Is Japan Finally Embracing Immigration?

this video is brought to you by brilliant early this month US President Joe Biden caused quite a diplomatic storm when he claimed that one of the reasons that America's economy was growing faster than Japan's was because America was welcoming of immigrants while Japan was quote xenophobic unsurprisingly this didn't go down all that well with Japan a longtime us Ally Who described the comments as unfortunate and inaccurate now to be fair to Biden the idea that Japan is uniquely migrant skeptic is both popular and not entirely incorrect historically Japan has had an immigration rate far lower than that of most Western countries and this definitely hasn't helped them solve either their decades long economic stagnation or the accompanying demographic crisis nonetheless in the past few years or so things have changed and while Japanese politicians strenuously avoid using the word immigration Japan has quietly become significantly more pro-immigrant than stereotypes would suggest so in this video we're going to have a look at how Japan's immigration policy has changed recently the reasons behind the shift and whether this change of heart could actually solve either Japan's economic or demographic [Music] woes before we start if you haven't already please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos so let's start with a bit of history in large part because both the Japanese government and public conceive of Japan as an ethnically homogeneous nation state Japan has long had some of the most restrictive immigration rules in the world especially when it comes to obtaining permanent residency or citizenship until very recently Japan's total foreign population represented less than 2% of the entire population and most of these were either what's known as nikin ethnic Japanese immigrants from South America usually Brazil or zichi people of Korean descent who were most most born in Japan and only speak Japanese but who have Korean passports because Japan doesn't have Birthright citizenship and the naturalization process is costly and difficult for context that's about half the global average of 3.5% way less than the oecd average of about 7% and miles below European countries like Germany who today have a foreign population representing nearly 25% of the total Japan also admits conspicuously few refugees and the fraction of Asylum Seekers recognized as refugees in any year is usually less than 1% in 2019 for instance Japan admitted just 44 refugees 0.4% of all applications for context that same year the United States accepted nearly 455,000 refugees with a recognition rate of 30% and Germany accepted nearly 55,000 refugees with a recognition rate of 26% obviously this policy has come under pressure recently thanks to Japan's Dem demographic crisis but even before that when Japan's economy was booming in the ' 80s Japanese Business Leaders lobbied the government for more foreign labor to fill labor shortages especially in so-called 3K jobs which are basically low paid rough jobs that most Japanese considered beneath them while Japan had and still has a relatively welcoming system for short-term skilled labor migrants like University professors the government was reluctant to accept significant numbers of unskilled laborers in part because they were wary of what happened in Europe after World War III when guest workers intended to fill post-war labor shortages ended up staying permanently anyway despite loosening its immigration law slightly in the '90s Via an amendment to the immigration Control Act in 1990 and the introduction of the so-called technical intern training program in 1993 the raw numbers didn't change that much and the share of foreign workers in the total labor force never went above 3% on top of that the technical intern training program became a point of controversy internationally temporary workers were treated terribly and the US state department warned in 2016 that it could be considered a form of human trafficking this lack of intern protections was in part because the Japanese government didn't want the guest workers to stay and 97% of them left after their visa expired however in the past few years Japan's demographic crisis has begun to bite and the government has responded by quietly liberalizing its immigration rules Japan's fertility rate that's that is the average number of children per woman fell below the replacement rate of 2.1 in the7 70s and has steadily dropped to about 1.2 today despite some very generous pro- family policies Japan's labor force duly began shrinking in the90s and in the 2000s Japan's population as a whole began shrinking Japan was able to temporarily offset its labor shortages by bringing women into the workforce but this was always only a stop Gap and in 2022 the labor force started shrinking again this has become a serious problem for the Japanese economy Japan's unemployment rate has been below 3% for the best part of a decade now and 86% of Japanese firms report having difficulty filling jobs as the problem has become more acute Japan's government has quietly and gradually liberalized its labor migration policy in the 2000s the technical intern training program was expanded to include more Industries and the maximum stay was extended from 3 to 5 years however the big change happened in 2019 when the Japanese government quietly created a new visa for specified skilled workers known as the SS sw1 Visa originally this permitted foreign Nationals who had completed technical intern training to stay in Japan for a maximum of 5 years to work in any of 12 designated sectors which were chosen by the government as those fields with the worst labor shortages Japan's foreign population quickly Rose from about 2 million in the mid-2010s to nearly 3 million before the pandemic then last year as many of the original SS sw1 visas were expiring Japanese businesses complained to the government that they wouldn't be able to replace the workers so the government introduced a new SS sw2 visa for the most in demand ssw 1 workers importantly SS sw2 workers can bring their families to Japan and it can be renewed any number of times I.E SS sw2 workers can stay in Japan permanently originally SS sw2 was limited to workers in the construction and ship building sectors but in June the government agreed to extend it to nine other sectors including the hard-to defin service sector and then doubled its annual Visa cap to 160,000 this is the first time that Japan has allowed permanent residency for workers and it finally opens the door to immigration on a broader scale now this has all been done very quietly and Japanese officials basically never use the word immigration instead preferring to talk exclusively about Labor this is presumably because they're worried about a public backlash but interestingly polling suggests that their anxieties might be unfounded Most Japanese people are very aware of their demographic issues and have therefore become more pro-immigrant while International comparisons are Complicated by Japan's limited experience with migration polling suggests that Japanese people are now some of the most Pro migrant in the entire world and a poll from late last year found that 86% of Japanese municipalities want more foreign workers the big question now is whether this is all too late Japan's demographic crisis is already pretty terrible and thanks to a weak Yen and Decades of economic stagnation Japan isn't as attractive a destination for immigrants as it once was ultimately underpinning this topic is a lot of data whether that's economics trade patterns polling or demographics a lot of the time in politics you just have to understand the data so if you want to get a better grasp on these things I'd recommend brilliant they've just introduced a whole bunch of new data courses which are perfect for Learners of any level taking you through everything from base 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Channel: TLDR News Global

Views: 299,903

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Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024