Category: Immigration

“It’s almost taboo to raise the issue of mass immigration here,” [Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau] says. “Japan has no experience of this, only of sending people abroad. Modern Japan almost totally shuts out foreigners and the only people who debate the issue are specialists. Nobody is even researching it.” http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20060321zg.html

Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the influential Japan Business Federation, said Monday Japan should accept foreign laborers “in all business categories” to cope with a shortage of labor in the near future. As Japan’s labor population will begin to decrease by 1 million a year after 2010, it will be difficult to overcome a resultant labor…

About 1.9 million foreigners are registered in Japan. Combined with illegal entries, non-Japanese make up 1.5 percent of Japan?s population, a tiny proportion compared to immigrant populations in Europe and North America. The challenges so familiar to officials in the US, Europe and Australia are thus relatively new in Japan. Official policy has not come…

Mr Nakatani is worried because Japanese are living longer, yet having fewer children. The result is a shrinking workforce which threatens economic growth. In recognition, the government is thinking of loosening its restrictive immigration policy. But any changes may come as a shock to a nation where registered foreigners make up just over 1% of…

The revised Nationality Law cleared the Diet Friday but only after lawmakers at the last minute managed to have a clause inserted to prevent what they claimed would be a surge in bogus paternal recognition cases. The revised law cleared the Upper House with the nonbinding clause, which calls for applicants to submit pictures of…