Excerpts
Despite facing an imminent labour shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. . . . the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups . . . . In 2009, the number of registered foreigners here fell for the first time since the government started to track annual records almost a half-century ago, shrinking 1.4 per cent from a year earlier to 2.19 million people — or just 1.71 per cent of Japan's overall population of 127.5 million. . . .
Experts say increased immigration provides one obvious remedy to Japan's two decades of lethargic economic growth. But instead of accepting young workers, however — and along with them, fresh ideas — Tokyo seems to have resigned itself to a demographic crisis that threatens to stunt the country's economic growth, hamper efforts to deal with its chronic budget deficits and bankrupt its social security system.
In 2008, only 11,000 of the 1,30,000 foreign students at Japan's universities and technical colleges found jobs here. . . .
Japan is losing skilled talent across industries, experts say. Investment banks, for example, are moving more staff members to hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have more foreigner-friendly immigration and taxation regimes, lower costs of living and local populations that speak better English.
Foreigners who submitted new applications for residential status — an important indicator of highly skilled labour because the status requires a specialised profession — slumped 49 per cent in 2009 from a year earlier to just 8,905 people.
The barriers to immigration to Japan are many. Restrictive immigration laws bar the country's struggling farms or workshops from access to foreign labour, driving some to abuse trainee programmes for workers from developing countries, or hire illegal immigrants. Stringent qualification requirements shut out skilled foreign professionals, while a web of complex rules and procedures discourages entrepreneurs from setting up in Japan.
Given the dim job prospects, universities here have been less than successful at raising foreign student enrolment numbers. And in the current harsh economic climate, as local incomes fall and new college graduates struggle to land jobs, there has been scant political will to broach what has been a delicate topic.
But Japan's demographic time clock is ticking: its population will fall by almost a third to 90 million within 50 years, according to government forecasts. By 2055, more than one in three Japanese will be over 65, as the working-age population falls by over a third to 52 million.
Still, when a heavyweight of the defeated Liberal Democratic Party unveiled a plan in 2008 calling for Japan to accept at least 10 million immigrants, opinion polls showed that a majority of Japanese were opposed. “The shrinking population is the biggest problem. The country is fighting for its survival,” said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, an independent research organisation. “Despite everything, America manages to stay vibrant because it attracts people from all over the world,” he said. “On the other hand, Japan is content to all but shut out people from overseas.”
Now, in a vicious cycle, Japan's economic woes, coupled with a lack of progress in immigration policy and lack of support for immigrants, are setting off an exodus of the precious few immigrants who have settled here.
