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Japan wrestles with its views on ‘outside people’ amid population crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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First, there is no "wrestling". The policy is clear. Second, the only way to fix declining population is to increase permanent residence, which means either a Permanent Residence Visa or citizenship. But it takes 10 years for Permanent Residence, and Japan bans dual citizenship. Work visas do not fix the problem. But work visas are popular because immigrants can be treated as slave labor.
In other words, the author of that article has done a small amount of research but is actually being far to generous to a xenophobic and racist government that's enabling the abuse of foreign laborers.
The problem is that they need workers now and not in 20 years.
You're right. I didn't write clearly. What I should have said is that if you think bringing in foreign workers is your solution to fixing the declining population, then you need to give those foreign workers permanent residence instead of giving them temporary work visas.
In other words, I was assuming the context of the article was known to readers without clearly stating so. Oops!
I think they are also missing the fact that there are sections of Japan's society that would rather see it shrink (collapse) and retain its Nihon-ness than be diluted by outside influences.
And that's their right, and not unexpected either.
I think by "wrestling" they mean the general attitude towards foreigners, not the policy.
not for children of mixed parents
Yes, it's true that they don't have to choose while they are children. And of course I didn't explain that it doesn't always take 10 years for PR because you could use the point system depending on your situation, and also that the Japanese government doesn't investigate whether people are dual citizens as long as they keep it a secret, but the government could in the future if it really wanted to, so you're still gambling, etc.
In other words, obviously it's a complex legal landscape, and my main goal was to expose the complete failure in focus in the original article and illustrate some of the starting points about the actual issues for those who are not knowledgeable about Japanese immigration law.