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Japan ‘on verge of no longer functioning’ after birth rate plummets to record new low
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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I'd say all those EU (and Canada) countries aren't striving to be the economic powerhouse that Japan is and China already has 1.5 billion people compared to Japan's 125 million. Plus most countries rely on immigration to make up the difference while I've heard (but maybe not true) that Japan is hard to immigrate to due to the disapproving culture toward foreigners.
The weird thing is that once you get a foot in the door, Japanese immigration policies actually aren't that strict. You just need a guarantor (company) to be willing to hire you.
The language barrier and hesitancy of companies to hire non-Japanese is the actual barrier, not so much the immigration policies themselves. The government could ofcourse encourage companies to hire foreigners...but Japan changes at a glacial pace.
I'm sure they'll be ready to deal with the new world under trump by 2035-40
fair enough. i picked those out as sort of 'mainstream' countries that this kind of article doesn't get published about, while i've seen them about japan a few times now. be interesting to contrast immigration rates to countries with similarly difficult language and cultural barriers but that's a bigger job i haven't the time for now
to this article's credit it does end with a couple of paragraphs on the korean government attempts to support "work-family balance, childcare and housing"
They actually have quite a bunch of programmes to bring foreigners in. That's not to say that the cultural issues aren't there but that's a separate problem regarding integration rather than immigration.
Sure, but they often aren't terribly appealing, outside of those that target highly qualified professionals. Japan also needs manpower to make up for shortages in areas like their agricultural and fishing industries, and the terms just kind of suck. Like, I could qualify right now to move there based on my work experience in seafood, but it would be on a 5 year, non-renewable visa, which doesn't count at all towards establishing permanent residency and doesn't allow me to bring my family with me.
Those sorts of programs really only appeal to people from nearby developing nations that want to go to Japan for a few years, send a ton of money back home, and then go back to live in Malaysia or the Philippines once they finish building their new house, or paying for their kid to attend a good school, or whatever. It doesn't do much more than kick the problems of a shrinking tax base and labor pool down the line a bit, nor does it really encourage those participating in such schemes to make serious efforts at integration with the local culture.
Sooner or later, Japan needs to implement a proper immigration reform to offset low domestic birth rates, or they'll have an elderly population that can't fund the government and public services, because they aren't working and the younger generation is too small to carry the load all on their own, and they also won't have the people to care for them and provide them goods and services in their old age.
In comparison, Italy and Spain have roughly 4x the immigrant population of Japan, and Canada's number of immigrants is nearly 10x as large.