with their isolationism, it’s not the first time they’ve gone down that path, all to appease the right-leaning imbeciles that blame the immigrant for their politicians’ ineptitude at dealing with systemic problems. It’s the same all over the world.
I just find it odd so many non-Japanese media and commentators weigh in on this.
Japan is not a multicultural country. You can't become Japanese through paperwork. It is very much through blood heritage, your language and cultural proficiency.
The bar to be Japanese is much higher than say Canadian or French. So why shouldn't they create laws that is aimed at benefiting themselves and their country without depending on foreigners?
Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
> People comment on every country [sic] immigration policies
That's the world as it is, not necessarily as it should be. Not being a citizen of the country in question, or part of the culture, and most importantly, not being one of the people that deals with the consequences of whichever choice is made, means your opinion counts for so little as to be barely worth sharing
I didn't share mine on Japan, but my opinions on my country's immigration policy is based on having to deal with the long-term consequences, as every citizen of my country must
My ancestors were dirt farmers with absolutely nothing despite their health and work ethic that moved here in the 1930s. Do we think Canada is better than then?
We really, really under value the impact of low income, low education immigrants imo.
Eg. The railway that created this country was built by low income Chinese workers that probably didn't even speak English.
Canada doesn't exist without the effort of low income, low education people.
It feels normal in a globalized world for commentators around the globe to observe and weigh in on the decisions of any country, especially one of such economic importance and cultural significance as Japan.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree on your points regarding Japan not being a multi-cultural country. And this, indeed, is rarely (if ever) mentioned in articles such as the one posted here.
Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
> Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
That's not at accurate from what I know of Japanese history. You seem to be over-indexing on the (relatively) brief Tokugawa-era sakoku policy and ignoring the thousands of years surrounding it where Japan was an active importer of culture.
Kanji, government structure, Buddhism, law, art and more were all imported from China and hugely influential in Japanese history. After the the Meiji Restoration, Japan explicitly set out to Westernize and went abroad to study European and American institutions, invited Westerners in to help build European-style banking systems and government systems, adopted Western clothing, architecture, military organization, legal codes, etc. etc.
If anything the Japanese are masters at importing the things they like of foreign culture and then modifying to make it their own. They have always been importers of culture.
Japan used to not have control over Okinawa or Hokkaido. Those were separate peoples that Japan invaded and colonized, along with Korea. They would have gotten to keep Korea too if it wasn't for those damned meddling Americans and their nuclear weapons, but there are still Koreans who have been living in Japan for generations. Even though Japan themselves said "you will never be like us, you will always be lesser, now grovel and grow us our cheap rice". This is multiculturalism, you just don't recognize it because you don't know what an Ainu is.
Also, Japanese is basically permanently welded to the Chinese writing system. Japan considered removing kanji and kana in favor of romaji at one point during the Meiji era - which would have been a disaster on par with English spelling reform. But, even then, Japanese is like 10% English by weight and growing, with no actual attempt by anyone to stop this from happening.
So Japan had minorities and borrowed writing system from other countries thousands of years ago mean they need to now erase their borders, redefine what Japanese identity is and become a full multicultural nation the likes of North America and Western Europe ?
So if you ate sushi during Thanksgiving ten years ago, are you now entitled to Japanese citizenship too ?
Dude ethnically Japanese people that were born in Japan, lived their entire childhoods in Japan, are no longer considered Japanese if they live outside of Japan for 5-10 years.
People who have lived their entire lives in Japan, but are not 100% ethnically Japanese, will literally never be accepted as Japanese.
You literally can become a Japanese citizen through paperwork. Only other requirement is 10 years of residency (used to be 5) and fluency in the language. I don't even think there's a cultural test. Know a few people that went through the process and it's pretty simple, just tedious providing all the paperwork.
Permanent residency is about who can stay without having to worry about visas, while visas are about who is allowed to enter in the first place. Foreigners will still be in Japan, the only thing changing is that they'll be even more tied to a black company than before.
The mental model most immigration-naive people have regarding immigration is that the vast majority of "desirable" immigrants go to a country to get a job, work for some years, and then maybe they get something called a "green card" (permanent residency) or something. The reality is that most employers can't legally hire immigrants, unless they go through a LOT of hoops, which is not worth it. So a handful of employers specialize in this, and because they spend money to control this corner of the labor market, the labor of the immigrants trades at a discount relative to citizen labor. This is literally the opposite of what the system's stated intent is, immigrants are not supposed to undercut citizens, but nobody with power cares about that. So legal immigration is effectively an indentured servitude scheme where you work the bottom tier of a job for some number of years until you can get permanent residency.
What Japan is doing is, effectively, making the time you have to spend to get that reward a lot longer, and also disqualifying anyone less than 30 years away from retirement age unless they're rich enough to make up the shortfall[1]. This is primarily about empowering sweatshops (black companies) over imported workers.
You think it's about preserving Japanese culture, but I, being a huge fucking weeb, know for a fact that nobody calling for this gives a shit about Japanese culture. Especially not the Japanese politicians. The kinds of cultural things most foreigners value are things Japan has been trying to throw away since the Meiji Restoration; while the kinds of things Japan's elite value are byproducts of having a rigidly ossified social structure that cannot absorb any amount of change.
Like, for example... anime and manga? Foreigners like it. Otaku[0] like it. But Japan spent a decade trying to vilify otaku as mass murderers in training, and the people creating anime and manga haven't had much social prestige until recently. Hell, they still don't get paid very well.
The famed Japanese politeness is downstream of social oppression. They are polite for exactly the same reason American Southerners are polite; a combination of elites imposing their values on the populace and the populace adopting social defense mechanisms against the elite.
There is a narrative being pushed by ultra-rich elites. Think about how Mark Zuckerberg shifted from "we need to bring in insane numbers of H-1Bs to cover a labor shortage gap" to giving Trump shittons of money. Or how Elon Musk keeps talking about how we need as many women pregnant as possible. Or just the insane hardon that businesses have for robots and AI now. These all come from the same desire to keep wages down by creating a permanent underclass.
The underlying problem with the labor shortage gap, both in Japan and elsewhere, is that you can't afford to have kids in the middle of a wage stagnation and cost-of-living crisis. Japan has been in this crisis for so long that their population is decreasing, but every other rich country is not far behind. The root cause is that businesses cost-optimized people's welfare out of the economy, and they need people to be a renewable resource.
There are a few ways to fix the problem, but closing countries off to immigration is not one of them. Actually, if you wanted to break the hold sweatshops have on immigrant labor, you'd want to open the fucking floodgates and let the market close out the labor arbitrage opportunity we've been keeping open ever since the WTO made free global trade a thing. If the globalists are allowed to move goods through 20 countries to hyper-optimize their labor spend, then I should be allowed to move to whatever country has the...
Doesn't seem they're really aware that they're something of an endangered "species". Although technically they'd still be endangered even if they open up seriously, as then there's heightened possibility of bloodline dilution. I wonder sometimes if that'd be a good or bad thing in the long run: loss of that which makes them pretty unique vs blending more with the world.
Korean men and Japanese women make up the biggest share of international marriages in Japan so there's something more going on here that makes Japanese women highly desirable to men in general.
there's a difference between an individual family changing its composition because it has an interracial marriage, and an entire country needing to do so just because they've taken in immigrants
It seems they are very well aware. They've probably seen what happens to other "endangered species" (eg. the English or Swedes) when the floodgates are opened by treasonous bureaucrats chasing votes, economic metrics, or appeasing their destructive oikophobia.
I dont care USA it had mass immigration from the third world for decades before sweden. Compare the numbers of bombs and crime between sweden and japan/korea to see something interesting
Hot take: I think immigration and multiculturalism is going to be the the biggest and the defining issue of this century. The history books will have "AI" and climate change in the margins as 'exacerbating factors'. We've started to see it in the US, and we're beginning to see the start to it in the EU. Japan--rightly or wrongly--might be averting a future disaster here. Japan is lucky in that they are still a very homogeneous society, and also unlucky in that they are ahead of the curve in population decline. I think the western world is in for a bad time over the next 50 years.
I don't think there's a limit to the animosity people feel (rightly or wrongly - what's "correct" has no bearing on people's feelings) and we will end up in a place where previously unthinkable force or actions are now permissible due to nasty politics. The US is getting a small taste of that now.
I don't think it takes much imagination to connect the dots... it wasn't that long ago in European history where people were systematically eradicated by the millions.
Isn't that the story of the US since birth? It seems immigration is just always a hot topic, everyone always thinks they can just pull up the latter behind them as to not lose what they have to others. I don't feel anything is different now.
I don’t this can even be debated. Immigration is the number one debated issue in rich countries and immigration policy is causing massive swings in elections.
I think Japan thinks they can still attract enough foreigners to perform necessary service and manual labor jobs without the promise of permanent residency. That along with increasing automation - serving robots are a common sight at many restaurants these days, for example.
Permanent residency is reserved for those who can be a net benefit to social welfare programs - by earning and contributing more than the average Japanese household (about USD $36,000 - $42,000 according to google). There are also new language requirements to promote assimilation.
I don’t think it’s anything too radical by global standards, and I have read there are similarities to what Singapore and South Korea already do [1] (but I don’t know too much about their programs though).
It’s important to note that the exact details haven’t been finalized yet. So exact income requirements could change from current proposals/rumors. There was a lot of outrage about proposed provisions to revoke permanent residency for people who commit crimes or don’t pay taxes, but when they actually came through they were pretty fair, common sense type changes.
These changes come on the heels of drastically increasing requirements for the business manager visa (which, to be fair, was heavily abused as a kind of “golden visa” in the past). They’ve also significantly increased visa application costs - I think I paid like ¥5,000 for my PR application, and it is now ¥200,000.
It does feel cruel to apply new requirements retroactively to people who have already submitted applications. And the stories of people whose lives are being completely upended by the changes are heartbreaking.
Japan has a heavy shortage of workers [0], and it has been so for many years now. Your link cites the efforts from 2017, the reason wasn't some olive branch to humanity, Japan already was in dire need of working class people.
Right now the yen is so weak Japan salary look ridiculously low, there is the language barrier, and the low hanging jobs aren't great either (a ton in elderly care).
Their policies to restrict immigration will have few impact short term, as immigration is already slowing down and even Filinos, who have always been on the better side of immigration, are looking for better opportunities [1]. Longer term though, people will remember how it goes when Japan economy trends down, and the immigration going away might not come back even when the trend reverses. Especially as there will already be a probably better community built elsewhere.
To put that in perspective, US companies report similar rates of worker shortages in surveys:
> The survey found that company size influenced hiring outcomes. Seventy-six percent of companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees reported shortages, followed by 75% of firms with 5,000 employees or more and 74% of those with 250 to 999 employees. Among smaller firms, 69% of organizations with 50 to 249 employees, 66% with 10 to 49 employees and 61% with fewer than 10 employees reported hiring challenges.
I'm not saying that there isn't a shortage of labor in Japan - just that business owners are never satisifed with the amount of labor available at the wages they wish to pay. Just that it may not be an existential shortage of labor like a lot of commenters are saying. Especially with recent developments in AI and automation.
The declining birthrate in general does seem to be an existential issue if it cannot be stabilized. But it is hard to predict population trends long term (when I was growing up the big concern was overpopulation).
The weak yen is also definitely an issue right now - but it's impossible to predict where it will be in the future.
The population decline and feeling to protect their identity are the two composite parts that strongly make Japan's case dire to my eyes. Those are not businesses feelings, and while China mispredicted it's population trends, we haven't seen any other country reversing a declining population other than letting in more people.
Perhaps the US is on the same slope, right now anything US related sounds bonkers on all sides so I have no idea how it will go after next elections.
> those tradeoffs are theirs to make
I'm a lot biased as they're making these tradeoffs for me and my family, and electing a different leadership will be tough short term. More than half of the population is 50+ yo and mostly cares about keeping it safe for their old age.
TBF the current gov does a lot in other aspects, but throwing immigration as a bone to nationalist sentiment has never led to good outcomes IMHO.
The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness in the context of immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai.
Oh please, everyone not in denial can certainly see there is a racial component to this. I also didn't only include "black" and "brown," some kinds of Asians are also being gatekept. Do you deny that Japanese society (like countless others) have a racism/xenophobia problem? Isn't it commonly known information that even people of other races/ethnicities who have successfully immigrated there or are just visiting as tourists are sometimes not allowed in certain venues with explicit messaging? And that this is commonly tolerated there? Isn't Japan the same country that barely 80-odd years ago was on a brutal campaign across several parts of Asia where they targeted non-Japanese with massacres, torture and live human experimentation among other things? Many of those people are still alive (ironically, some are probably among the elderly and isolated who need help right now). Isn't Japan the same country that still regularly denies their well-known and documented atrocities during that period?
??? There's literally a white person in the article that is also reconsidering their situation? Why do you keep making this about "black, brown and east Asian" people?? They are xenophobic to literally everyone on Earth.
As it turns out, I'm also of a very similar background to your kids, a South Asian American that is, and one who would be accepted in Japan just fine (I already have highly educated and well off relatives living there permanently). Frankly, I have to say, you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority and looking up to the great Japanese people; you probably have a similar perception of America/Canada and western Europe. I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way (if only your kids are desi but not you).
Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when they don't know how to behave!?. To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese.
Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters or future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk.
The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context.
No, I’m not in denial, I just have the rational ability to let principles override my occasional emotional reactions, it’s part of being a truly high-minded and intelligent adult human being, certainly too much to expect from everyone, I’ll acknowledge that.
Race is not superficial or irrelevant, it should be, but racists exist. You’re in denial about this because you have a deep-seated inferiority complex and what some call “internalized racism,” which again, is quite typical of a certain sector of desi immigrant populations, especially those who come from very disadvantaged or discriminated backgrounds. You want to believe race or racism isn’t a thing because otherwise you’d have to face the facts that you’re often thought of as lowly just for the way you look or where you’re from, and you don’t really fit in with the people around you, that you are and will always be thought of as “different.” Again, I know how that feels, but unlike you, I have principles that allow me to engage with the world without being in denial and also not discriminating against others because I faced discrimination myself. I’ll say though, I appreciate you not denying that you feel this way.
Racism and culture are not the same but they are subject to very similar forms of discrimination and very often by the same kinds of people. The Venn diagram of racists and xenophobes is the closest thing to being a circle without actually being one. I am not in denial also that there can be elements of corruption in a culture, and I’ll admit some of those exist among South Asians. But, the reality is there are elements of corruption in every culture, do you think American culture is perfect? If you do, I have to believe you’re not living in the same reality as the rest of us. The glorious Nippon you believe in is also steeped in cultural corruption, you deliberately ignore their recent history and in fact their current culture as well. Ask people belonging to discriminated classes there or even regular Japanese people if things are perfect over there. There is rampant debauchery, exploitation of women and young girls, problems of alcoholism, high levels of work-related stress because of cultural expectations of showing loyalty to the company and leadership. These are all elements of corruption that have negative impact, the only thing Japan does really well is cleanliness and crime prevention. Things aren’t perfect but they do try to be orderly, so why are you regularly visiting them when your brown self is prone to being dirty and committing crimes? Why make more work for them?
Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are and none of them have this kind of self-hating feelings of inferiority. I think it’s because we naturally take for granted the 1st world benefits we grew up with whereas people from disadvantaged backgrounds who immigrated as adolescents sometimes seem to think they’ve reached paradise and go out of their way to present themselves as servile and not concerned with discrimination at all, just being thankful and humble to glorious white people, and in this case even adopting their externalized nationalism towards Japan. This is just a feeling though, I am not saying it with any certainty.
> The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context
But you shouldn’t treat them the same way. They’re fundamentally different. You can be perfectly happy being Bangladeshi as a matter of DNA, while hating the culture of the country. Shit, that’s like half my extended family. We all got the fuck out. How many people are there in NYC or Chicago from the redneck parts of Alabama who hate the culture back home? It’s the same thing! Those people aren’t “self hating white people.” They are just people who think there are better ways to live and act than the way their ancestors did.
> Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are
Haha, that explains a lot. You’re surrounded by white people, so you feel this affinity to your co-ethnics, which compels you to defend a culture that you didn’t even grow up in. That’s irrational. You’re an individual. You can look at the world and just see who is doing stuff that works and who is doing stuff that doesn’t work. You don’t have to yoke yourself to people you have nothing in common with other than skin color.
You’re correct, I wasn’t born in the U.S., and neither was my mom or my dad. So we actually understand the problem with the culture back in old country. We lived there. We’re not analyzing it through the lens of white people from the other side of the world. You don’t need to psychoanalyze me to understand why I like Japan and dislike Bangladesh. I have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell.
I don’t think you can categorize the conflict between Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese as “racism.” Those countries are neighbors with a tremendous amount of history. That’s its own, separate thing, like Greeks versus Turks or Bangladeshis versus Pakistanis.
For Dubai specifically, there is a mix of foreigners, a large percentage being labourers from South Asia. The orderliness we see, I think is largely due to strict* and harsh laws.
The laborers are heavily segregated from the native population. I think it’s morally bankrupt to have a quasi-slave class of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis that does all the work, but is hidden from view. But that is the only way anybody has found to maintain an environment like Dubai while having low skill immigration from the subcontinent.
The number of times I (white, living in Japan) have raised concerns about anti-foreigner sentiment, only to be told “they’re not talking about people like you”, would beg to differ.
I mean, to get the Japanese take on immigration, you could go to 5chan and check out the temperature over there. Japanese don't frequent this board, so what you will get is mostly North American and Western European (not even eastern European)
I'm not saying I'm surprised it's largely western people (like myself) that are commenting here, what's surprising is how much nationalism they have for Japan without living there or being ethnically Japanese.
It’s actually the opposite, the Japanese government may not realise it yet, but these rules ensure basically only economic migrants will come to Japan.
I’ve been living in Japan for a cumulative ~11 months and the number of white people I’ve seen working in 7-11 is zero. Why? Because such roles are simply not attractive for them, and they don’t want to put up with the BS. The people who will do anything to live in Japan are the people with little prospects in their home country.
In a sense you’re right, but the people from developed countries coming to Japan will be the handful of millionaires who can afford to essentially buy their way in through the business visa, like the YouTuber PewDiePie did.
> I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
It can be asked the other way around. Is it worth it to completely destroy the order in the society for the sake of one generation of elderly?
I live in the Netherlands in a black neighborhood, and let me tell you, it's a real shithole. These people are not interested in getting jobs, they just live off neverending money from social programs - with the most expensive one funnily designed to keep them poor for generations - lots of social housing that prevents them from taking part in the housing market going to the moon.
The crime rate is unbelievable. Children literally carry guns around. How do I know? I witnessed a kid shooting another kid with a real gun on my street. Before that I also saw a similar situation from my window one street away.
The lack of respect to anything is obvious. They drop trash on the street because naive taxpayer like me will pay for cleaning. Dudes often harass people on ebikes or scooters because they know that can get away before you react. Loud noise at night? Suck it up.
With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France.
Naturally, these people have Dutch citizenship, so it's not easy to kick them out. Not that the Dutch are interested - I was legally considered a victim of yet another shooting so I got updates on the legal case, and it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. That's Dutch justice system for you.
The Japanese understand this. A generation of tough times is something a society can easily recover from. Meanwhile you can undo a failed immigration program only with ethnic cleansing, and nobody wants that.
With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France.
I was folllowing till that point. Homophobia is non-european ? Homophobic terrorist attacks ? What are you talking about ?
> Go to Africa or Middle East and see how they treat gays.
Yeah - a good many of the former European colonies in Africa do have criminal laws against homosexuality that were introduced during European colonisation - this is very true.
Uganda's easily one of the more extreme in that regard, with quite the history of British origin anti-gay laws and more recent substantial support from US homophobic Christian lobbies.
Many decades of independence, and they're still blaming all their problems on colonialism. Prime example of learned helplessness. It's not even funny at this point.
> Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey
You're not even trying to build a logical argument and you know it.
This is the actual answer but too many people are invested in their own narratives to see it.
When you visit someone's country you are not just a guest, you are the model for everyone else who comes from where you do and who looks like you do. The assumption is that how you behave is how others from where you came from will behave. In an age where social media exposes everyone all the time, bad behavior gets seen and shown to others and conclusions drawn based on that behavior.
But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism. Which even if true, who cares? It's their country. They're allowed to welcome or decline anyone they wish. How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
You know, Johnny Somali fled Japan, went to South Korea, tried the same shit, got arrested and is now in South Korean prison. I think it briefly made news but nowadays I doubt most people remember him.
If you have a functioning society and a petty criminal, you can just... arrest them. No needs for all those xenophobic drama.
Or not, I guess. After all, what am I to tell Japanese people what to expect from their own police?
Somali did much more than just disrespect, e.g. deepfake pornography of women he met, trespassing onto construction sites, throwing food in businesses.
Not sure how it's work in japan, but many of these things require a formal criminal complaint in my country and people are not used to disrespectful people.
Saying that it's the issue of a country is wrong and to simple minded.
> But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism.
It seems like your preceding paragraph argues that this racism exists, without using that specific word.
> How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
How often do you see that, as opposed to people simply stating how they feel about who/what others allow in their homes? I’ve rarely seen the former and almost always see the latter.
I agree that pr** should be banned from Japan.
But he was used a tool against people who have nothing to do with him.
My black friends tell me that it is very hard to be taken seriously when your kin thinks that attitude is a matter of noise.
One of them told me his relationship ended with his fiance because her father was "racist" and didn't believe he was one of the most well paid engineers in the state.
I don’t support xenophobia, but after visiting Japan, I can see how it happens. Foreigners are disruptive and disrespectful, often carelessly, but also often when they are trying not to be. I was really trying to be polite and respectful, and I learned some Japanese (not nearly enough), and I could tell I was bumbling at times.
It is one thing when it is one person, it is another when it is every tenth person.
I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment. I was getting frustrated by rude gaijin and I was one (well I was trying really hard not to be rude).
> I don’t support xenophobia […] I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment
What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment? You’re not Japanese, it sounds like, so being xenophobic towards non-Japanese doesn’t work in this context. Only a Japanese person could experience it.
Would it also be xenophobia, or more xenoannoyance? Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior?
> What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment?
It is a bad, counterproductive impulse that will hurt their society long term, just as I think xenophobia in the US has been counterproductive.
You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Xenophobia doesn’t really jive with recognizing people as individuals and recognizing that a foreigner can learn Japanese well and follow the cultural norms (aside from the norm of having been born in Japan to Japanese parents, but only because it is impossible for a gaijin to do that).
In other words, I don’t think it’s right to broadly group immigrants into the same bucket as disrespectful tourists, but I also see on a human level how that impulse arises. The greater majority of well-behaved tourists don’t stand out like the problem-causers do.
> Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
> You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Oh definitely. When it comes to rules and laws there is always some cutoff or some threshold. It's like the driving age. The laws to generalize by necessity. There is only so much of a chance there to encode "level at which a visitor learned cultural norms", a "culture quiz" etc. Those are things for a citizenship but not visitors usually. In some cases it's easy to point to a legal proceeding or complaint and say "look this person is banned, he did X,Y,Z". But then there is stuff that not documented. Like maybe someone not taking their shoes off, or speaking too loudly, or reclining their seat without asking.
> > Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
> The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
I know, I was being pedantic on purpose to show that the words used matter. The way it's presented is as a moral transgression, Japanese not wanting foreigners to visit sort of sound the same as homophobes or islamophobes. I think it's unfair. Any country, especially one with a democratically elected government should be able to say who can come and who can't to their country.
I personally don't have a problem with xenophobia. I see it as the other side of the coin from openness to 'foreign' cultures and peoples. Both always exist in a society (opening up and shutting out) and you need both.
A people that don't have any xenophobia will have their country taken over and their culture erased. While also, a people that don't have any openness to foreign people and foreign cultures will stultify. You need both, in balance (and often that balance is shifting, in one direction or the other).
Extreme tourism influx due to covid rebound and weak yen. And most Japanese people not being observant enough to understand that those foreigners causing trouble (or simply just putting pressure on existing infrastructure) is not the residents but shitty tourists.
Most of the issue they have would be reduced if the yen got stronger or they introduced some expensive tourist fee, but that's very unlikely
Most people in any nation aren't observant enough, without exception. Since it's the Japanese people whose opinion counts here, it's their turn right now to be called out for it.
While Takaichi is responsible for the lack of tact in that situation, I personally blame the opposition politician that raised the question hoping to score some cheap political points when the end result couldn’t have been more obvious.
Large social media campaigns full of misinformation about how foreigners are all getting free fully-paid higher education, cheating welfare, and how foreigners don't pay any taxes at all, complete with AI-generated infographics showing sad japanese families handing over cash to foreigners wearing hijab.
Yeah, I've had a couple of conversations with Japanese people who were surprised to hear that I need to have a job to maintain a visa, since they think foreigners can just come here and get money from the government for doing nothing. Japan accepts very few refugees, so realistically this isn't happening to the extent that people believe. Leaving aside whether immigration is a net positive or negative, the foreign population of Japan is almost entirely working, studying (on their own dime), owning a small business* or the spouse/child of someone doing one of those things.
*While there are some reports of rich people just creating something that meets the bare-minimum requirements of a "business" to get a visa, these people are independently wealthy and not collecting welfare payments.
Purchasing power dropped with yen weakening, shrinkflation and inflation in all shopping categories, stagnant salaries and work policies + politicians who are preying on all of this with the "foreigners bad" rhetoric.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadThey're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
85% of University of Waterloo software engineering graduates move to the US. <https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062>
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
That seems to show in the data. Canada screwed this up and brought in way too many people, way too quickly, without anything close to the housing, infrastructure or investment needed to support it. Since the cuts started in 2024 and were pushed further by the new government, GDP per capita has started growing again and rents are cooling, which seems partially explained by those immigration cut backs.
What I can't find in the data is evidence that this explains why Canada lagged behind countries like the US. Most of that gap seems to come from high-tech industries. Meaning Canada just doesn't invest in itself enough, and cheap migrant labour doesn't explain why it failed to build the industries that actually drove growth elsewhere.
Canadians might be able to produce more innovation if there wasn't so much inflation and tax burden due to high immigration.
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
You literally just did, only in that comedically intellectual vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
> Germany got obliterated [...]
You're conveniently omitting the fact that they relied on massive external aid, security alliances, education expansion and more. China in particular rose up thanks to state-led industrial policies and having a heck of a lot of people to do stuff for cheap. And none of those countries were poached of their resources and their populations oppressed for decades/centuries.
Also funny you say people should improve their lot, when that's exactly what they're trying to do... somewhere where there's actually decent opportunity to improve said lot since that's generally absent in a "hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump" (shaped by a history of colonial poaching, proxy conflicts, etc; these are relevant facts that people like you try to sweep under the rug). The majority not looking for handouts; they looking to make a life for themselves and their family.
> You should be extraordinary [...]
Sorry to tell you that a genuinely free labour market means more mobility, not less. What you're describing is a highly regulated labour market with strong border controls. Get your definitions straight.
And yes, if some individual/group commits crimes, then sure they should be sent back or jailed like any citizen. But if they're making a honest living and paying their social dues then leave them the hell alone, regardless of how they arrived in the first place.
Basically none. You know this rhetoric doesn't work any more, right? Like you know it is played out, surely?
> Get your definitions straight.
Bizarre.
Yeah there are people out there who think only they have the right to be in a particular space, because birth or skin colour or whatever other attributes they use to set themselves apart and above. Virtually indistinguishable from the Nazis, slavers and every other group that considered themselves superior to another group that doesn't meet their criteria for inclusion; only difference is there are now laws and the world is watching closely for gas chambers and the like nowadays, so they find loopholes in said laws to continue dehumanizing and excluding others. You sound very much like one belonging to the former group.
Anyway, good luck with noise like that. It's good for a laugh. Like I have to confess that I'm not sure if you're having a laugh and this is a parody, and I hope it is.
I am not a free market absolutist - I don't think I implied that anywhere.
> hundreds of millions of voices
That's a vibe, not an argument. And the data doesn’t line up with your catastrophe story. Migration tends to raise global output and, on average, has positive effects on destination GDP per capita over time[0]. It turns out that immigrant effects on native jobs is near net zero, as there are small losses or gains depending on skill mix in the various local labour markets. Actually new immigrants have a greater effect on the jobs of old immigrants[1] (news to me, but makes sense). Similarly in welfare, there's pretty much negligible impact in more advanced economies, leaning positive over time especially when immigrants arrive as working-age adults, which is the norm[2].
I could go on, but I think that's enough research out of me. You don't have to be a "free market absolutist" to see that the reality is far more mixed than “nations are suffering.” Yes, poorly designed immigration policies can lead to problems. No, there's nothing authoritative to backup claims that immigration is broadly destructive, which makes those voices uninformed. Or prejudiced.
[0] https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2021/088/arti...
[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/87518/1/11-103.pdf
[2] https://www.imf.org/external/np/g20/pdf/2015/111515backgroun...
Though I would debate the idea that immigration is an "easy" solution. Perhaps the way it's frequently being done, with a lack of social integration, etc. But that's just bad policy.
Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US. It was just a demographic shift. You might have your opinions guided by colonialism and capitalism more than you think.
> Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-referential_humor
Very sad state of affairs. Good on Japan that they see the danger and try to do something about it before it's too late.
Nothing has been forced upon Western Europe - we have aging populations and shrinking demographics, so a need for people to plug the holes in the workforce.
There is no illuminati-type conspiracy here. Japan has lost 5 mil people or so since 2010, and the median age is like 50. At some point there will be nobody to work and pay tax, no doctors or nurses to take care of the elderly What's the plan exactly to deal with this, what's the magic solution that doesn't somehow involve immigration?
Aha, OK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_t...
What are you even trying to imply by posting that link?
Britain is a good for example: they (and France) spent the 20th century doing anything and everything to prevent their empires crumbling. One such thing was easing movement of people with their old colonies to maintain influence.
Turns out things can happen without little green men being involved.
I would personally argue that it IS orchestrated, as this massive change happened in 50 years after 1000+ years of no change, but it's not relevant to the actual outcome. Call it a racist conspiracy theory all you want, people are becoming immune to that strategy.
The reason for Japan's (brief) attempt at immigration is they recognised their demographic decline as an actual existential risk. They've chickened out because it proved sufficiently politically unpopular - this is not the same thing. Good luck to them dealing with their demographics in some other as-yet-unknown way.
Yes it's clear you've been drinking the koolaid. And no, people have migrated around for thousands of years, that's simply not grounded in reality. How do you think humans got from Africa to the rest of the planet? Or does that not count as migration because it's somehow too far in the past?
I don't know how else to refer to a conspiracy theory that's primarily driven by fears/hatred of others based not on their merits and values but their ethnicity/race. If you have another preferred term that accurately depicts this I'd be happy to use it instead.
White population of London fell from 97,7% in 1961 to 53,8% in 2021, probably below 50% now. What's happening to Britain is the same thing that British did to indigenous populations during colonial times.
Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable, but denying simple statistics from governmental agencies in democratic countries is... well... very close to a conspiracy-theory
For sure, the actual colonisation and enslavement of peoples around the world is totally equivalent to a demographic shift.
> Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable
It's not, it's very widely recognised as a racist conspiracy theory.
In any case, there is no country in Europe in which anti-immigration parties have an absolute majority (> 50%), let alone an "overwhelming" one [0]. So to answer your question: yes, democratic decision making is important to me, especially such that it actually reflects the will of the electorate and not some wish a minority within it has.
[0] https://popu-list.org/
Or that immigration simply isn't their most important policy, even though they support stricter measures.
Imagine you have a choice between two parties: party A wants to detonate an atomic bomb in the capital but also create well-funded animal shelters. Party B opposes the destruction of the capital city, but they want to turn all puppies in the country into kebabs. What do you vote? You don't want to eat ground puppies, do you?
If these are the only party choices an electorate has, it seems to me they have bigger problems. And so option C, the people don't vote, hence giving neither party a mandate to do what they want?
I really struggle to see how an example this obtuse has any analogy to reality.
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
Low wage immigrants will not be able to fix the economy (demographics related decline is still decades away, yes it is important long term but not if the fundamentals don't improve). They will increase crime though since that's just what happens when you are poor in a bad economy. There won't be culling of poor locals but restricting inpu where possible, immigration, seems ok given the overall picture.
https://opengov.jp/en/society/crime/
Japan is facing a significant shortage of long-term care workers. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimates that the country will need approximately 2.4 million care workers by FY2026 and 2.72 million by FY2040 (about 250,000 and 570,000 more, respectively, than the 2.15 million employed in FY2022)[1]
[1] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_41379.html
Can someone explain why they think this is a detrimental practice for native Japanese?
While it's cute to think that suddenly these jobs are going to Americans, but these are mostly undesirable jobs that pay less than typical jobs. To the extent that they even get filled by native workers, it drives real wages down and not up.
Meanwhile, only allowing immigrants from the top of the income bracket crowds out the top side of the job market.
It's a lowering tide that lowers all boats.
It also heavily disadvantages singles.
Look at any of the Western cities that became attractive for retirement or "investment properties" for wealthy international folks... it makes everything more expensive for everyone already there.
If the concern was just about preventing things from changing for existing citizens, restrictions across the income band would seem to make much more sense.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-issues-guidance-...
* was a legal immigrant
* had passed a medical inspection
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Technically true, extremely misleading. The law placed vastly fewer restrictions on who was a legal immigrant for much of that period. Of course, it is true starting in 1921, and 1924, legislation was put in place to limit immigration by "undesirables" such as Asians, Italians and Slavs.
Curious...which one of those regimes do you want to bring back?
About ten and a half million of those in 15 years, from 1900 to 1914. Against a 1900 US population of about 76 million.
> The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
> Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York.
Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
> And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York
The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
> and Chicago today.
Chicago Democrats were immigrants around the relevant time. Chicago Republicans were from older stock. Both were corrupt.
Assimilation was the effect of immigration restriction, whether or not that was the motivation. It broke up the chains of migration that facilitated maintenance of separate cultural enclaves.
> Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
> The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall ("Following the 1854 mayoral election and the resulting mayoralty of Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over a century through its organized network of loyal, well-rewarded, and largely Irish Catholic district and precinct leaders.").
To be clear, the point isn't that they were Irish. As far as I can tell, Ireland isn't more corrupt than other western european countries. It was the political dynamics that arose from the presence of a large culturally distinct immigrant population.
> and Chicago today.
Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era, well into the 1970s: https://www.thelastward.org/p/what-happened-to-chicagos-iris....
Greetings from Canada. I live in Montreal. We have more of a Mafia problem nowadays than New York (no RICO here), and we were comparable in the 1930s. Bootleggers, remember? Where do you think they were running the booze from? Same "market", same mob. Yeah, they managed to dominate everybody else. That's what I mean about "niches". In fact they did it worldwide, and according to Wikipedia they're prominent in Australia, too. These are transnational groups. The Mafia is also big in Sicily. Are you going to say that's because of (checks notes) Sicilian immigration? Specifically because of a huge wave around 1900?
We also have Hell's Angels here. Ethnically "white". No immigrant identification whatsoever, totally acculturated... although I assume some of them moved here from the US. Pretty racist and anti-immigrant, actually. Cool fact: I used to live two houses away from Sonny Barger in beautiful Oakland, California. OK, it wasn't actually that cool. Those guys were really noisy. But I assure you they did not come through Ellis Island.
Apparently Winnipeg has First Nations gangs (Indians to you). Kinda the opposite of immigrants.
... plus a grab bag of others, some of them organized by immigrants. Yes, organized crime tends to segregate itself ethnically, so if one group gets the upper hand, you're likely to see its ethnicity as the face of the problem. But all ethnicities get to play, and they will expand into any available vacuum. If you hadn't had the Italian Mafia (worldwide), you'd have had something else (at least regionally).
And it's not always ethnic. Apparently there's a gang in BC that actually calls itself the United Nations.
> Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789.
It sure was by 1854, eh, according to your own quote? That was 38 years before Ellis Island opened. Before the specific wave of immigration that you're claiming caused the problem. Goalposts. You are moving them.
> Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era
... and preceded it. Your own link says "Of the 28 most influential Chicago aldermen of the 1890s, 24 were Irish.". I don't think they teleported from Ellis Island and took over in under 8 years.
As to Ellis Island—I was using it as a label to refer to the pre-1920s wave of immigration generally. It was opened in the 1890s in response to waves of immigration that started in the 1830s. The film “Gangs of New York” is set from 1846-1863.
... as determined by an on-the-spot interview. Which was admittedly done in a very bigoted way.
> had passed a medical inspection
... which took about one minute to check for red flags. If you had red flags, they diverted you to quarantine. They were mostly looking for TB and some eye disease.
> had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
... by which they meant having as much as $25 on hand (call it $1000 in 2026, though that's a bit high), and convincing the interviewer that you could probably get a job. That convincing step did include claiming, in a way the interviewer found credible, to have skills beyond the "day laborer" level. But only just beyond.
> I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Good news: the medical requirements now are equivalent, the financial/self-support requirements are now much, much higher, and the vetting is vastly more thorough.
The proposed requirements in Japan require earnings to exceed Japan's average and also for them to have an equivalent of 30 years of pension payouts saved up.
The US requirements are not as specific, but for comparison one of the numbers is that that families need to have an income requirement 25% higher than federal poverty guidelines, which very low compared to average US incomes.
The U.S. was founded as a nation of immigrants, and has a cultural history of being exceptionally immigrant-friendly (compared to other nations), especially with regard to immigrants without much means.
I don't believe other nations have any obligation to follow this example. On the contrary, they should be able to set whatever immigration policies make sense for them. But this model of letting in poor immigrants, letting them do the work that nobody else wants to do, and letting their kids become net contributors, does seem to have benefited the U.S. greatly over the past few centuries.
Roosevelt's 1915 Americanism address also reveals this:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68152/68152-h/68152-h.htm
He says americanism "is a matter of the spirit and of the soul". In the very next paragraph, the so called "hyphenated americans" are condemned. This is perfectly reasonable.
However, note the examples used:
The implication is only the souls of white europeans were eligible for americanization.There is legal precedent supports this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_...
In 1923, the supreme court decided an indian was not eligible for naturalization and citizenship because he was not white.
So arguably the US was a white ethnoatate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, just over half a century ago.
I do imagine original white people were perhaps more keenly aware of the fact that this land was not originally theirs, and that other people should be let in and given a fair shot, even if they're poor.
I was merely making the argument that U.S. immigration policy has historically not been very classist (even if it was immensely racist), and not caring about the wealth of the incoming immigrants has worked out immensely well for the country over its lifespan.
I am not sure in understand the issue, if Japanese want this, what’s the problem?
So it's true that those in power are harming innocent people in order to maintain their power, but it's also true that Japanese people believe they are being harmed by foreign immigrants.
And some of it is actually true. Of course, conversely, there's also the problem of many Japanese companies hiring Southeast Asian workers at low wages and mistreating them.
But whether it's me as a Korean or Japan, both tend to have a certain authoritarian mindset instilled based on "ethnic" identity. So one aspect of this policy is "we only welcome rich foreigners who spend money and leave," and the media responds accordingly.
Strictly speaking, if you look at these policies strengthening restrictions on foreigners from a third-country perspective, you can see them from the angle of far-rightization. That is, sanctions against outsiders for the sake of internal cohesion[1]. But considering the severe aging population in Japanese industry right now, it's effectively cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face.
However, East Asians receive a somewhat different education from you, so that's how it is.
The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen, which benefits financial companies and exports but sacrifices the Japanese people—the incompetence of the regime is the problem. But because it's hard to grasp all of that complex background, people want to attack something else that's near them.
And also, because the morality of some underdeveloped countries (I know it's an example...) differs from that of developed countries, friction often occurs. Just as the sense of time differs between agricultural regions and cities, for instance.
[1]https://csrda.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/socialresearch/pr/26PressRel...
whats the saying? everything is downstream from economics?
Those people have only ever paid in, have much better options than Japan at this point economically given how far the country has fallen behind, and the logical terminus of this is basically being some kind of ethic chauvinist second world clown country.
If you're even turning skilled tech workers and law abiding people away your immigration problem is solved by virtue of being poor in another 10-20 years
The real issue is the people who have lived and worked in Japan for a long time, but don't earn large salaries. Japan is basically closing the door for permanent residence for those people unless they marry a local. My hot take: I am OK with closing the door for those people. They are basically earning a lower middle income. I'm not sure Japan wants or needs to have those people as permanent residents. However, they are free to live and work here as long as as they want. After they finish working, they can return to their home country. No one is taking that away.
They will do it by expanding their existing (enormous) technical intern programme. There are already many low(er) skill foreigners working in elderly care.Totally wrong, people who were eligible for the business manager visa are no longer elgibile with zero warning or grace period granted, so yeah, total BS. If you built a business here, that's been destroyed if you don't have enough money to quality for another business manager visa under the new (ridiculous) requirements.
What about the people who have worked for 10 years , paid all their tax, not broken the law, but don't have 30 years worth of money to live on, do you think they should be rewarded with the rejection of a PR? On what grounds is that fair?
I get the feeling you either have zero connection to Japan, or you do live here and are married to a Japanese, so you're happy to see the ladder get pulled up because "you're ok".
You are right that a significant change was made to the business manager visa. Old rules: 5M JPY was required as "minimum capital". New rules: 30M JPY is required. The primary reason for the change was to close a loophole that many mainland Chinese used to get a business manager visa to move their family to Japan. (There is no group of people less liked by Japanese people.)
I agree: They should have added a carve-out for legitimate small businesses. Alternatively, they should have created a programme to lend money at a reasonable interest rate and X years to become compliant. There are many non-Japanese restaurants that are run by first generation immigrants from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. However, the actual number of small businesses that have been "forced to leave" as a result of this change are as yet unknown.
There were a few very noisy folks that the mainstream media reported about over and over. However, they should try to borrow money from friends, family, or a bank. Personally, I contacted one of them via WhatsApp to offer to lend money to make the 30M JPY requirement, but I never heard back. After that, I assumed that they were "blowing smoke" (bullshit). Interestingly, for all the ones that were very publicly complaining about the changes (that I saw), none of their businesses have closed. I guess they made it work.
I won't repeat myself here, but I answered that concern here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864179 The financial situation of the Japan central gov't is the same or worse compared to ten years ago. They don't want to grant permanent residence to people who are less than middle class. It is very likely that these people would consume in public benefits during retirement far more than they ever paid into the system. I think Japan is being financial prudent about what foreigners they allow to "stay forever". So, yes, I agree: They "pulled up the ladder", economically speaking.Another myth of the traditional (my term) ten year permanent residence route: It is not guaranteed to be granted even if you followed all of the known and public rules -- good salary, paid all taxes (incl social), no traffic violations/arrests, etc. They look at your integration into Japanese society. If your Japanese language is poor, they frequently reject. If you are unmarried, they also frequently reject. If you belong to no civic orgs or never volunteer, they also frequently reject. If you don't have multiple personal recommendations for PR from Japanese citizens and/or other PRs, they also frequently reject. There are many, many Reddit and blog posts about such rejections.
Finally, have these changes affected you? You seem very emotionally charged in your posts about the matter.
The problem is I’ve built my life here and they keep treating foreigners as a lesser life form. People here can unironically be standing next to me bitching about foreigners. Then turn to me and say something like “not you, you are fine.”
With these laws, they are pushing 99% of people out while saving face from being called racists.
I think every country should have a right over their borders. Japan wasn't built on multiculturalism like United States or Canada, so I'm not surprised.
That being said, I would probably think twice about traveling to Japan as a tourist.
Laws dating back to 1790 restricted naturalization to white people, which arguably makes the US a sort of white ethnostate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and repealing that act appears to be an objective of the american right wing as of 2026.
It really made me question whether it was possible for a third worlder like me to ever become an american.
The whole idea of naturalization is to assimilate into the new culture and become one of them. Far too many people just don't put in the effort to do that.
I immigrated to another country and I went in eyes wide open knowing that at any point I might have to pack up and head home. In fact, it became far harder to immigrate only a few years after I did. Likelihood is that if I hadn't come when I did I never would have been able to.
It took 10 years to finally become a citizen, but I did so the first day it was an option (yes, I counted down the days and sent in the application on day 1), because I knew it was the only way I could safely assume I'd never be forced to leave.
In practice, most visas are short term, and none of them will allow you to benefit from social aids for very long. At most I imagine you could extend your working visa to 5 years, get sick the first year and be at charge for the remaining 4 years ? There will be ink spent on these cases, but statistically how often does that even happen to need stricter laws ?
The current political climates needs the gov to look "Japan First" and these kind of rule change are very cheap to do, especially as the people directly impacted don't vote nor can complain. It goes well with the very anti-foreigner sentiment, especially as the current wave of tourists is very unpopular despite the money coming in.
The longer view is Japan getting less workers in total, yet more of the worse immigrants as they're calling for people who either don't need Japan (have enough money to go anywhere and don't need to think long term) or are willing to take more risks (high return grifts etc.), in a time where Japanese salaries and productivity are already lower than surrounding countries.
They're basically making a bad situation worse, just for short term political play, giving in on the worse trends.
For the government, the cost for any worker in the same circumstances would be the same. On the other side, the foreigners cost less to the government overall when they were educated and raised elsewhere.
I’m not saying you are wrong, just that the previous rules are already in place in that very direction, and the changes are being placed instead to please and gain political support.
So while it's very rational to demand strong language skills, and very rational to expect people to go with a certified school given the unique difficulty of the language, potential residents are essentially limited to earning part-time wages (typically much lower than full time) during that period, and virtually barred from proactively engaging in any other kind of economic activity. They could transition to a business manager visa after that, but it will have to be a new business set up from scratch which must include at least one Japanese hire as well as minimum language skills; essentially requiring business activity/know how and business planning which the person was barred from doing during the language acquisition phase.
It's not impossible to meet these criteria by any means, but it actively discourages bootstrapping and efficient use of available time.
> and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years
It's a confusing guideline but this isn't accurate. You need to show an expected future pension (could be savings) equivalent to a salaried worker who paid into an employee's pension for 30 years. That's strict, but there will probably be a bunch of ways to show that.
That’s not the standard. The standard is making sure someone is really a huge contribution to the society such that it offsets the burden of immigration.
Of course it's Japans decision.
probably a better idea is average for the prefecture they live in, but i guess they want to simplify things or discourage ppl from moving to the countryside? idk; most people are in tokyo/osaka to be sure...
In the UK, only 47% are net tax contributors. I can't find what the same statistic is for Japan. I don't believe it's wrong for there to be an expectation that they be a net contributor.
47% of what? Of the immigrants coming in the UK are net tax contributors?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
> Across the UK, 53.3% of people lived in households that were net recipients in FYE 2024. This means that they lived in households that received more in benefits (cash and benefits in kind) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect).
It's a straightforward subsidy for employer profits.
Am I missing something here?
A digital nomad is still economically positive when a) their money circulates locally, eg at cafes and restaurants and b) comes from outside the region. That’s because they’re bringing wealth generated elsewhere (ie, at their employer) into the region.
While you’re correct the state misses out on income taxes, they get taxes on further spending, eg, when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe.
Not specifically about digital nomads, but Amazon used to estimate their salary dollars induce $2.5 of additional local economic activity — as Amazon employees bought from local stores, the store employees did in turn, etc.
Nations whose economies depend on foreign tourist spending their money there, are some of the worst developed out there, have a disproportionately high low wage sector, and some of the highest wealth inequalities out there with the lowest opportunities for upwards mobility. Basically a dutch disease.
Developed economies aren't gonna be improved by you moving to buy lattes there while you gentrify the locals in the process and making life more expensive for them. The only ones who will be happy you do this will be greedy landlords.
Developed economies want skilled workers to stay as long term residents and contribute in income taxes, and maybe even become citizens so they can become eligible for the draft in case shit were to hit the fan. Digital nomads are like locusts by comparisons, they come to treat your country like and amusement park while the going is good, but leave at the slightest inconvenience.
This assumes they come just to geoarbitrage. Many want to experience a country for its nature, food, culture, people etc.
Maybe depends on where you choose to go?
This only works to some extent, because, again, you can't subsidize budget with VAT only. And a person who is a bona fide employed immigrant still pays more tax in place of "just" a nomad.
Sorry, but your logic is flawed here.
Yes — people who emigrate to work there pay more in taxes, but they generally also consume more: the job they’re working displaces a local, they benefit from social medicine, etc. Digital nomads bring jobs from elsewhere to spend locally, while not benefiting from (eg) local healthcare or schools.
They would get the same wages earned on the workload surplus coming from employed immigrants in place of nomads. They also use the same services plus pay income salary. That's the whole point discussed here. Skilled immigration is better than glorified tourism.
It isn't that hard to have above-average income – around 40% of Japanese workers do.
I think "a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts" may be much more challenging to meet, however.
It would be insane for a country that is already dealing with an overburdened social welfare system to grant permanent residency to someone who is, say, 60 years old and doesn't have any savings or pension income to support them in retirement.
Which, fair, it's their right to close the door fully, but lack of immigration and a greatly aged population sounds like a recipe for collapse.
It does not mean that you need to have 30 years of savings right now. Just that you are on track to get there by the time you retire.
There are a lot of people who won't qualify (and while it certainly sucks for people affected, this is by design) - but those who earn more than the Japanese average should generally qualify.
The basic premise is absurd on its face that a country should ever be expected to even allow immigration especially if it does not want it.
Does this take into account the amount of pension a person would still accumulate under Japanese employment, or will this immediately disqualify anyone under 45?
https://unseen-japan.com/foreign-elderly-care-workers-japan/
I shit you not, this is the plan.
SSW1 is a max of 5 years, non renewable. Somewhat similar and somewhat different from TITP (training) allows a path to SSW1 readiness and completion of TITP qualifies workers without testing for SSW1, SSW1 is intended to prepare workers for SSW2, which requires documented work and a test.
After 3 years employment as SSW1 (or two years if workers role includes supervisory management and is documented properly) every SSW1 worker is eligible to take a single test for SSW2. The SS2 visa is also a 5 year max but is RENEWABLE indefinitely. This isn't 'permanent residency' but a rolling work visa with it's own eligibility.
Now, if a worker cannot acquire the proficiency to pass the SW2 test before 5 years is over; then perhaps they should return, because they do not seem to be studying the job they are engaged in and not engaging in becoming more proficient in helping their employer's business grow. They may remain at the same job with the SSW2 visa, continue at the same pay, and perform the same work; so there is no motive for their employer to make obtaining the SSW2 visa difficult other than that they may regret having that employee after seeing their work ethic and output.
However the SSW1 and SSW2 visas do not lock you into a single employer. Workers are free to quit and/or find another place to work, are eligible for unemployment if your employer fires or lays you off not-for-cause, and have 90 days to get new employment in either event (quit or fired) with significant systemic assistance (HelloWork among them) for finding a new employer.
The 'specific' company aspect is for the initial application for SSW 'eligibility certificate' but workers are eligible to work for any employer from day one of their visa issuance. Yes, these SSWs are industry specific, as the tests for each type of 'specific skills' is independent and unique, but one can take additional, different industry tests while in country on one kind of SSW1 visa and then apply for 'designated activities' to engage in cross industry work, and this would allow continuation of SSW1 without moving to SSW2 by reapplication for 'eligibility' in the second industry at the end of the 5 year non-renewable SSW1. Some industries have more applicants than allowed visas, some industries never get over about 30% of the needed SSW1/2 workers.
It is not predatory, does not take advantage of workers who are diligent and studious. It certainly is not a route to work-play in a bar and doing casual part time host work. It is for serious workers in specific high need fields who may otherwise lack degrees and professional work experience which would qualify for the higher level visas.
Framing it as abusive or predatory is to not understand the system at all. The principal guardrails are actually on the applying employer, with strong requirements for a third party (Registered Support Organization) to make sure that the work conditions and terms are safe and honest, pay and compensation rates are not lower than standard for natural employees, participation in insurance, tax, retirement, and banking are proper, access to safe clean housing and other necessary social needs are met, such as Japanese language study, social integration and participation ~ neighborhood regular clean up, and local matsuri festival invites.
Sidebar - The clean up might sound like work, but is a time to meet and socialize with your neighbors and be seen as a participant who 'helps out'. There is usually so little actual trash that it's more like an Easter egg hunt than anything else - find a discarded nicotine-gum wrapper or a smashed plastic bottle if you're lucky - my last clean up day we didn't get even half of an office waste-bin worth for the whole block among 20 plus people over 45 minutes. But I do meet new people almost ev...
Look, on one hand I'm glad that it worked out for you, that you had enough work-life balance to study and get certified for the SSW2 program and you're content to stay on it until you're physically unable to work anymore or somehow find a way to qualify for a permanent residence under the new guidelines for both you and your wife.
On the other, the story is full of caveats:
- company hiring in that sector has to be well-managed and well-behaved (oversight is often superficial compounded by the fact that in a lot of cases, the hiring company and the employer-of-record are actually 2 different entities);
- you have sufficient time and energy to skill-up after work, especially if it's physical labor;
- you have sufficient funds to skill-up;
- in case you need to change your job, you're not in distress from the current employer or financially.
I don't know what your cultural background is. In my worldview, these programs are inhumane. Humane variant is this: if you (collective "you", Japan) deem the person worthy of coming here and changing the bedpans of your elderly when none of the Japanese youth wants to do it for the same salary, you get the fuck out of the way unless this immigrant breaks your laws, and at that point you deport them. But if they come here and obey your laws they should have the reciprocal security in their old age, not conditional on how well they test on JLPT and for sure not conditional on unrealistic expectation of earning significantly more than an average Japanese worker.
P.S. Socializing is nice. You can still go and pick up the non-existent trash when you're on a Eng/Intl/Humanities visa and even on PR. Just saying.
Abuses will exist wherever oversight is insufficient.
Planning to remain in Japan after reaching the age of 'no longer able to work' is a condition that permanent resident visa, if the proposed changes actually occur and persist, may no longer provide. Given that, then contributing to the national retirement/pension plan and preparing for naturalization would seem to be the proper route to that long term expectation of reciprocal security.
If the job pay is 'lower than a Japanese worker would accept' then that does indeed classify as abuse of the SSW1 designated rules. As they have been explained to me by legal council, SSW1 rules state explicitly that employees must receive at least as much pay as would cost for a local laborer, in order to not depress local labor values.
If this is the condition that you or persons known to you are working in, that is a reason needed for a change in employment.
A JLPT test is not typically part of the SSW2 requirement, at least for the industries I have studied the test material for, but the tests are in Japanese at about JLPT4/3ish level. Each tests specific vocabulary (the kanji portion) are very specific and one can focus on learning the necessary content which is a much lower threshold than JLPT3, but studying for that does become dependent on the work-life balance aspect. Clear communication with an earnest and fair employer is important for establishing that; and it sounds like you are having some difficulties with this side of things. That is unfortunate.
I don't have any magic tricks for not getting taken advantage of; but know that it appears your experience with the SSW1 is not necessarily typical of the program as intended, and there may be some alternatives to feeling trapped or not valued in the long term here.
Is your 登録支援機関 (tōroku shien kikan) Registered Support Organization an active participant in the necessary oversight, or have they effectively been rubber-stamping the actions that have led to this situation?
That was where I was leaning on the socialization aspect. The RSO has some responsibility in making sure SSW workers are aware of the scheduled community building events in order to facilitate socialization and acculturation - these can always be done independently, but there's an obligation to facilitate these for the RSO.
Having active opportunities to interact (again work-life balance) can be a big help in working toward fluency, which I feel should be a goal for anyone planning a long term habitation in any country. In Samoa this is fa'asamoa, "Fesili muli mai ia mua mai" when arriving follow who came first, the "When in Rome do as the Romans" and in Japanese 郷に入ってはば郷に従う go ni iteba go ni shitagau.
If there is anything you think I might be able to do to help, I am willing to try. もし手伝う事があれば遠慮なくネ
It isn't obvious that the SSW program itself is designed with abuse as an intended outcome. I also don't get the strong sense that these changes to the PR process, at least what actual documentation is on https://www.moj.go.jp, are going to have much real impact other than prompting those with a real long term commitment to life in Japan to look more closely at the naturalisation process and possibly motivate SSW1 workers to be more serious about upskill to SSW2.
Because SSW1 time no longer applies to the 10 year PR eligibility (which can be shorter with "contribution to Japanese society" https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930003503.pdf), this makes staying at SSW1 for longer than 2-3 years a bit wasteful if the goal is PR.
Perhaps there is some room in this system for well-managed RSOs to take a more active role in helping current SSW1 employees take the necessary steps to prepare for transition to SSW2 and perhaps this kind of action is something that rural townships should look at as a mechanism to improve their local workforce options.
I wonder if there's any employers in your extended network who could gain from having access to workers already holding SSW1 visas with 2+ year remaining on visa and helping prepare those workers for SSW2 testing and retention along with long-term work contracts. It would seem to be a real opportunity for companies struggling to meet production objectives due to labor shortages without the potentially high initial capital cost of finding those workers from abroad and the cost of turnover and training that come from short term new workers.
I'm just kinda thinking out loud here; it seems to me that where there are avenues for abuse which appear to offer little recourse for the workers, then there may be an avenue to offer that recourse and in turn benefit from the ready capability and earned loyalty of those workers. Sure, your bed-pan example is a worst case job scenario, but that field of SSW is not restricted to only bed-pan level work, and surely there are companies who need quite a range of ready workforce for many tasks that would fit the same visa which can pay a decent wage for skilled labor which are not 'black companies'.
I'll try to introduce some of this into the discussions at my next informal soudan kikai. The shiyakusho team heree has been great at facilitating the network of contacts and interested parties which has enabled our current opportunities, and been very involved in every step from the moment we showed interest in living out here in the 'inaka'.
I think that a lot of them feel they should patriotically starve to death.
https://www.deseret.com/2007/10/12/20046650/starving-man-s-d...
>From South Asia
>Works in tech
Go figure.
Weird take, are you against upward mobility? Would you not take the same opportunity in their position?
I'm not up to date with Japanese news, does anyone know the reason for that?
You know who have babies? Immigrants.
You know who pays social security for peuple when they get older ? Those grown up babies.
Do the math. Japan has much to teach the world but the most important lesson they are now teaching, is that people are stupid, easily manipulated, excessively xenophobic and absolutely happy to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly if it means not admitting they’re wrong. In Japan, in the US, in Europe and elsewhere.
Dumb dumb humans…
I appreciate you basing your argument in statistics, but if you have them to hand, could you link to them?
If you have problems finding it just ask the AI. But you should avoid companies controlled by the pro immigrant elite.
I think one of the reason why Japan is considering doing these is because a lot of people with specific cultural religious, and ethnic backgrounds are really causing a lot of trouble. They cause a lot of trouble even in my home country where they are the majority (I am an ethnic minority).
I’ve heard anecdotes from my Japanese friends and families and really, its bad. And these people refuse to assimilate, but want to conquer instead.
However, targeting specific racial/religious/ethnic minorities are generally frowned in the modern world, so Japan just create a more “acceptable” filter here to filter out people from these backgrounds, that is, wealth.
We can’t all go along and sing kumbaya to one another, although I personally want to. But the other cultures/ethnicities/religious backgrounds don’t want to.
Yes, I witnessed persecution and death before, managed to escape it when I was really small. this definitely color my perception regarding specific cultural/ethnic/religious backgrounds regardless whether I have a lot of good friends from said backgrounds.
You need Japanese blood (visibly), culture (language, manner, custom), and nationality to be "fully" accepted. This isn't new and has more to do with Japanese people themselves than with any legal restriction.
What confuses me is that Japan is not a very immigrant-heavy country. There's no chance of someone who doesn't represent the interests of native Japanese people being elected any time soon, or ever. So why can't they pass laws codifying the behaviors they want to encourage and ones they will treat as non-assimilation? Why aren't they doing something to address misbehavior directly, making newcomers to the country prove their long-term commitment to their new social and cultural environment, or punishing infractions more harshly so bad actors can't stay in the country? Why are the only two options available to them 'do nothing' or 'blanket punish all foreigners because all foreigners are trouble'?
Japan is a shame based culture. A lot of social norms are encoded as part of being Japanese and not strictly enforced. Japan has less lawyers per capita compared to US for example.
Take a look at a lot of the influencers that are causing trouble in Japan. In the US we probably bludgeon (or shoot) those people on the spot and lawyers talk later, but Japan doesn’t do that, not even their police. Majority of Japanese just sit there silently but deep inside filled with disgust.
Besides, once these laws are implemented, soon it will be obvious which groups are “targeted” and it doesn’t look good in the eyes of the international world.
Besides, the implication you made is that a lot of the actions people don't like are already illegal, just not tightly enforced. Especially if you say Americans would shoot the perpetrators on the spot.
Even if they wanted to protect their status quo, they could only apply stricter requirements on residents who haven't received their citizenship yet. Law-abiding immigrants in many countries are used to having to clear higher bars than locals. But at least in this case this would be equitable, only punishing the people who actually do something wrong instead of everyone.
The US could avoid a lot of inefficiences if they adopted the same.
Feigning to not know, is knowing.
— https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The truth unfortunately just doesn't matter much these days.
Folks read stuff online by people and just take it as fact without bothering to ask the simple questions that you have.
[1]: https://thesociopedia.blogspot.com/2026/07/why-nationalism-i...
[2]: often used as a tool by oligarchy to shift blame away from themselves, instead towards vulnerable groups, as the cause of rising inequality and various institutional crisis
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Japan
The subtle but profound ways those generations have experienced being essentially abandoned by the government and “Japan Inc” will have a lasting impact on Japan for many decades to come.
There are some leaders who actually grasp the problem and actually have decent ideas for solutions, but the will and capacity to execute those ideas just isn’t there.
Countries have a right to change their laws, but I believe it’s in everyone’s interest for those laws to be changed while respecting principles of predictability and legal certainty.
People planned and rearranged their entire lives around immigration law in force at one point, perhaps 5 years ago, and now a new law is going into force that slams the door shut to having a basic sense of stability, with only a 6 month transition period. It’s cruel. And it sends a bad sign to anyone looking to move.
The USA can afford to be cruel because people will deal with it for high wages. Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large. It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
Context for others: Until 2026 Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship. It now has some basic requirements in these areas.
* 2025 citizenship requirements: <https://web.archive.org/web/20250315034218/https://www.migra...>
* 2026: <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>
>in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden after Swedish. <http://web.archive.org/web/20210511231225/https://digitaledi...>.
Also completely unrelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
This has included an absurdly inflexible agency which blames immigrants for mistakes outside of their control, and the full gamut of Kafkaesque rules. As a result, indigenous high tech industry is increasingly leaving Sweden in favour of EU neighbours.
It's like saying "anglosaxon" and grouping english, german, swedish, danish, norwegian as one single language.
At the same time it is very unlikely that the English speaker will learn Swedish, so English speakers are more of a threat to Swedish than Arabic speakers.
Beyond naturalization reforms, you also have the issue of minimum salary hikes for work permits (with no transitional rules), resulting in regular, integrated workers getting deported. 18 year old kids (of regular, integrated workers) getting deported, as well as regular, integrated workers being deported because they happened to come in on an asylum visa and then changed to a work permit (under a law that was revoked, again, with no transitional rules).
Every time the lack of predictability and legal certainty for these people was an explicit choice.
Swedes barely understand the cruelty that’s happening, let alone the damage it’s doing to Sweden’s reputation among globally mobile workers.
This such a baffling statement, honestly: that the flourishing economy crucially depends on foreign labour. What happened with the role of the technological know-how, and vast material (and financial) capital? The institutions? All of that is still not enough for prosperity unless you can hire a paperless José for $7.40 per hour, with an implied threat of handing him off to ICE if he raises any stink?
Foreign labor is what will keep most of these countries afloat for the following 50 years.
Japan is a good example, they lose about 1 million every year.
And the unemployed youth would be working those low skilled jobs today if they wanted to, fact is they don’t pay enough for them and if those jobs are automated away they will still be unemployed.
It obviously suppress wages, which is a necessary condition for capitalism. Any country where it costs 10x to build infrastructure because there is no cheap labor will be less competitive.
Xenophobia doesn't exist in the Netherlands we just hate everyone equally lol.
And why does the destination country need that persons labour and expertise, but not the origin country?
If the native population is becoming exterminated with or without migration, what exactly is the "country" that needs to be kept "afloat"? Your stock portfolio? Your treasury bills? Your real estate investment?
Wealthier areas wonder why it costs so much for house renovations or for daycare or`for farmer's market produce. Or similarly folks move to less wealthy countries as "expats" and hire help, babysitters, tutors. Sense of prosperity seems tied to those things feeling inexpensive and them feeling cheap requires income inequality. There's I think a large amount of feeling poor (or average) when those things are eating your budget. Even though you have them. For example, you pay for expensive childcare so both parents can work, it takes a big bite out of your budget, and so you don't feel wealthy (but you're paying for childcare and your family has an employee). Similarly, you're paying for expensive private school, it eats your budget, you don't feel wealthy (but your child is going to private school).
For those doing well, the surplus goes to what's left—house, education, healthcare (I recall there being a fourth, but I'm blanking). Those things are expensive because they should be, you're wealthy. You're competing with the other wealthy people. I'm stealing this from somewhere, but they're essentially luxury goods—the more money you have, the more (and better quality) you consume. They don't decrease as percent of income as food does.
wouldn't the same logic apply to people from say east germany moving to the west? or 'annoying liberals' from california moving to north carolina? yes they can add to the local tax base, but if we want to keep things fair we should probably move to restrict everyone to stay in their own places if thats the logic we are following... but maybe i'm not thinking deeply enough...
I learned it here some years ago. I don’t follow Swedish news. Someone or the article title mentioned “grenade attacks in Sweden”. I thought it was parody at first but it’s a thing somehow. Do they think immigration is what contributes? Someone said it was simply the city in question was at the border with other country that’s why grenades are a thing there…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombings_in_Sweden
I am fascinated by others being fascinated with Japan (meta fascination?). It’s like this mythical land of milk and honey for some. I don’t get? It’s just another country amongst hundred others.
Anti-immigration laws, Japan: happy face
As usual, the meme is ever alive around these parts. Anything Japan does is heralded as a good move™ and no impartial discussion can be had without the weeaboos coming out of the woodwork to put a positive spin on it.
But sure, we’ll see if limiting these odious gaijin coming in will solve their stagnant economy, fertility crisis and obsolete business practices. Good luck with their isolationism, it’s not the first time they’ve gone down that path, all to appease the right-leaning imbeciles that blame the immigrant for their politicians’ ineptitude at dealing with systemic problems. It’s the same all over the world.
Japan is not a multicultural country. You can't become Japanese through paperwork. It is very much through blood heritage, your language and cultural proficiency.
The bar to be Japanese is much higher than say Canadian or French. So why shouldn't they create laws that is aimed at benefiting themselves and their country without depending on foreigners?
Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
What is odd about it? People comment on every country immigration policies. Why would Japan get a special exemption
That's the world as it is, not necessarily as it should be. Not being a citizen of the country in question, or part of the culture, and most importantly, not being one of the people that deals with the consequences of whichever choice is made, means your opinion counts for so little as to be barely worth sharing
I had less than $10k to my name when I moved to Canada. I have done very well since.
How about Canada? Did it become better or worse since then?
It's absolutely become worse since the 80s
I get a lot of shit from my fellow countrymen when I say it. Rose colored glasses, etc
But nah. It's way harder to be successful here than it was even 20 years ago
We really, really under value the impact of low income, low education immigrants imo.
Eg. The railway that created this country was built by low income Chinese workers that probably didn't even speak English.
Canada doesn't exist without the effort of low income, low education people.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree on your points regarding Japan not being a multi-cultural country. And this, indeed, is rarely (if ever) mentioned in articles such as the one posted here.
Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
That's not at accurate from what I know of Japanese history. You seem to be over-indexing on the (relatively) brief Tokugawa-era sakoku policy and ignoring the thousands of years surrounding it where Japan was an active importer of culture.
Kanji, government structure, Buddhism, law, art and more were all imported from China and hugely influential in Japanese history. After the the Meiji Restoration, Japan explicitly set out to Westernize and went abroad to study European and American institutions, invited Westerners in to help build European-style banking systems and government systems, adopted Western clothing, architecture, military organization, legal codes, etc. etc.
If anything the Japanese are masters at importing the things they like of foreign culture and then modifying to make it their own. They have always been importers of culture.
So is Sicily… and yet it's quite diverse…
Japan used to not have control over Okinawa or Hokkaido. Those were separate peoples that Japan invaded and colonized, along with Korea. They would have gotten to keep Korea too if it wasn't for those damned meddling Americans and their nuclear weapons, but there are still Koreans who have been living in Japan for generations. Even though Japan themselves said "you will never be like us, you will always be lesser, now grovel and grow us our cheap rice". This is multiculturalism, you just don't recognize it because you don't know what an Ainu is.
Also, Japanese is basically permanently welded to the Chinese writing system. Japan considered removing kanji and kana in favor of romaji at one point during the Meiji era - which would have been a disaster on par with English spelling reform. But, even then, Japanese is like 10% English by weight and growing, with no actual attempt by anyone to stop this from happening.
So if you ate sushi during Thanksgiving ten years ago, are you now entitled to Japanese citizenship too ?
Explain why the blood is needed. Is it perhaps because Japan uses a different type of oxygen that needs different hemoglobin?
People who have lived their entire lives in Japan, but are not 100% ethnically Japanese, will literally never be accepted as Japanese.
I mean should we shut down hacker news? the whole point is discussing.
The mental model most immigration-naive people have regarding immigration is that the vast majority of "desirable" immigrants go to a country to get a job, work for some years, and then maybe they get something called a "green card" (permanent residency) or something. The reality is that most employers can't legally hire immigrants, unless they go through a LOT of hoops, which is not worth it. So a handful of employers specialize in this, and because they spend money to control this corner of the labor market, the labor of the immigrants trades at a discount relative to citizen labor. This is literally the opposite of what the system's stated intent is, immigrants are not supposed to undercut citizens, but nobody with power cares about that. So legal immigration is effectively an indentured servitude scheme where you work the bottom tier of a job for some number of years until you can get permanent residency.
What Japan is doing is, effectively, making the time you have to spend to get that reward a lot longer, and also disqualifying anyone less than 30 years away from retirement age unless they're rich enough to make up the shortfall[1]. This is primarily about empowering sweatshops (black companies) over imported workers.
You think it's about preserving Japanese culture, but I, being a huge fucking weeb, know for a fact that nobody calling for this gives a shit about Japanese culture. Especially not the Japanese politicians. The kinds of cultural things most foreigners value are things Japan has been trying to throw away since the Meiji Restoration; while the kinds of things Japan's elite value are byproducts of having a rigidly ossified social structure that cannot absorb any amount of change.
Like, for example... anime and manga? Foreigners like it. Otaku[0] like it. But Japan spent a decade trying to vilify otaku as mass murderers in training, and the people creating anime and manga haven't had much social prestige until recently. Hell, they still don't get paid very well.
The famed Japanese politeness is downstream of social oppression. They are polite for exactly the same reason American Southerners are polite; a combination of elites imposing their values on the populace and the populace adopting social defense mechanisms against the elite.
There is a narrative being pushed by ultra-rich elites. Think about how Mark Zuckerberg shifted from "we need to bring in insane numbers of H-1Bs to cover a labor shortage gap" to giving Trump shittons of money. Or how Elon Musk keeps talking about how we need as many women pregnant as possible. Or just the insane hardon that businesses have for robots and AI now. These all come from the same desire to keep wages down by creating a permanent underclass.
The underlying problem with the labor shortage gap, both in Japan and elsewhere, is that you can't afford to have kids in the middle of a wage stagnation and cost-of-living crisis. Japan has been in this crisis for so long that their population is decreasing, but every other rich country is not far behind. The root cause is that businesses cost-optimized people's welfare out of the economy, and they need people to be a renewable resource.
There are a few ways to fix the problem, but closing countries off to immigration is not one of them. Actually, if you wanted to break the hold sweatshops have on immigrant labor, you'd want to open the fucking floodgates and let the market close out the labor arbitrage opportunity we've been keeping open ever since the WTO made free global trade a thing. If the globalists are allowed to move goods through 20 countries to hyper-optimize their labor spend, then I should be allowed to move to whatever country has the...
~70% of int'l marriages in Japan are Japanese men + foreign brides.
Of the women marrying foreign husbands, 25.7% Korean, next is 16.7% American, then 12.5% Chinese.
it's an extended family of sorts
The rape definition in Sweden is extremely broad. If you had read your own link you'd know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden#Unreliable_data...
Yeah i think they have low crime because of their interesting definitions of what a crime is.
I don't think it takes much imagination to connect the dots... it wasn't that long ago in European history where people were systematically eradicated by the millions.
Permanent residency is reserved for those who can be a net benefit to social welfare programs - by earning and contributing more than the average Japanese household (about USD $36,000 - $42,000 according to google). There are also new language requirements to promote assimilation.
I don’t think it’s anything too radical by global standards, and I have read there are similarities to what Singapore and South Korea already do [1] (but I don’t know too much about their programs though).
It’s important to note that the exact details haven’t been finalized yet. So exact income requirements could change from current proposals/rumors. There was a lot of outrage about proposed provisions to revoke permanent residency for people who commit crimes or don’t pay taxes, but when they actually came through they were pretty fair, common sense type changes.
These changes come on the heels of drastically increasing requirements for the business manager visa (which, to be fair, was heavily abused as a kind of “golden visa” in the past). They’ve also significantly increased visa application costs - I think I paid like ¥5,000 for my PR application, and it is now ¥200,000.
It does feel cruel to apply new requirements retroactively to people who have already submitted applications. And the stories of people whose lives are being completely upended by the changes are heartbreaking.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/09/21/japan/jap...
Right now the yen is so weak Japan salary look ridiculously low, there is the language barrier, and the low hanging jobs aren't great either (a ton in elderly care).
Their policies to restrict immigration will have few impact short term, as immigration is already slowing down and even Filinos, who have always been on the better side of immigration, are looking for better opportunities [1]. Longer term though, people will remember how it goes when Japan economy trends down, and the immigration going away might not come back even when the trend reverses. Especially as there will already be a probably better community built elsewhere.
[0] https://jp.ibtimes.com/japans-full-time-labor-shortages-pers...
[1] https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3309634/why-filipino-migra...
> The survey found that company size influenced hiring outcomes. Seventy-six percent of companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees reported shortages, followed by 75% of firms with 5,000 employees or more and 74% of those with 250 to 999 employees. Among smaller firms, 69% of organizations with 50 to 249 employees, 66% with 10 to 49 employees and 61% with fewer than 10 employees reported hiring challenges.
I'm not saying that there isn't a shortage of labor in Japan - just that business owners are never satisifed with the amount of labor available at the wages they wish to pay. Just that it may not be an existential shortage of labor like a lot of commenters are saying. Especially with recent developments in AI and automation.
The declining birthrate in general does seem to be an existential issue if it cannot be stabilized. But it is hard to predict population trends long term (when I was growing up the big concern was overpopulation).
The weak yen is also definitely an issue right now - but it's impossible to predict where it will be in the future.
[1] https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-o...
Perhaps the US is on the same slope, right now anything US related sounds bonkers on all sides so I have no idea how it will go after next elections.
> those tradeoffs are theirs to make
I'm a lot biased as they're making these tradeoffs for me and my family, and electing a different leadership will be tough short term. More than half of the population is 50+ yo and mostly cares about keeping it safe for their old age.
TBF the current gov does a lot in other aspects, but throwing immigration as a bone to nationalist sentiment has never led to good outcomes IMHO.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when they don't know how to behave!?. To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese.
Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters or future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk.
No, I’m not in denial, I just have the rational ability to let principles override my occasional emotional reactions, it’s part of being a truly high-minded and intelligent adult human being, certainly too much to expect from everyone, I’ll acknowledge that.
Race is not superficial or irrelevant, it should be, but racists exist. You’re in denial about this because you have a deep-seated inferiority complex and what some call “internalized racism,” which again, is quite typical of a certain sector of desi immigrant populations, especially those who come from very disadvantaged or discriminated backgrounds. You want to believe race or racism isn’t a thing because otherwise you’d have to face the facts that you’re often thought of as lowly just for the way you look or where you’re from, and you don’t really fit in with the people around you, that you are and will always be thought of as “different.” Again, I know how that feels, but unlike you, I have principles that allow me to engage with the world without being in denial and also not discriminating against others because I faced discrimination myself. I’ll say though, I appreciate you not denying that you feel this way.
Racism and culture are not the same but they are subject to very similar forms of discrimination and very often by the same kinds of people. The Venn diagram of racists and xenophobes is the closest thing to being a circle without actually being one. I am not in denial also that there can be elements of corruption in a culture, and I’ll admit some of those exist among South Asians. But, the reality is there are elements of corruption in every culture, do you think American culture is perfect? If you do, I have to believe you’re not living in the same reality as the rest of us. The glorious Nippon you believe in is also steeped in cultural corruption, you deliberately ignore their recent history and in fact their current culture as well. Ask people belonging to discriminated classes there or even regular Japanese people if things are perfect over there. There is rampant debauchery, exploitation of women and young girls, problems of alcoholism, high levels of work-related stress because of cultural expectations of showing loyalty to the company and leadership. These are all elements of corruption that have negative impact, the only thing Japan does really well is cleanliness and crime prevention. Things aren’t perfect but they do try to be orderly, so why are you regularly visiting them when your brown self is prone to being dirty and committing crimes? Why make more work for them?
Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are and none of them have this kind of self-hating feelings of inferiority. I think it’s because we naturally take for granted the 1st world benefits we grew up with whereas people from disadvantaged backgrounds who immigrated as adolescents sometimes seem to think they’ve reached paradise and go out of their way to present themselves as servile and not concerned with discrimination at all, just being thankful and humble to glorious white people, and in this case even adopting their externalized nationalism towards Japan. This is just a feeling though, I am not saying it with any certainty.
But you shouldn’t treat them the same way. They’re fundamentally different. You can be perfectly happy being Bangladeshi as a matter of DNA, while hating the culture of the country. Shit, that’s like half my extended family. We all got the fuck out. How many people are there in NYC or Chicago from the redneck parts of Alabama who hate the culture back home? It’s the same thing! Those people aren’t “self hating white people.” They are just people who think there are better ways to live and act than the way their ancestors did.
> Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are
Haha, that explains a lot. You’re surrounded by white people, so you feel this affinity to your co-ethnics, which compels you to defend a culture that you didn’t even grow up in. That’s irrational. You’re an individual. You can look at the world and just see who is doing stuff that works and who is doing stuff that doesn’t work. You don’t have to yoke yourself to people you have nothing in common with other than skin color.
You’re correct, I wasn’t born in the U.S., and neither was my mom or my dad. So we actually understand the problem with the culture back in old country. We lived there. We’re not analyzing it through the lens of white people from the other side of the world. You don’t need to psychoanalyze me to understand why I like Japan and dislike Bangladesh. I have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And I'm okay with that
Not true - a youtuber from Germany who lives in Japan since about 10 years, was denied citizenship recently. And he'd make more than enough money.
https://www.youtube.com/@NihonGoo
The thing is really true: Japan is against more immigration. You'll always be a gaijin there if you come from the outside.
> there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism
Other countries are also very much against mass immigration. Japan just does it in a very strange way.
I’ve been living in Japan for a cumulative ~11 months and the number of white people I’ve seen working in 7-11 is zero. Why? Because such roles are simply not attractive for them, and they don’t want to put up with the BS. The people who will do anything to live in Japan are the people with little prospects in their home country.
In a sense you’re right, but the people from developed countries coming to Japan will be the handful of millionaires who can afford to essentially buy their way in through the business visa, like the YouTuber PewDiePie did.
It can be asked the other way around. Is it worth it to completely destroy the order in the society for the sake of one generation of elderly?
I live in the Netherlands in a black neighborhood, and let me tell you, it's a real shithole. These people are not interested in getting jobs, they just live off neverending money from social programs - with the most expensive one funnily designed to keep them poor for generations - lots of social housing that prevents them from taking part in the housing market going to the moon.
The crime rate is unbelievable. Children literally carry guns around. How do I know? I witnessed a kid shooting another kid with a real gun on my street. Before that I also saw a similar situation from my window one street away.
The lack of respect to anything is obvious. They drop trash on the street because naive taxpayer like me will pay for cleaning. Dudes often harass people on ebikes or scooters because they know that can get away before you react. Loud noise at night? Suck it up.
With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France.
Naturally, these people have Dutch citizenship, so it's not easy to kick them out. Not that the Dutch are interested - I was legally considered a victim of yet another shooting so I got updates on the legal case, and it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. That's Dutch justice system for you.
The Japanese understand this. A generation of tough times is something a society can easily recover from. Meanwhile you can undo a failed immigration program only with ethnic cleansing, and nobody wants that.
Go to Africa or Middle East and see how they treat gays.
> Homophobic terrorist attacks ?
Those are two separate points. My bad, could've said it better.
Yeah - a good many of the former European colonies in Africa do have criminal laws against homosexuality that were introduced during European colonisation - this is very true.
Uganda's easily one of the more extreme in that regard, with quite the history of British origin anti-gay laws and more recent substantial support from US homophobic Christian lobbies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Uganda
It's a time capsule of European origin values.
Many decades of independence, and they're still blaming all their problems on colonialism. Prime example of learned helplessness. It's not even funny at this point.
> Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey
You're not even trying to build a logical argument and you know it.
Someone applying for PR at 30 has far more time to contribute than someone applying for PR at 50.
that's a huge jump in 1 year. What happened?
Johnny Somali.
When you visit someone's country you are not just a guest, you are the model for everyone else who comes from where you do and who looks like you do. The assumption is that how you behave is how others from where you came from will behave. In an age where social media exposes everyone all the time, bad behavior gets seen and shown to others and conclusions drawn based on that behavior.
But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism. Which even if true, who cares? It's their country. They're allowed to welcome or decline anyone they wish. How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
Amazing.
If you have a functioning society and a petty criminal, you can just... arrest them. No needs for all those xenophobic drama.
Or not, I guess. After all, what am I to tell Japanese people what to expect from their own police?
Japan has a stricter legal system than many Western countries.
Saying that it's the issue of a country is wrong and to simple minded.
It seems like your preceding paragraph argues that this racism exists, without using that specific word.
> How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
How often do you see that, as opposed to people simply stating how they feel about who/what others allow in their homes? I’ve rarely seen the former and almost always see the latter.
My black friends tell me that it is very hard to be taken seriously when your kin thinks that attitude is a matter of noise. One of them told me his relationship ended with his fiance because her father was "racist" and didn't believe he was one of the most well paid engineers in the state.
It is one thing when it is one person, it is another when it is every tenth person.
I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment. I was getting frustrated by rude gaijin and I was one (well I was trying really hard not to be rude).
What more does supporting it entail than being sympathetic to the sentiment? You’re not Japanese, it sounds like, so being xenophobic towards non-Japanese doesn’t work in this context. Only a Japanese person could experience it.
Would it also be xenophobia, or more xenoannoyance? Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior?
It is a bad, counterproductive impulse that will hurt their society long term, just as I think xenophobia in the US has been counterproductive.
You should also recognize that there’s a difference between the people who visit, and the people who completely restructure their lives to immigrate. And there’s a difference between immigrants who do their best to learn and integrate into the culture, and immigrants who try to impose their culture on the host nation.
Xenophobia doesn’t really jive with recognizing people as individuals and recognizing that a foreigner can learn Japanese well and follow the cultural norms (aside from the norm of having been born in Japan to Japanese parents, but only because it is impossible for a gaijin to do that).
In other words, I don’t think it’s right to broadly group immigrants into the same bucket as disrespectful tourists, but I also see on a human level how that impulse arises. The greater majority of well-behaved tourists don’t stand out like the problem-causers do.
> Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
Oh definitely. When it comes to rules and laws there is always some cutoff or some threshold. It's like the driving age. The laws to generalize by necessity. There is only so much of a chance there to encode "level at which a visitor learned cultural norms", a "culture quiz" etc. Those are things for a citizenship but not visitors usually. In some cases it's easy to point to a legal proceeding or complaint and say "look this person is banned, he did X,Y,Z". But then there is stuff that not documented. Like maybe someone not taking their shoes off, or speaking too loudly, or reclining their seat without asking.
> > Are the Japanese really terrified of foreigners or just annoyed at misbehavior
> The “phobia” part of the word is probably confusing you, in actual usage, xenophobia encompasses dislike, “fear” is not necessary. Similar to homophobia or Islamophobia, the term includes fear _or_ dislike/hatred.
I know, I was being pedantic on purpose to show that the words used matter. The way it's presented is as a moral transgression, Japanese not wanting foreigners to visit sort of sound the same as homophobes or islamophobes. I think it's unfair. Any country, especially one with a democratically elected government should be able to say who can come and who can't to their country.
I personally don't have a problem with xenophobia. I see it as the other side of the coin from openness to 'foreign' cultures and peoples. Both always exist in a society (opening up and shutting out) and you need both.
A people that don't have any xenophobia will have their country taken over and their culture erased. While also, a people that don't have any openness to foreign people and foreign cultures will stultify. You need both, in balance (and often that balance is shifting, in one direction or the other).
Most of the issue they have would be reduced if the yen got stronger or they introduced some expensive tourist fee, but that's very unlikely
If you have contempt for "most" Japanese people, after years of residing in Japan, then you may be the sort of person they'd prefer not to have.
Very arrogant for the GP to think they are in a position to characterise "most Japanese people" as "not being observant enough"
The implication that we tech workers (or tech expats) are more "observant" than most Japanese people sounds like contempt.
If you harbor that contempt after years of residing in Japan, then you may be the sort of person Japan prefers not to have.
In my experience, having lived in Japan for a bit, I would estimate the opposition rate to be much, much higher.
*While there are some reports of rich people just creating something that meets the bare-minimum requirements of a "business" to get a visa, these people are independently wealthy and not collecting welfare payments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Japan#/media/File:F...