Requiring proficiency in the language is reasonable, but requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane. That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population
In the UK, only 47% are net tax contributors. I can't find what the same statistic is for Japan. I don't believe it's wrong for there to be an expectation that they be a net contributor.
Most countries need both VAT and income tax to fund their budget. Importing well off immigrants means they subsidize the VAT part only and likely do not generate income from Japan salaries. This is basically same problem as with digital nomads: they use the infrastructure which they do not fund proportionally compared to regular citizens.
A digital nomad is still economically positive when a) their money circulates locally, eg at cafes and restaurants and b) comes from outside the region. That’s because they’re bringing wealth generated elsewhere (ie, at their employer) into the region.
While you’re correct the state misses out on income taxes, they get taxes on further spending, eg, when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe.
Not specifically about digital nomads, but Amazon used to estimate their salary dollars induce $2.5 of additional local economic activity — as Amazon employees bought from local stores, the store employees did in turn, etc.
>when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe
Nations whose economies depend on foreign tourist coming to spend their money there, are some of the worst developed out there, have a disproportionately high low wage sector, and some of the highest wealth inequalities out there with the lowest opportunities for upwards mobility. Basically a dutch disease. Nobody wants their economy to be like that if they can avoid it.
Countries aren't gonna be improved by you moving to buy 2$ lattes there while you gentrify the locals in the process and making life more expensive for them, trapping them in perpetual indentured servitude catering to the digital nomad/tourist industry with little to no possibility of moving up the value chain. The only ones who will be happy you do this will be landlords and business owners in the hospitality industry but no developed economy is built with those two as its pillars.
Developed nations want an export economy of products and services aided by imported skilled workers to stay as long term residents and contribute in income taxes, not in latte purchases, and maybe even become citizens so they can become eligible for the draft in case shit were to hit the fan. Digital nomads are like locusts by comparisons, they come to treat your country like and amusement park in a race to the bottom while the going is good, but leave at the slightest inconvenience if now the 2$ latte now has to be 3$ due to increased labor protections, when the impoverished country next door sells it for 2.50$.
> Across the UK, 53.3% of people lived in households that were net recipients in FYE 2024. This means that they lived in households that received more in benefits (cash and benefits in kind) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect).
That stat is bogus though when used in this context. The least payed workers contribute the most to every day life of society in my opinion and pay the least tax.
If we consider outright slavery, would that statistic count a slave as a "non-contributing" member of society? After all, they must be fed, and housed, but pay no taxes. What a burden they are!
I do. It's like needing a credit check to get a job. It's a horrible death spiral: Japanese jobs can decrease wages from more supply, which can out you under the line, which makes it harder for you to contribute to the economy.
Isn’t this just a reflection of wealth inequality though? A “net negative” tax payer is just working a job that makes one of the net positive payers richer thus still bringing in more income for the country.
That doesn't necessarily mean recipients are unemployed. It could mean taxpayers are subsidizing low-wage employers through public assistance to their employees, with a minimum wage that hasn't increased since 2009.
You've missed the original point. Someone can be working a job and realistically pulling their own weight, but the system we have distributes that money to the owners and investors, who then pay tax and give some part back to the worker through welfare.
The country is better off having this person even if they are receiving welfare. Of course that's not the situation for all people on welfare, but the idea that the top percent of earners are doing all the work while the majority of people sit around getting stuff for free is obviously untrue.
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane
It would be insane for a country that is already dealing with an overburdened social welfare system to grant permanent residency to someone who is, say, 60 years old and doesn't have any savings or pension income to support them in retirement.
That's fair, but the stereotypical immigrant isn't near retirement. Positive migration tends to be related to youth, and it's hard to imagine that this will work for most.
Which, fair, it's their right to close the door fully, but lack of immigration and a greatly aged population sounds like a recipe for collapse.
The requirement is that your projected pension benefit, at your current income level, needs to match the average pension benefit for someone who worked for 30 years. And if you don't meet that requirement, whatever shortfall you have can be offset with an equivalent amount of savings.
It does not mean that you need to have 30 years of savings right now. Just that you are on track to get there by the time you retire.
There are a lot of people who won't qualify (and while it certainly sucks for people affected, this is by design) - but those who earn more than the Japanese average should generally qualify.
The US has something like this, but the income threshold is lower.[1] US immigrants in most categories have to show that they will not become a "public charge", that is, need US welfare benefits.
That's reasonable too. People who move to a new country should be able to support themselves there and have a good chance to thrive in their new home. If the average income of the population isn't enough for that to be possible, your country has bigger problems than immigrants
Manu tings are reasonable but not done. For example, it seems unreasonable that one country can print any amount of money due to being called the reserve currency and use it to influence countries around the world.
If you want fairness, start from the top and don’t punch down. I’m not against any definitions of immigration but generally most definitions aren’t reasonable. They are just downstream and issues of an upstream systems problem.
If there aren’t any immigrants to work them, either the pay will increase or the product/service will disappear. Essential services and products won’t disappear, so this seems okay?
If we look at it from the other direction, we are artificially increasing quality of life by taking advantage of foreigners who have no better option than to work for little pay. Getting rid of this seems positive?
The US requirements are so much lower that calling them similar does a disservice.
The proposed requirements in Japan require earnings to exceed Japan's average and also for them to have an equivalent of 30 years of pension payouts saved up.
The US requirements are not as specific, but for comparison one of the numbers is that that families need to have an income requirement 25% higher than federal poverty guidelines, which very low compared to average US incomes.
they don't require 30 years saved up, only showing (somehow) that you will be able to generate such a pension equivalent over time. I suspect that will be very squishy in practice.
> Draft Revisions to the Guidelines for Permission for Permanent Residence (Summary)
...
> Regarding the positioning of the "Permanent Resident" status of residence:
> ・ Explicitly stated for the first time that, as it is "the most stable legal status—entailing no restrictions on activities or duration of stay and presupposing a lifetime spent in Japan"—there is a "need for particularly careful screening."
...
> Regarding "2. Requirement for Independent Livelihood"
> ・ Underlying Principle: Explicitly requires an economic status equal to or better than that of Japanese nationals, both currently and in the future.
> ・ Income: Whether income consistently meets or exceeds the average income level of Japanese households based on household size (raising the standard).
> ・ Pension: Whether the projected future pension benefit amount reaches the level corresponding to 30 years of enrollment in the Employees' Pension Insurance at the aforementioned annual income level (newly added requirement; however, financial assets that can cover any shortfall will also be taken into account).
> “ive me your tired, your poor,
> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
> I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
The U.S. was founded as a nation of immigrants, and has a cultural history of being exceptionally immigrant-friendly (compared to other nations), especially with regard to immigrants without much means.
I don't believe other nations have any obligation to follow this example. On the contrary, they should be able to set whatever immigration policies make sense for them. But this model of letting in poor immigrants, letting them do the work that nobody else wants to do, and letting their kids become net contributors, does seem to have benefited the U.S. greatly over the past few centuries.
I dunno... 1790 Naturalization Act says only white people could become citizens. Sounds like they were friendly towards immigration from very specific countries.
Roosevelt's 1915 Americanism address also reveals this:
He says americanism "is a matter of the spirit and of the soul". In the very next paragraph, the so called "hyphenated americans" are condemned. This is perfectly reasonable.
In 1923, the supreme court decided an indian was not eligible for citizenship because he was not white.
So arguably the US was a white ethnoatate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, just over half a century ago.
I mean yes, obviously: the nation was founded with a giant genocide of native peoples.
I do imagine original white people were perhaps more keenly aware of the fact that this land was not originally theirs, and that other people should be let in and given a fair shot, even if they're poor.
I was merely making the argument that U.S. immigration policy has historically not been very classist (even if it was immensely racist), and not caring about the wealth of the incoming immigrants has worked out immensely well for the country over its lifespan.
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
1) Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years.
2) 30-40% returned home
3) The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
4) Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York. And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York and Chicago today.
> Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years.
About ten and a half million of those in 15 years, from 1900 to 1914. Against a 1900 US population of about 76 million.
> The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
> Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York.
Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
> And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York
The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
> and Chicago today.
Chicago Democrats were immigrants around the relevant time. Chicago Republicans were from older stock. Both were corrupt.
> Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
Assimilation was the effect of immigration restriction, whether or not that was the motivation. It broke up the chains of migration that facilitated maintenance of separate cultural enclaves.
> Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
> The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall ("Following the 1854 mayoral election and the resulting mayoralty of Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over a century through its organized network of loyal, well-rewarded, and largely Irish Catholic district and precinct leaders.").
To be clear, the point isn't that they were Irish. As far as I can tell, Ireland isn't more corrupt than other western european countries. It was the political dynamics that arose from the presence of a large culturally distinct immigrant population.
> Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
Greetings from Canada. I live in Montreal. We have more of a Mafia problem nowadays than New York (no RICO here), and we were comparable in the 1930s. Bootleggers, remember? Where do you think they were running the booze from? Same "market", same mob. Yeah, they managed to dominate everybody else. That's what I mean about "niches". In fact they did it worldwide, and according to Wikipedia they're prominent in Australia, too. These are transnational groups. The Mafia is also big in Sicily. Are you going to say that's because of (checks notes) Sicilian immigration? Specifically because of a huge wave around 1900?
We also have Hell's Angels here. Ethnically "white". No immigrant identification whatsoever, totally acculturated... although I assume some of them moved here from the US. Pretty racist and anti-immigrant, actually. Cool fact: I used to live two houses away from Sonny Barger in beautiful Oakland, California. OK, it wasn't actually that cool. Those guys were really noisy. But I assure you they did not come through Ellis Island.
Apparently Winnipeg has First Nations gangs (Indians to you). Kinda the opposite of immigrants.
... plus a grab bag of others, some of them organized by immigrants. Yes, organized crime tends to segregate itself ethnically, so if one group gets the upper hand, you're likely to see its ethnicity as the face of the problem. But all ethnicities get to play, and they will expand into any available vacuum. If you hadn't had the Italian Mafia (worldwide), you'd have had something else (at least regionally).
And it's not always ethnic. Apparently there's a gang in BC that actually calls itself the United Nations.
> Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789.
It sure was by 1854, eh, according to your own quote? That was 38 years before Ellis Island opened. Before the specific wave of immigration that you're claiming caused the problem. Goalposts. You are moving them.
> Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era
... and preceded it. Your own link says "Of the 28 most influential Chicago aldermen of the 1890s, 24 were Irish.". I don't think they teleported from Ellis Island and took over in under 8 years.
Technically true, extremely misleading. The law placed vastly fewer restrictions on who was a legal immigrant for much of that period. Of course, it is true starting in 1921, and 1924, legislation was put in place to limit immigration by "undesirables" such as Asians, Italians and Slavs.
Curious...which one of those regimes do you want to bring back?
I'm not sure people should be forced to live with those they feel xenophobia towards, even if one grants that the feelings of xenophobia have no basis in reality.
OK, so considering Sweden, if Sweden is flooded with immigrants, where should the Swedes who just want to live with other Swedes go? Australia??
Also you do realize that your preferred migration policy will lead to microaggressions (and possibly macroaggressions) against immigrants? If people don't have democratic means to keep out disliked foreigners, they may be tempted to try alternatives. The ballot box is ultimately an alternative to violence.
Are you suggesting that all the immigrants in Sweden are acting and thinking exactly like Swedish people, and differ only in "race?" You think the Swedes are jealous about the people who don't need as much sunscreen? Otherwise, your comment is simply irrelevant.
Your preferred policy also leads to microagressions, where the mere presence of someone who doesn't 'look' swedish would set these 'people' off.
It seems more like 'xenophobia' is the real culprit here, and should be tackled directly instead of 'granting' it as a preference that doesn't need to be interrogated.
Now do a realistic summary of what it took to pass these checks, eg how details of a medical inspection or what level of resources (inflation adjusted) were required. Equating past practices with current standards is a bait-and-switch.
... as determined by an on-the-spot interview. Which was admittedly done in a very bigoted way.
> had passed a medical inspection
... which took about one minute to check for red flags. If you had red flags, they diverted you to quarantine. They were mostly looking for TB and some eye disease.
> had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
... by which they meant having as much as $25 on hand (call it $1000 in 2026, though that's a bit high), and convincing the interviewer that you could probably get a job. That convincing step did include claiming, in a way the interviewer found credible, to have skills beyond the "day laborer" level. But only just beyond.
> I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Good news: the medical requirements now are equivalent, the financial/self-support requirements are now much, much higher, and the vetting is vastly more thorough.
Something like two thirds of the US federal budget is spent on some form of welfare. Assuming you want to keep that ratio you could spend more per person with fewer people withdrawing from that system.
Completely wrong, except possibly if you're defining Social Security as welfare, in which case honesty would compel you to note that no one draws Social Security except based on having previously made contributions via dedicated taxation for social security.
Just a reminder... Social Security requires 40 quarters (ie, 10 years) of income to even qualify for a pension. And the pension is based on what you earn, which is what you pay into the system.
Only 10 years? Damn, here in many EU countries you need to contribute much longer than that to qualify for receiving a pension. And supposedly we're the "socialist" ones.
I agree that Social Security is not plain welfare, but it has significant welfare components. Simplifying some, you get back something like 90% of the first $15,432 income per year but only 32% of income above that up to $92,988. (And above that, it's 15%.) Only getting 32% back of what you pay in so that the rest can be redistributed to others who made less could be considered partly welfare. Also, if you die too young, you don't get the money back, nor can you give it to your children. It's redistributed to other people. I'm not saying it's bad (I think it's probably good overall), but I can see how it's partly welfare.
The US doesn’t lack the capital for welfare. The country decides to instead waste its resources fighting wars, fighting its allies, fighting its trade partners. The money is here, there is no will to allocate it to welfare. You could reduce the number of people on welfare by a massive amount and none of the savings from that would get distributed to the remaining recipient
The US economy did great prior to 1900 or so. During this period, we did not have significant military action outside of the Americas, and we avoided peacetime alliances. From 1820-1900 the US economy exploded from about 40% the size of the UK economy to about 200% the size of the UK economy.
Switzerland has a per capita GDP exceeding the US while pursuing isolationist foreign policy. They are the world's most popular country in opinion polls.
I hate to break it to you, but the world of pre-1900 has been dead and gone for a solid 120+ years, it was killed off by Europe getting itself into two stupid wars that the Americans had to come over and save them from. Nothing works the same anymore.
All those European countries get to invest in those nice social programs and isolationism because the US has at least up until now acted as world police and handled their foreign affairs for the most part.
>"Those wars are essential to protecting our economic interests"
Translation - we bomb people for money. well thanks for being frank anyways. otherwise it is sick to hear all that moralizing about "us being a good guys"
No, they're essential to protecting Benjamin Netanyahu's ass. No more and no less.
Less vindictively, the only economic interest the US has in the Middle East is oil. Relying on oil for your energy needs is, in 2026, a choice and not a requirement. Wind, solar, and the batteries you need to store them are continuously getting cheaper. And for the people who are net consumers of energy - primarily the US, Europe, and China - renewables are better for everything, but especially they're better for energy independence!
The only things that require oil are airplanes, plastics, and industrial chemical processes (like we make asphalt out of oil and certain inks out of naphtha). Eliminating most of the energy demand for oil would mean a significantly reduced dependence on foreign oil, and more specifically, the political dependence on low gas prices. America rebuilt all its cities in the image of the car and, as a result, made gasoline/petrol a necessary ingredient of urban mobility. This was, again, a choice - we absolutely could have retained and grown our dense urban cores and we can still rebuild what was destroyed.
But this requires an entire governing body at every level that is not a corpse paraded by the ghosts of Tammany Hall, Standard Oil, and Hitler. The primary crisis in America that is driving these wars is a fundamental lack of political will for alternatives.
This is a statistic that is technically true but has some hidden nuance.
Depending on what gets counted, "public assistance" stats like this usually include medicare and social security. (Social security gets debated because of how it's paid-in, but I'm not here to argue that. The fact is, it gets included in these stats). Those two make up the dominant consumption of public assistance to the point that things we hear about in the media like food stamps are kind of a rounding error.
Medicare and social security are collected primarily by older people. Foreign born populations have much lower numbers of people in that age bracket than the general popualtion.
Combine those two facts and it's not surprising that when you look at charts of foreign born vs native born, the foreign born population uses less public assistance.
It's a statistic that is more about age distribution than anything. Like when you one of those bad maps trying to prove a point but really just showing population density of big cities.
I'd love to see some source for this, because from what I've seen, 59% of undocumented immigrants receive some form of welfare (the state of California spends roughly $10 billion a year alone on this) and documented migrants are at roughly the same rate, double the native born population's rate of 28%.
> I'd love to see some source for this [proceeds to throw out a bunch of source-free numbers]
I looked up the source for these numbers.
It's the Center for Immigration Studies, and they are notorious for being a right-wing think tank used to dress up up anti-immigration policy using misleading statistics.
How notorious are they? Well, they are listed as a hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center[1].
The numbers you're citing aren't 'welfare,' the biggest thing is using the education system. The thing that, long term, makes they into productive taxpayers. CIS doesn't figure the long-term benefits into their numbers because that would destroy their thesis.
The HUD secretary mentioned the number, and the number was also included in a Congressional report, though it ended up being through testimony, also from that same source, which I hadn't realized. I'd been under the impression the one claim was independently sourced from actual federal data, rather being from CIS.
In any case, none of this amounts to immigrants using less welfare than native born residents, which is what I was asking sources for.
The vast majority of the difference, according to the article, is social security benefits and Medicare. The non-retirement difference is very small.
> Native-born Americans use an average of ... $3,638 in means-tested benefits in 2023. By comparison, immigrants used ... $3,370 in means-tested benefits.
The article also ignores state provided benefits, and thus the disparity between documented and undocumented migrant populations. The article 's "much less" headline is not really supported by the evidence provided.
Just because some people want something that doesn't suddenly make it reasonable or wise. In this case it's a problem for many already successful people living in Japan currently who will be forced to leave. It's also a problem for Japanese companies who have hired those people or who want to attract foreign talent to positions that pay well, but don't typically leave someone fabulously wealthy compared to most of the people living around them. It's also a problem because the policy is coming in at a time of increased xenophobia and overt racism and while this policy is likely to reduce the total number of foreigners living in Japan, it's unlikely to address the problems people have with the foreigners who will remain, and it could actually make those problems worse.
I don't think anyone plans on trying to step in and intervene, but I hope people also don't shy from talking about how foolish this move is, the problems it won't solve, the problems it's likely to cause, and the people whose lives are being negatively impacted by it.
Why don't you trust the Japanese to know wha they're doing when it comes to their own society? After all, they're the ones who built an amazing country everyone wants to visit!
Because the yen is weak is a big reason why visiting is appealing. Its also a big reason why their population is dwindling.
The govt is just trying to point fingers at foreigners to hide their weakness. I think recently they made a big deal about foreign owned real estate then quickly forgot about that talking point when their own study showed it equated to something like .05% of their total housing.
That’s not the point I’m making. Japan is clearly a wonderful society, seeing as how many people want to visit and immigrate. Why not trust the people who built that society that they know what they’re doing?
Something must be done, this is something, we must do it!
Just because something can be done doesn't make it good for the society. Japan has a shrinking population and is currently dependent on immigrants for low wage work. Plenty of actions can make the current problem worse and have unintended consequences. Whether they happen or not is a political question, not a moral one.
Who determined "what they want?" Did you want your government to attack Iran? Are you responsible for it? Why not?
That's their problem to solve however they want, if they want. The population shrinking by some large percentage doesn't seem to be inherently bad to me, and probably is good.
It's so laughable to me when people say "BUT THE SHAREHOLDER VALUE!" when we talk about things like the important life trends of millions of people.
Absolutely. They’ll just go through a period of a bunch of social workers discovering a new corpse every three days. Whole towns dying because there is nobody to maintain the public services. The people will get exactly what they were asking for, and they’ll die for it.
A few generations ago they were enslaving people [0]. This is what racism can lead to. Maintaining their heritage, their way of life, some would say.
Hopefully their population decline doesn't hit them too hard. But that, and their lack natural of resources, could lead to bad things. Fascists and their ilk thrive in such situations.
> I am not sure in understand the issue, if Japanese want this, what’s the problem?
The problem is I’ve built my life here and they keep treating foreigners as a lesser life form. People here can unironically be standing next to me bitching about foreigners. Then turn to me and say something like “not you, you are fine.”
Clearly Japanese feel like they don't want immigrants or want very few of them, which is fine.
With these laws, they are pushing 99% of people out while saving face from being called racists.
I think every country should have a right over their borders. Japan wasn't built on multiculturalism like United States or Canada, so I'm not surprised.
That being said, I would probably think twice about traveling to Japan as a tourist.
United States wasn't exactly built on multiculturalism either.
Laws dating back to 1790 restricted naturalization to white people, which arguably makes the US a sort of white ethnostate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and repealing that act appears to be an objective of the american right wing as of 2026.
It really made me question whether it was possible for a third worlder like me to ever become an american.
Plenty of foreigners are in fact quite rude towards their new hosts though. It can and does bring out the worst in people, and I can't say I blame them.
The whole idea of naturalization is to assimilate into the new culture and become one of them. Far too many people just don't put in the effort to do that.
It would be fine if it was a well documented recurring issue that plagued society. As is it, it feels more like a canary in the coal mine, for dirtier times to come.
In practice, most visas are short term, and none of them will allow you to benefit from social aids for very long. At most I imagine you could extend your working visa to 5 years, get sick the first year and be at charge for the remaining 4 years ? There will be ink spent on these cases, but statistically how often does that even happen to need stricter laws ?
The current political climates needs the gov to look "Japan First" and these kind of rule change are very cheap to do, especially as the people directly impacted don't vote nor can complain. It goes well with the very anti-foreigner sentiment, especially as the current wave of tourists is very unpopular despite the money coming in.
The longer view is Japan getting less workers in total, yet more of the worse immigrants as they're calling for people who either don't need Japan (have enough money to go anywhere and don't need to think long term) or are willing to take more risks (high return grifts etc.), in a time where Japanese salaries and productivity are already lower than surrounding countries.
They're basically making a bad situation worse, just for short term political play, giving in on the worse trends.
Because it's super fucking cruel, are you a human?
This is cruel, populist politics designed to blame foreigners for all the problems and corruption the Japanese government has allowed to go on which has ruined their economy.
There has been a hard right swing by some radical minority parties which gained a lot of popularity fast by spreading Xenophobia online and the major parties have now adopted some of that to stay relevent.
It hurts innocent people just so those in power can stay in power.
Also Japan is a country which basically 100% relies on foreign countries to survive, so maybe the government there should be a bit more careful. For example they get most of their Natural gas from Australia for free..
telling a person that has build a successful life after eight years, is assimilated and speaks the language and can support themselves that they have to leave on completely absurd conditions that virtually nobody could meet, including native citizens, is cruel by just about every definition of that term.
Those people have only ever paid in, have much better options than Japan at this point economically given how far the country has fallen behind, and the logical terminus of this is basically being some kind of ethnic chauvinist second world clown country.
If you're even turning skilled tech workers and law abiding people away your immigration problem is solved by virtue of being poor in another 10-20 years. Japan fell below replacement fertility in the 70s, 35% of the population is over 60, good luck caring for those tens of millions of people about to retire.
I agree, but unfortunately, looking at the news from Japan, far-right support rates are higher than one might expect.
So it's true that those in power are harming innocent people in order to maintain their power, but it's also true that Japanese people believe they are being harmed by foreign immigrants.
And some of it is actually true. Of course, conversely, there's also the problem of many Japanese companies hiring Southeast Asian workers at low wages and mistreating them.
But whether it's me as a Korean or Japan, both tend to have a certain authoritarian mindset instilled based on "ethnic" identity. So one aspect of this policy is "we only welcome rich foreigners who spend money and leave," and the media responds accordingly.
Strictly speaking, if you look at these policies strengthening restrictions on foreigners from a third-country perspective, you can see them from the angle of far-rightization. That is, sanctions against outsiders for the sake of internal cohesion[1]. But considering the severe aging population in Japanese industry right now, it's effectively cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face.
However, East Asians receive a somewhat different education from you, so that's how it is.
The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen, which benefits financial companies and exports but sacrifices the Japanese people—the incompetence of the regime is the problem. But because it's hard to grasp all of that complex background, people want to attack something else that's near them.
And also, because the morality of some underdeveloped countries (I know it's an example...) differs from that of developed countries, friction often occurs. Just as the sense of time differs between agricultural regions and cities, for instance.
> The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen
i think you are right, there is a lot of over-tourism (and from some places 'rude' tourists that are really aggravating to people) but that is also being caused by weak yen in the end...
whats the saying? everything is downstream from economics?
They don't want to risk someone coming for a job, getting fired and becoming a drain on the social safety net. Able to care for themselves not just now, but for a while. It's a reasonable position.
And Japan isn’t either. They are requiring that by the time you retire you’ll have paid at least 30 years into the pension system or have equivalent financial resources any gap.
Reasonable, but they're going about it in irrational ways. For example, a person on a student visa is allowed to set up a company in Japan, but technically they're not allowed to put in any hours managing it. There's a strict 28-hour/week working limit, and a person is allowed to operate as a sole trader performing very specific tass, but the moment they rent an office or hire an employee they're in violation of their visa.
So while it's very rational to demand strong language skills, and very rational to expect people to go with a certified school given the unique difficulty of the language, potential residents are essentially limited to earning part-time wages (typically much lower than full time) during that period, and virtually barred from proactively engaging in any other kind of economic activity. They could transition to a business manager visa after that, but it will have to be a new business set up from scratch which must include at least one Japanese hire as well as minimum language skills; essentially requiring business activity/know how and business planning which the person was barred from doing during the language acquisition phase.
It's not impossible to meet these criteria by any means, but it actively discourages bootstrapping and efficient use of available time.
To qualify to long term residence means that they worked for years and contributed with taxes during that period, so it’s only fair that they get protection in case they happen to lose their jobs.
For the government, the cost for any worker in the same circumstances would be the same. On the other side, the foreigners cost less to the government overall when they were educated and raised elsewhere.
I’m not saying you are wrong, just that the previous rules are already in place in that very direction, and the changes are being placed instead to please and gain political support.
That's not how good risk analysis works. You also have to consider the alternative that you exclude someone coming for a job they excel at while becoming a net benefit to society just because they couldn't support themselves in an eventuality that didn't come to pass.
> That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
That’s not the standard. The standard is making sure someone is really a huge contribution to the society such that it offsets the burden of immigration.
I wonder how big the population of people that know enough Japanese, would be a huge contribution to Japanese society and wouldn't be able to get a better deal somewhere else really is. Can't imagine it's more than a million people. And putting in the effort seems quite futile as you could lose your status at any point in time for political gain.
From the article: In an announcement detailing the changes, Japan’s Immigration Services Agency stressed the need for foreigners to “live independently” and have “a stable life without the risk of becoming a burden”.
Their new requirements far exceed what is needed to meet that stated goal
How is that "between the lines"? Yes, that is the goal. If your argument is that it's just because of simple racism or something, then make that argument.
There really needs to be a term like "racism" without the negative connotations that it now carries. Yes, in the strictest sense, Japanese people wanting fewer foreigners in their territory is "racist", but it's not racist.
I've heard "culturalism". It's devastating that this game even needs to be played. It should go without saying that rejecting foreigners under certain circumstances is not automatically "racism" in the petty sense.
That's just the word we use for racism when the "other" isn't primarily a single visually distinct race. They're both low-quality words used mostly as insults rather than literally.
The more welfare you have, the better of an idea this is. An aging country especially cannot afford to risk more wards of the state.
> and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years
It's a confusing guideline but this isn't accurate. You need to show an expected future pension (could be savings) equivalent to a salaried worker who paid into an employee's pension for 30 years. That's strict, but there will probably be a bunch of ways to show that.
The 30 years thing is insane for sure. Making more money than the average might be insane, it depends on how much more (which I didn't spot in the article, maybe I missed it).
the other issue is, there are lots of people who work and help out in the countryside where cost of living (and hence wages) are very low and forcing them to be above the whole average of the county is a bit onerous i think.
probably a better idea is average for the prefecture they live in, but i guess they want to simplify things or discourage ppl from moving to the countryside? idk; most people are in tokyo/osaka to be sure...
It's not about being reasonable, it's about having a good reason to kick basically everyone out who isn't 100% Japanese, or who has enough money to prop up their aging population and get almost nothing in return.
If the goal is to preserve their culture I doubt that insisting that everyone who moves there have "fuck you" money is going to help as much as they think it will. At least some percentage of those who meet that bar will be people who are selfish and very accustomed to just doing whatever they want.
The more money people have, the greater their ability to reshape the environment and culture around them to suit their individual preferences. Rich people aren't moving to remote villages in bumblefuku nowhere either. Having a bunch of rich foreigners concentrated in the major (and culturally influential) cities will only make it worse.
yea really. The reality is that people who want to move to Japan, learn Japanese, devote their life to this are probably very interested in Japanese culture. There is no risk to Japanese culture from these people.
It's absolutely more likely that the very wealthy that aren't taking as many risks in moving to Japan are not going to care about Japanese culture.
They have a rapidly aging society and a high national debt load (which also means a more shallow economic growth curve into the future), it’s reasonable to exclude anyone who might even have a chance of being a burden. High value immigrants always have value, either in wealth or economic potential, anyone else is charity if they cannot provide surplus economic value once their own needs have been met or support themselves off of wealth or income they bring with them.
It’s unfortunate when we don’t get picked for the dodgeball team. Life is inherently unfair and mostly a lottery.
(not against foreign aid charity by any means, but delivering it distinct from immigration policy is potentially more efficient and optimal in many ways)
I'm not certain. In an aging society, the thing they'd need are young laborers. People with 30 years of savings are unlikely to be either young, nor laborers.
Maybe those wealthy immigrants are very talented people who are very good at, say, managing an insurance company or researching pharmaceuticals, but Japan has a glut of 55-year-olds who can do that stuff very well. They're running short of young people who can be nurses, junior machinists, and construction workers.
In a macroeconomic sense, wealthy people might be able to pay for the services they need from their own pockets, but functionally it's not that different than being unemployed (unless they choose to work). They would be almost purely adding demand to the economy. The wealth they are bringing represents supply that they added into the economy in the past and abroad, and now they have a wallet full of paper with which they can buy services for the next 30 years in Japan without having to do any further productive work.
I don’t disagree, and a lot of this discussion is about the future of automation and having sufficient nation state capacity to meet an aging populations’ needs. With that said, you want to attract the right young immigrants to come and stay: willing to integrate, supportive of their adoptive culture, and a net positive to the economy and community. They are a guest until chosen to become a fellow citizen.
No they don't. Such a person might use their existing wealth to import goods or commodities, undercutting domestic competitors, extract wealth from the local economy, and then decamp. I'm not arguing that people with high net worth necessarily behave like this, but economic benefit to the host is by no means a given.
For example, the market for vaping-type products in Japan (technically 'heated tobacco') is dominated by American companies (legally) and SE Asian criminal syndicates (illegally). The legal products generate high tax revenue for the government (but not for Japanese tobacco companies) but it's foreseeable that much of the tax benefit will be offset by higher future healthcare costs, while the net profits of the business operation disappear overseas rather than remaining within the economy.
The percentage of the global population with fuck you money is so vanishingly small that a nation of 100 million such as Japan, could import them all with almost zero impact on their culture.
Furthermore, it’s deeply disingenuous to suggest that inconsiderate people only exist on the upper end of the income distribution. Assholes who want to take over and control others are found at every income level. If you want to keep your country from descending into Marxist dystopia then making fuck you money a requirement for immigration is not a terrible idea.
50th percentile + 30 years subsistence is not "fuck you" money, but regardless, income has multiple effects, not only cultural. They don't want to be financially supporting foreigners, of course.
A rough calculation suggests the floor for '30 years subsistence' is about ¥120m/$800k, a sum that's pretty much impossible to accumulate at the 50th percentile of wages.
That's fine, it's just a semantic argument about how people use the term, which doesn't affect my actual assertion, which is that it's not an unreasonable bar.
There is exactly one solution to that problem: raising the birth rate by any means necessary. There is no nation without natalism.
Also, reducing immigration without natalism will result in economic collapse. Old people are extremely expensive. The old tax the young to pay for themselves. If there are no young people to tax, the music will stop quite abruptly.
I just find it odd so many non-Japanese media and commentators weigh in on this.
Japan is not a multicultural country. You can't become Japanese through paperwork. It is very much through blood heritage, your language and cultural proficiency.
The bar to be Japanese is much higher than say Canadian or French. So why shouldn't they create laws that is aimed at benefiting themselves and their country without depending on foreigners?
Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
> People comment on every country [sic] immigration policies
That's the world as it is, not necessarily as it should be. Not being a citizen of the country in question, or part of the culture, and most importantly, not being one of the people that deals with the consequences of whichever choice is made, means your opinion counts for so little as to be barely worth sharing
My ancestors were dirt farmers with absolutely nothing despite their health and work ethic that moved here in the 1930s. Do we think Canada is better than then?
We really, really under value the impact of low income, low education immigrants imo.
Eg. The railway that created this country was built by low income Chinese workers that probably didn't even speak English.
Canada doesn't exist without the effort of low income, low education people.
It feels normal in a globalized world for commentators around the globe to observe and weigh in on the decisions of any country, especially one of such economic importance and cultural significance as Japan.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree on your points regarding Japan not being a multi-cultural country. And this, indeed, is rarely (if ever) mentioned in articles such as the one posted here.
Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
> Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
That's not at accurate from what I know of Japanese history. You seem to be over-indexing on the (relatively) brief Tokugawa-era sakoku policy and ignoring the thousands of years surrounding it where Japan was an active importer of culture.
Kanji, government structure, Buddhism, law, art and more were all imported from China and hugely influential in Japanese history. After the the Meiji Restoration, Japan explicitly set out to Westernize and went abroad to study European and American institutions, invited Westerners in to help build European-style banking systems and government systems, adopted Western clothing, architecture, military organization, legal codes, etc. etc.
If anything the Japanese are masters at importing the things they like of foreign culture and then modifying to make it their own. They have always been importers of culture.
There lies the thesis you pointed out. The point of these articles and coverage seems to be aimed at "Why isn't Japan multicultural yet, so racist!" which makes no sense. Japan has been inhabited by Japanese language, culture and homogeneous people for thousands of years.
There is absolutely no need for Japan to become multicultural or any other country for that matter because not being multicultural isn't a fault or a sin.
I don't know why so many in the West demand this on other countries. There's just something very unnatural and unrealistic and scary to expect a homogeneous country like Japan to suddenly start calling a clearly non-Japanese looking person Japanese. It's going to create huge problems for Japan that won't benefit it or its people by any measure.
Dude ethnically Japanese people that were born in Japan, lived their entire childhoods in Japan, are no longer considered Japanese if they live outside of Japan for 5-10 years.
People who have lived their entire lives in Japan, but are not 100% ethnically Japanese, will literally never be accepted as Japanese.
The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
It’s actually the opposite, the Japanese government may not realise it yet, but these rules ensure basically only economic migrants will come to Japan.
I’ve been living in Japan for a cumulative ~11 months and the number of white people I’ve seen working in 7-11 is zero. Why? Because such roles are simply not attractive for them, and they don’t want to put up with the BS. The people who will do anything to live in Japan are the people with little prospects in their home country.
In a sense you’re right, but the people from developed countries coming to Japan will be the handful of millionaires who can afford to essentially buy their way in through the business visa, like the YouTuber PewDiePie did.
You're misunderstanding the immigration requirements: who is considered doesn't necessarily mean everyone that fits the requirements will be accepted. It's a requirements list for exclusion, doesn't say fitting the requirements implies inclusion.
I mean, to get the Japanese take on immigration, you could go to 5chan and check out the temperature over there. Japanese don't frequent this board, so what you will get is mostly North American and Western European (not even eastern European)
I'm not saying I'm surprised it's largely western people (like myself) that are commenting here, what's surprising is how much nationalism they have for Japan without living there or being ethnically Japanese.
> I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
It can be asked the other way around. Is it worth it to completely destroy the order in the society for the sake of one generation of elderly?
I live in the Netherlands in a black neighborhood, and let me tell you, it's a real shithole. These people are not interested in getting jobs, they just live off neverending money from social programs - with the most expensive one funnily designed to keep them poor for generations - lots of social housing that prevents them from taking part in the housing market going to the moon.
The crime rate is unbelievable. Children literally carry guns around. How do I know? I witnessed a kid shooting another kid with a real gun on my street. Before that I also saw a similar situation from my window one street away.
The lack of respect to anything is obvious. They drop trash on the street because naive taxpayer like me will pay for cleaning. Dudes often harass people on ebikes or scooters because they know that can get away before you react. Loud noise at night? Suck it up.
With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France.
Naturally, these people have Dutch citizenship, so it's not easy to kick them out. Not that the Dutch are interested - I was legally considered a victim of yet another shooting so I got updates on the legal case, and it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. That's Dutch justice system for you.
The Japanese understand this. A generation of tough times is something a society can easily recover from. Meanwhile you can undo a failed immigration program only with ethnic cleansing, and nobody wants that.
I said nothing about that, it’s not news to me. That might be the case today, but there was a time when countries in the western hemisphere like America were importing massive numbers of the poor and destitute, not to mention even enslaved people. Not that I’m arguing for a return to indentured servitude and slavery, but there are clearly times when poor people are wanted or at least tolerated en masse. Such as when you are building a new country and need settlers and frontiersmen, or when your population is struggling to keep the economy up due to an aging native population with hardly anybody to look after them.
> everyone already has their own poor population to deal with
Yikes, that is quite the dehumanizing framing
Edit: A person commented "why?" before deleting their comment, which I had started responding to. I still want to give my response:
Because an enlightened government is for the people (and an unenlightened government is not worth having). The purpose of a government is to care for the welfare of the people, not to be the securer of private wealth for the wealthy. The above comment frames it as "dealing with" an undesirable population. That population is the people, and it is a perversion to think otherwise.
How? It seems realistic, not brutal (though reality is a bit brutal).
Edit: Your update seems unrelated. I can't connect it to what the parent said. They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor, and you responded as if they said we should not support even our own poor, in favor of supporting the wealthy. There's no connection there.
> They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor
The original comment did not say what you claim.
The original comment framed it as “dealing with” the poor population. That is bad framing. The role of government is to take care of the people, not to “deal with” them. That framing is important because the people are not a problem to be dealt with. They are to be protected and cared for. The framing is important because it dictates what is accepted and what gets done.
Most immigration seems to me as some form of wealth differential to attract the relatively poor foreigners giving them less rights than local population.
Middle East runs on poor people from the subcontinent and Africa.
Hong Kong depends on live-in foreign labor who have to camp out in public spaces on their day-off.
America is built on poorer labor of every kind - enslaved African cotton farmers , indentured Chinese railway workers, famine stricken Irish, or more recently Latin American or H1B Indians in tech.
Some countries try to attract the richest percent like New Zealand, however it is not economically meaningful nor is major portion of immigrants globally or within their countries even.
Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights.
> as they definitely work harder for less pay and rights than the local poor.
Why would I want to support the introduction in my country of what is virtually modern slave labor practices by abusing and exploiting the poor and desperate foreigners so that some business can get richer because they don't want to pay or provide decent working conditions or invest into automation?
Especially that a lot of those cheap laborers without rights aren't even doing work to the benefit of the community (elderly care, construction etc) but to the benefit of a few wealthy and unscrupulous business owners (Amazon, Uber Eats, etc) who are addicted to cheap exploitable labor.
>Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights.
Yeah, but there a major differences in which these are implemented that can make immigration a success or a failure.
Some countries that you also mentioned like Middle East, Hong Kong, but also Singapore import those workers for cheap labor so they can do the work the locals don't want and in exchange migrants make money to send back home, making it mutually beneficial, but they don't get the right to permanently settle there or gain citizenship because they don't want them as citizens, they just want temporary workers that will work and then leave when they're no longer useful or wanted.
This however does not apply to most western nations where migrants can settle permanently and relatively easily become citizens with voting rights in a relatively short timeframe(at least in EU), and that's where the anxiety of the locals comes from and also their hatred of migrants. They're importing an alien culture they're not fond of as cheap labor, that once settled and granted voting rights, if not integrated properly and harboring animosity, can demographically displace them via their higher fertility rates(natives are already minorities in some major EU cities) managing to out-vote them and force their culture onto them democratically, or worse, use their majority status to take revenge for how their ancestors being treated as cheap labor. Either way, this is a recipe for endless racial tensions or even conflicts in the future, that isn't being priced in to the economic upsides of mass migration which only looks at GDP.
That, of course, is the actual real question in this debate and all the other similar debates. Some people benefit from an influx of very low-pay people, and some people don't.
Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness despite immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai. If the immigrants in Japan were behaving exactly the same as Japanese, just saving money on sunscreen, you wouldn’t be seeing these measures.
For Dubai specifically, there is a mix of foreigners, a large percentage being labourers from South Asia. The orderliness we see, I think is largely due to strict* and harsh laws.
The laborers are heavily segregated from the native population. I think it’s morally bankrupt to have a quasi-slave class of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis that does all the work, but is hidden from view. But that is the only way anybody has found to maintain a clean and orderly environment like Dubai while having low skill immigration from the subcontinent.
The number of times I (white, living in Japan) have raised concerns about anti-foreigner sentiment, only to be told “they’re not talking about people like you”, would beg to differ.
Oh please, everyone not in denial can certainly see there is a racial component to this. I also didn't only include "black" and "brown," some kinds of Asians are also being gatekept. Do you deny that Japanese society (like countless others) has a racism/xenophobia problem? Isn't it commonly known information that even people of other races/ethnicities who have successfully immigrated there or are just visiting as tourists are sometimes not allowed in certain venues with explicit messaging? And that this is commonly tolerated there? Isn't Japan the same country that barely 80-odd years ago was on a brutal campaign across several parts of Asia where they targeted non-Japanese with massacres, torture and live human experimentation among other things? Many of those people are still alive (ironically, some are probably among the elderly and isolated who need help right now). Isn't Japan the same country that still regularly denies their well-known and documented atrocities during that period?
??? There's literally a white person in the article that is also reconsidering their situation? Why do you keep making this about "black, brown and east Asian" people?? They are xenophobic to literally everyone on Earth.
> Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
This? I am not commenting on this part. Hot take: I actually want Japan to stay Japan, I don't want Japan to turn into anything other than Japan. Its a good place to live in exactly because it is Japan. They don't have to change to accept more tourists, you have to change to be accepted by them.
It has nothing to do with race. It’s about keeping our foreign cultural and social norms. If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted, then you’d have a point. But that’s not the case.
All of your handwaving is irrelevant to a Japanese person in 2026. What matters is that democratic societies are entitled to use the levers of government to create the kind of society they want to live in. I visit Japan regularly, and the last time I went with my kids it was very apparent that my rowdy Bangladeshi-American kids were inconveniencing people. In a country where I see people walk blocks out of the way to cross at a crosswalk, instead of crossing in the middle of the street, I can understand and accept our permanent presence there would be unwelcome. Japanese people shouldn’t have to welcome American or Bangladeshi or any other foreign social and cultural norms into their community.
If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted
Koreans fit that bill; there's a lot of ethnically Korean people whose families have been in Japan multiple generations (not just assimilated as first-gen immigrants) but there's still significant social prejudice against them; life people of Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai descent who've grown up in Japan as opposed to being recent arrivals. If you haunt Japanese nationalist online communities you can see this on a daily basis.
I don’t think you can categorize the conflict between Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese as “racism.” Those countries are neighbors with a tremendous amount of history. That’s its own, separate thing, like Greeks versus Turks or Bangladeshis versus Pakistanis.
As it turns out, I'm also of a very similar background to your kids, a South Asian American that is, and one who would be accepted in Japan just fine (I already have highly educated and well off relatives living there permanently). Frankly, I have to say, you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority and looking up to the great Japanese people; you probably have a similar perception of America/Canada and western Europe. I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way (if only your kids are desi but not you).
Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place/background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when we/they don't know how to behave!? To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese.
Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters nor future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk.
> you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority ... I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way
Why are you saying "race/culture" like it's the same thing? It's like you're trying to use race, which is superficial and irrelevant, to shield culture from criticism. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, but hated the culture, so he left. That's not a problem, it's smart. There are better ways to think and act and worse ways to think and act.
> To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better
So you're just in denial! You can see it, but you can't make yourself acknowledge it.
The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context.
No, I’m not in denial, I just have the rational ability to let principles override my occasional emotional reactions, it’s part of being a truly high-minded and intelligent adult human being, certainly too much to expect from everyone, I’ll acknowledge that.
Race is not superficial or irrelevant, it should be, but racists exist. You’re in denial about this because you have a deep-seated inferiority complex and what some call “internalized racism,” which again, is quite typical of a certain sector of desi immigrant populations, especially those who come from very disadvantaged or discriminated backgrounds. You want to believe race or racism isn’t a thing because otherwise you’d have to face the facts that you’re often thought of as lowly just for the way you look or where you’re from, and you don’t really fit in with the people around you, that you are and will always be thought of as “different.” Again, I know how that feels, but unlike you, I have principles that allow me to engage with the world without being in denial and also not discriminating against others because I faced discrimination myself. I’ll say though, I appreciate you not denying that you feel this way.
Racism and culture are not the same but they are subject to very similar forms of discrimination and very often by the same kinds of people. The Venn diagram of racists and xenophobes is the closest thing to being a circle without actually being one. I am not in denial also that there can be elements of corruption in a culture, and I’ll admit some of those exist among South Asians. But, the reality is there are elements of corruption in every culture, do you think American culture is perfect? If you do, I have to believe you’re not living in the same reality as the rest of us. The glorious Nippon you believe in is also steeped in cultural corruption, you deliberately ignore their recent history and in fact their current culture as well. Ask people belonging to discriminated classes there or even regular Japanese people if things are perfect over there. There is rampant debauchery, exploitation of women and young girls, problems of alcoholism, high levels of work-related stress because of cultural expectations of showing loyalty to the company and leadership. These are all elements of corruption that have negative impact, the only thing Japan does really well is cleanliness and crime prevention. Things aren’t perfect but they do try to be orderly, so why are you regularly visiting them when your brown self is prone to being dirty and committing crimes? Why make more work for them?
Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are and none of them have this kind of self-hating feelings of inferiority. I think it’s because we naturally take for granted the 1st world benefits we grew up with whereas people from disadvantaged backgrounds who immigrated as adolescents sometimes seem to think they’ve reached paradise and go out of their way to present themselves as servile and not concerned with discrimination at all, just being thankful and humble to glorious white people, and in this case even adopting their externalized nationalism towards Japan. This is just a feeling though, I am not saying it with any certainty.
> The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context
But you shouldn’t treat them the same way. They’re fundamentally different. You can be perfectly happy being Bangladeshi as a matter of DNA, while hating the culture of the country. Shit, that’s like half my extended family. We all got the fuck out. How many people are there in NYC or Chicago from the redneck parts of Alabama who hate the culture back home? It’s the same thing! Those people aren’t “self hating white people.” They are just people who think there are better ways to live and act than the way their ancestors did.
> Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are
Haha, that explains a lot. You’re surrounded by white people, so you feel this affinity to your co-ethnics, which compels you to defend a culture that you didn’t even grow up in. That’s irrational. You’re an individual. You can look at the world and just see who is doing stuff that works and who is doing stuff that doesn’t work. You don’t have to yoke yourself to people you have nothing in common with other than skin color.
You’re correct, I wasn’t born in the U.S., and neither was my mom or my dad. So we actually understand the problem with the culture back in old country. We lived there. We’re not analyzing it through the lens of white people from the other side of the world. You don’t need to psychoanalyze me to understand why I like Japan and dislike Bangladesh. I have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell. This is objective stuff. The people who talk quietly, cross at crosswalks, queue up, etc., have a better culture than the ones that don’t. And they have every right to be afraid of immigrants from places that don’t do that.
Who brought up the question of tying behavior to race? Whether race exists is not the question being discussed here, regardless of the biological existence of race or not, there is a social perception of it existing and that is commonly used in the society in which (and I presume this is true for most of us) I live. I was asked an implied question about bringing up race and thus answered with the social perception in mind. You might need to ask yourself what or whom you are actually arguing with, because it doesn't appear to be me.
You’re the one who brought up race when nobody mentioned it. Race is a red herring when talking about immigration. Japanese people come in a wide variety of skin colors. People in Japan aren’t upset about skin color. People in Japan are upset about having to deal with other people who have a different cultural background, social norms, habits, language, etc.
Hey, it's the self-hating brown person again, stalking another one like yourself through the comments for disagreeing with you now, are you? Race is an inherent part of any immigration discussion in the modern world. Do you think US immigration policies have nothing to do with race right now? You'd be a dumbass to think so (not surprising in the least).
Race only comes up because cultural relativists like yourself try to inject it into the discussion to derail any discussion of culture.
The funny thing is that you acknowledged in your post above that you have problems with the culture too! You accuse me of being a “self hating” “brown” person. But in reality you have an irrational loyalty to your ethnic group. You feel compelled to defend a culture you don’t necessarily share because you see it as linked to an ethnicity that you do share.
Also really? Japanese people come in different skin colors is part of your argument? The overwhelming majority are very similar, and you know very well perception of race has little to do with color or is at least not exclusively about color. There is no way an adult human being living America today doesn't understand that. And are you aware that even natives to the islands of Japan like the Ainu who are actually of a different race and color also face discrimination there and have long struggled against this? Again, please try to use your head a bit instead of commenting while emotional/drunk.
As a resident of Japan, this is particularly funny to me since those two countries are exactly the ones the authorities are trying to limit immigration from. Japan is _very_ racist when it comes to Korea, and China "buying all the land" this past decade is a frequent trope of the news (also that the Chinese cheat the NTA and pension system and never pay a dime).
Then of course you have crime (Vietnamese) and the right-wing idea that the Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians come here to steal Japanese (low wage) jobs (that nobody wants to do).
Nobody gives two fucks about immigration from north America, Europe or Australia.
I believe this is normally the point where a typical HN or reddit user is supposed to come in and mention "whataboutism." Criticism of Japan's immigration policies (which the OP article is about) is in no way an approval (or even comment) on immigration policies of other countries.
Nobody claimed it was very different or that others are doing things better, at least I have not claimed such. Think logically for a minute, does (nearly) everyone doing something naturally make it a good thing? Are we not allowed to be critical of things every nation state does? I would wager every nation state has some degree and kind of corruption baked into its political process, if not officially then at least in practice. Should I then hold back on criticizing corruption in Indian or Chinese or Russian or American politics because hey every country has some degree of it?
I didn't claim it's good. I said it's not shocking. The world is turning to shit, but Japan's immigration rules tightening is completely in line with everything everywhere.
It's really unfortunate that they have approved these changes. I know at least 7 people that have decided to leave Japan because of it. They were making enough money to support themselves, but under the rule they basically gave no chance of ever reaching that new income requirement. Some jobs just don't have that much upward financial mobility. Which is fine if you live outside the city without a large family, but these rules are harsh to anyone that isn't working a high pay job. Permanent recidency would have allowed them to work outside their visa category, easily start a business, and utilize their Japanese language skills in a larger market.
Its quite a shock since historically the government has moved extremely slow when implementing policies that have a large impact. But the last 6 months have been extremely anxiety inducing with a new immigration change being announced and approved every month.
A politician can spin it that way sure, despite foreigners owning 0.12 percent of property and most foreigner jobs (at least the ones my friends have) requiring fluent English. It's not a threat to Japanese people, but with the right populist figure, anything can sound like a threat. What I find so sad about this is the lack of empathy for people that worked hard to build a life here, paid their taxes, and followed the law. They did nothing wrong, but are the targets of a population primed to take their economic woes and anger out on people simply living their life peacefully.
Shitty situation I'm sure but no matter how you spin it or complain its shouting into the void. Whether there was real plus or minus ultimately as you pointed out make up a very microscopic fraction of Japanese economy and priority from the Japanese point of view, who's voice almost always override those of foreigners.
It would be nice for everybody to be happy but its clear Japanese who are the rightful owners of the land are not, and thus they have a right to vote and through consensus decide on what they perceive to be best for their national interests.
Maybe it's good for them maybe it's not but it won't be heard like all the comments here including mine or visible to real Japanese people living in Japan.
>They did nothing wrong, but are the targets of a population primed to take their economic woes and anger out on people simply living their life peacefully.
If you check out history books, you'll be surprised(or not) by how often that happens.
>What I find so sad about this is the lack of empathy for people that worked hard to build a life here, paid their taxes, and followed the law.
Economic hardships and scarcity will turn everyone into animals. Every society, even the most kind, peaceful and orderly is only 3 missing meals away from killing each other for the last piece of bread. Except before killing each other, they'll first kill foreigners. Story as old as time.
Japan does not have a shortage of homes - they have a surplus. Their economy very much need younger workers as their birth rates have fallen. But instead of simply allowing new workers in, they're choosing to devalue the shit out of their currency, then complaining about the huge influx of tourism that it triggered.
(in theory) 7 new job vacancies and 7 more free homes
No. Japan already has low unemployment and high overtime demands due to worker shortages, and property is already cheap (even in most cities other than Tokyo) due to a combination of falling population, complex construction/demolition codes, changing lifestyles, and a different view of asset classes/investment practices from the US.
It's kinda like how nobody likes inflation (other than certain kinds of debtors) but a deflationary economy isn't a good solution to that problem. This will have a similar effect because the people leaving are likely to be the most culturally assimilated/affiliated with decent language skills etc., but their departure won't alleviate the demand for additional labor in industry and agriculture so there will probably still be a net increase in short-term and illegal foreign residency.
This is certainly going to conflict with their moves to make it easier to attract aged care workers to the country. Perhaps all the elderly people are expected to patriotically look after themselves?
Perhaps they have simply realized that no political decisions are without downsides, including unchecked immigration, and that on balance, they’ve decided it’s not for them?
It’s silly to claim that immigration is the only way to care for old people. We have been caring for old people for the entire history of the human race. We can start doing it again anytime.
It’s true, that it’s inconsistent to demand no immigration and simultaneously defendthe right to produce no children. But it is Japanese people who need to square that circle, not people who want to immigrate to Japan, nor people outside Japan, who feel Japan should allow immigration.
It’s the rate of increase in immigration, which makes it harder for a country to “take it in and give room for assimilation”. Same problem in Canada, and a good chunk of pathways have been rolled back.
It’s not a simple issue, but very obviously citizens of countries where immigration rate has gone through the roof aren’t happy. Also the usual hatred starts when low income immigrants move into the country, as they’re more likely to work in public-facing jobs (markets, hotels, etc).
Extreme tourism influx due to covid rebound and weak yen. And most Japanese people not being observant enough to understand that those foreigners causing trouble (or simply just putting pressure on existing infrastructure) is not the residents but shitty tourists.
Most of the issue they have would be reduced if the yen got stronger or they introduced some expensive tourist fee, but that's very unlikely
Sanseito scapegoating foreigners for every problem (particularly Chinese and SE Asian), highly organized social media campaigns with a lot of help from western right wingers, nuisance video streamers exploiting the weak yen to do 'insult/abuse the locals vacations' for cheap, and a rise in anti-Chinese sentiment since the beginning of the year.
Early in Takaichi's premiership, she answered a parliamentary question about the possibility of a Chinese attack on taiwan by sying that this would present an 'existential' problem for Japan. This alarmed the Chinese who saw it as an intrusion on their private business and a reminder of Japanese war atrocities; but before they could make a restrained diplomatic complaint, a Chinese consul in (iirc) Osaka went nuts on social media telling Takaichi to pull her filthy neck in before it was chopped off. After that neither side could back down without losing face so they're stuck in a diplomatic deep freeze.
There are a lot of other structural factors I could go into but those are the major differences since 2024. Actual incidence of crime or large population shifts seem to be absent.
This is the actual answer but too many people are invested in their own narratives to see it.
When you visit someone's country you are not just a guest, you are the model for everyone else who comes from where you do and who looks like you do. The assumption is that how you behave is how others from where you came from will behave. In an age where social media exposes everyone all the time, bad behavior gets seen and shown to others and conclusions drawn based on that behavior.
But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism. Which even if true, who cares? It's their country. They're allowed to welcome or decline anyone they wish. How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
I don’t support xenophobia, but after visiting Japan, I can see how it happens. Foreigners are disruptive and disrespectful, often carelessly, but also often when they are trying not to be. I was really trying to be polite and respectful, and I learned some Japanese (not nearly enough), and I could tell I was bumbling at times.
It is one thing when it is one person, it is another when it is every tenth person.
I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment. I was getting frustrated by rude gaijin and I was one (well I was trying really hard not to be rude).
Large social media campaigns full of misinformation about how foreigners are all getting free fully-paid higher education, cheating welfare, and how foreigners don't pay any taxes at all, complete with AI-generated infographics showing sad japanese families handing over cash to foreigners wearing hijab.
I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws, in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
Countries have a right to change their laws, but I believe it’s in everyone’s interest for those laws to be changed while respecting principles of predictability and legal certainty.
People planned and rearranged their entire lives around immigration law in force at one point, perhaps 5 years ago, and now a new law is going into force that slams the door shut to having a basic sense of stability, with only a 6 month transition period. It’s cruel. And it sends a bad sign to anyone looking to move.
The USA can afford to be cruel because people will deal with it for high wages. Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large. It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
> It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
This such a baffling statement, honestly: that the flourishing economy crucially depends on foreign labour. What happened with the role of the technological know-how, and vast material (and financial) capital? The institutions? All of that is still not enough for prosperity unless you can hire a paperless José for $7.40 per hour, with an implied threat of handing him off to ICE if he raises any stink?
I'm having a hard time following the thinking in many of these threads so I'm not sure if you're questioning it genuinely (or hypothetically or sarcastically), but I think essentially yes sadly.
Wealthier areas wonder why it costs so much for house renovations or for daycare or`for farmer's market produce. Or similarly folks move to less wealthy countries as "expats" and hire help, babysitters, tutors. Sense of prosperity seems tied to those things feeling inexpensive and them feeling cheap requires income inequality. There's I think a large amount of feeling poor (or average) when those things are eating your budget. Even though you have them. For example, you pay for expensive childcare so both parents can work, it takes a big bite out of your budget, and so you don't feel wealthy (but you're paying for childcare and your family has an employee). Similarly, you're paying for expensive private school, it eats your budget, you don't feel wealthy (but your child is going to private school).
For those doing well, the surplus goes to what's left—house, education, healthcare (I recall there being a fourth, but I'm blanking). Those things are expensive because they should be, you're wealthy. You're competing with the other wealthy people. I'm stealing this from somewhere, but they're essentially luxury goods—the more money you have, the more (and better quality) you consume. They don't decrease as percent of income as food does.
Most of developed economies dont need blue collar foreign labor in the future. Some dont even need it now. There are no industries in uk or france and this labor role is mostly to suppress wages (we ve seen it with brexit and english truck drivers) . For industrial nations like germany before they shot themselves you do need this labor until robots and automation makes them obsolete. Way before 50years and then being a nation with low immigration is becoming a key advantage for a country cohesion and future. Finally every country at 25% youth unemployment (like france and spain) shoould block all immigration beside highly skilled immigrants
Robots and automation won’t replace health care workers. Aging countries will need more of those.
And the unemployed youth would be working those low skilled jobs today if they wanted to, fact is they don’t pay enough for them and if those jobs are automated away they will still be unemployed.
It obviously suppress wages, which is a necessary condition for capitalism. Any country where it costs 10x to build infrastructure because there is no cheap labor will be less competitive.
When a person migrates, I would believe that the origin country has one less population. So why is it good that this person props up population in the destination country instead of in the origin country?
And why does the destination country need that persons labour and expertise, but not the origin country?
If the native population is becoming exterminated with or without migration, what exactly is the "country" that needs to be kept "afloat"? Your stock portfolio? Your treasury bills? Your real estate investment?
It’s definitely a possibility that a country dwindles away and is happy to do so in order to avoid immigration. We’ll probably see that with Japan and South Korea by the end of this century.
Ultimately it’s their choice.
Whether a country with high population composed of immigration is still the same country we can look to the Americas. Countries with extreme high degree of immigration and assimilation, yet still very much worthwhile countries. Maybe not the countries the natives from 500 years ago would have imagined, but their culture has survived more than 100 years and contribute significantly to the world still. New Zealand is also a good example of native culture not being wiped out even with assimilation.
The fate of the native North Americans is one of the largest catastrophes in the history of humanity. Just as so many other times through human history when natives were displaced and replaced, whether by violent or non-violent means, or a mix of both.
Immigration doesn't change the fact of natives dwindling away or not. A nation is the native people, not a name on a map. The exceptions are the United States and other new world ex-colonies. But there was a very dear price paid in blood and tears to make them.
America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before. Very good arguments have been made that the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) did originate from native North American ideas and ideals being brought to Europe through cultural exchange, but it's not assimilation on the part of the settlers.
> America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before
That's almost a uniquely United States problem, not at all as big of an issue in most of the Americas. Only a few countries in the Americas have had their native population pretty much entirely wiped out without any assimilation whatsoever. The US is one of these few countries (Cuba and Hispaniola would be other examples of total replacement).
The rest has had large degree of intermixing or wholesale population preservation. Aspects of native culture is those countries were suppressed historically but are still preserved in some way to this day.
It's also very fair to say sovereign countries today can build a healthier immigration policy than 1500s Europeans with their extermination campaigns. I'd be the last to say that is an example to be followed.
More to the point here: Japan can be exclusively Japanese for another 200 years and die forever, or be Japanese + something for another 10 thousand years. Unlike 500 years ago, they get a choice.
You don't have a automatic right to live in another country in my opinion. I don't blame Swedes for slamming a door shut that has turned their incredibly safe country into the gun and bomb capital of Europe.
> You don't have a automatic right to live in another country in my opinion.
its true, and thats how things are (legally anyways) but taking that further sometimes i wonder why its okay to freely move from region a to region b inside a country?
wouldn't the same logic apply to people from say east germany moving to the west? or 'annoying liberals' from california moving to north carolina? yes they can add to the local tax base, but if we want to keep things fair we should probably move to restrict everyone to stay in their own places if thats the logic we are following... but maybe i'm not thinking deeply enough...
>I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws
Context for others: Until 2026 Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship. It now has some basic requirements in these areas.
If English, German, Swedish, etc. shared a single prestige form, which all educated speakers understand and use for formal purposes, I think it would be reasonable and common to call them dialects of "Germanic".
More generally, you'll drive yourself crazy trying to form an opinion of what a language "really" is independent of what the people who use it believe. Norwegian people can generally read Danish, and Danish people can generally read Norwegian if it's written in Bokmål, but Bokmål is only one of the two equally valid ways to write Norwegian. What's going on there? You can trample over the cultural context to impose some abstract definition of what's "really" a language, or you can accept that Norwegian is a language because Norwegian speakers say so and not worry too much about the metaphysical status of Nynorsk.
I acknowledge and sympathize with the pain this will cause, but in regards to Japan itself: Good for them. Not because it is a rightward shift, but because it is a shift toward pragmatism in the face of the inherent tension between respect for all people and respect for one's own people and culture.
In my humble opinion, an ideal world is a liberal one with cherry-picked, tightly controlled, practical conservative elements that boldly take on the intimidating job of maintaining the balance between love and reason.
This is a shift away from pragmatism; pragmatism would be acknowledging Japan's economic need for immigration.
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
Pragmatism could just as easily be a decision by the public collectively to have more babies. There’s nothing about immigration that makes it inherently pragmatic. It could be, with the agreement of the electorate, away to compensate for the electorates decisions to have fewer babies. But it’s not up for us outside of Japan to lecture them on whether or not they are being consistent on this.
Technically you're probably right, since most people are not terribly rational. Most people believe their values are the only correct ones, in which case there is exactly one "pragmatic" path.
It's OK if they choose to seek other avenues for dealing with that problem. The easiest solution is often not the best, and sometimes there is no net-positive path forward.
> I mean, sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences of an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
They're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
>Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
I'm not following your argument at all, if they had taken no immigrants, the GDP would just be even worse then, and Canada would be even further behind.
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
None of this happens in isolation. If you flood a country with a torrent of migrants, everything else just doesn't continue as is with that one thing happening on the side.
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces[1]. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
[1] So did government spending. Why do major projects, seek new export markets, etc, when you can announce GDP growth regardless, even if the GDP per capita was flat to declining. A decade when we did nothing but celebrate how wonderfully diverse and tolerant we are.
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
> the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
Yes, physically that's a good description of the natural flow of things. No, it makes no sense for successful nations to suffer for the benefit of unsuccessful nations, generally speaking. What they should provide is aid, with varying specifics on what that means (e.g. it could be as simple as favorable trade).
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
How are those nations suffering, when the reason that they're destinations is because they have a surplus of resources (I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place)? As long as a significant number of the immigrants aren't committing crimes and play by the rules the citizens go by to the best of their abilities, why is there an issue? Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
> I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place
You literally just did, only in that comedically vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
There is nothing pragmatic about kicking out the workforce you imported because of a shortage of native labour. The pragmatist stance would be to accept those differences, and focus on addressing/alleviating them. Cutting your nose to spite your face is more idealism than pragmatism.
I know its a bit of glass half full vs glass half empty, but I suspect those are not quite the right words.
Does any of the countries recently doubling down on populist policies about immigration really care about the upper end of whatever the euphemism/approximation metric of the day is? Whether the metric is about money, social behavior, maintaining trust & continuity, or even just purely practical matters of compatibility in non-negotiable beliefs & customs.. none of the policies really seem to be aimed at drawing a line between the top 10% and the top 30%. I think its always more about keeping the bottom X% out.
I think when you ask “what counties care about”, it’s simplifying a situation. Policy makers have different goals than ordinary people (although than can overlap).
If there were a significant amount of such people coming in it would push up the cost of living for the average-(or below-average)-income Japanese citizen.
Look at any of the Western cities that became attractive for retirement or "investment properties" for wealthy international folks... it makes everything more expensive for everyone already there.
If the concern was just about preventing things from changing for existing citizens, restrictions across the income band would seem to make much more sense.
Given that that this policy is targeted against low-income foreigners I was under the impression it was meant to prevent downward wage pressure. Given the current political climate it may be more socially focused than I originally thought.
From the article
“Japan needs foreign workers because of labour shortages. But if the conditions for long-term settlement become substantially more difficult, this could potentially reduce Japan’s attractiveness to foreign workers who are considering Japan as a place to build their long-term lives,”
Specifically, Japan needs workers in human services to physically care for the very large elderly population. They need them so badly that they are in the process of implementing easier work visas for them. But do you think those jobs pay more than the national average?
No, but that's the point. They don't want long-term residents, they want short-term labor. This has been the goal for a long time, and if you move to Japan expecting anything else you'll be disappointed.
"Labour shortage" is just the business's perspective on "plenty of jobs!"
If there truly is a shortage of outstanding jobs, then they can compete and raise salaries and the least significant roles ultimately won't get filled, which is optimal.
It's my understanding that end-of-life care service workers are paid relatively little (at least in the US). It does seem like this policy would exacerbate those labor shortages.
Think of the US - the reduction of low wage immigrants has been a large factor in our economy lately. Food prices have gone up, and in the long term there's fewer young families getting added to the social security system.
While it's cute to think that suddenly these jobs are going to Americans, but these are mostly undesirable jobs that pay less than typical jobs. To the extent that they even get filled by native workers, it drives real wages down and not up.
Meanwhile, only allowing immigrants from the top of the income bracket crowds out the top side of the job market.
This is very one-sided. There are plenty of low income and working class people who have suddenly found more work than they have had in years due to reductions in immigration.
What's the empirical evidence that proves this? If the economy gets worse as a result of lack of immigration, its going to reduce opportunities for low income and working class people.
It restricts immigration to cities where the high wages are, ie. Tokyo which is itself already too crowded, and forces foreigners living in less populated parts of the country to leave, further depopulating it.
That makes sense (and seems undesirable). It's my understanding that Japan has a lot of near-ghost-towns with empty houses they badly need people to live in and improve (and presumably spend money in the area).
That's my bad, it's poorly worded. I meant something closer to "why would this practice of excluding low-earning foreigners be bad for the native Japanese".
You mean like when they made daycare and preschool free in 2019? Or when they gave stronger parental-leave rights in 2021 and 2025? Or when they increased the child allowance (a monthly payment to parents per child) in 2024? Or when they made it mandatory for employers to offer things like telework or reduced working hours for parents with children under the age of 3 in 2025?
None of it has worked so far, but they are taking aggressive steps to try to fight the declining birthrate.
Good for Japan. They are being forward thinking and protective over their existing job supply. America is a great example of what happens with too much offshoring and lax immigration policies. Especially with the effects of AI, there are no longer enough jobs to go around.
If you need them to support your production, then it's ok for them to be a net cost no? Basically you're paying to have goods and services that you wouldn't otherwise, it's like paying for employees, it's a cost, but it brings value still.
My concern with these rules is that they don’t seem likely to address the issues at hand, but they do legitimise a rising xenophobic sentiment.
From what I see, the main drivers of negative sentiment towards foreigners are poorly behaved tourists, investors developing land and municipal issues with short-term residents. Being stricter on long-term workers addresses none of these. I live in Hokkaido and travel to many rural parts of Japan for work, so my experience will differ from someone living in Tokyo. However, I feel the other issues are blown out of proportion to fan the flames.
Requiring permanent residents to maintain an above-average annual income (¥5.9 million) favours people who settle in Tokyo, where the average is ¥6.8 million, over Aomori, where it is ¥4.8 million. This works against using immigration to help repopulate rural areas.
But maybe they just want short-term workers? That seems fundamentally at odds with expecting immigrants to integrate and contribute to society. It is a commitment to learn the language, put down roots in a community and pay into social system. The benefits of which you only see years if not decades later. It’s difficult to expect that when your future in the country is deliberately temporary and uncertain.
I know people who have been here for decades and built businesses who may now have to leave. There was a good example in the news of a Nepalese restaurant that had been in business for over 10 years, whose owner was facing the possibility that his Business Manager visa wouldn’t be renewed under the new investment requirements. Someone who spends years building a business, paying taxes and serving the local community may be pushed out, while a wealthy overseas investor can drop some money into a property investment and get a visa without having paid any tax here. Who thought that one through?
It makes me feel that long-term residents are being targeted because we’re an easy target, rather than because these measures address the causes of the backlash. That erodes trust. The cost of my visa has gone up 10x while my income hasn’t changed; how can I trust they won’t add more arbitrary rules? Remember, this is the same LDP whose leader 10 years ago said, “Japan will become a country where permanent residency can be obtained at one of the fastest speeds in the world.” What changed?
Hot take: I think immigration and multiculturalism is going to be the the biggest and the defining issue of this century. The history books will have "AI" and climate change in the margins as 'exacerbating factors'. We've started to see it in the US, and we're beginning to see the start to it in the EU. Japan--rightly or wrongly--might be averting a future disaster here. Japan is lucky in that they are still a very homogeneous society, and also unlucky in that they are ahead of the curve in population decline. I think the western world is in for a bad time over the next 50 years.
Isn't that the story of the US since birth? It seems immigration is just always a hot topic, everyone always thinks they can just pull up the latter behind them as to not lose what they have to others. I don't feel anything is different now.
I don’t this can even be debated. Immigration is the number one discussed issue in rich countries and immigration policy is causing massive swings in elections.
I don't think there's a limit to the animosity people feel (rightly or wrongly - what's "correct" has no bearing on people's feelings) and we will end up in a place where previously unthinkable force or actions are now permissible due to nasty politics. The US is getting a small taste of that now.
I don't think it takes much imagination to connect the dots... it wasn't that long ago in European history where people were systematically eradicated by the millions.
There are Ceuta like events of a smaller scale every day at every border of western europe. Dont need to wait 50 years. Not a single european voted for this. French people also voted no to a european economy but those who seized power didnt care
In a time of declining globalism and growing[1] nationalism[2] and anti-immigration sentiment around the world, I think it is unsurprising that a historically[3] xenophobic culture would move in this direction.
[2]: often used as a tool by oligarchy to shift blame away from themselves, instead towards vulnerable groups, as the cause of rising inequality and various institutional crisis
Let's be honest, the Japanese gov't has killed off every generation since the asian bubble popped in the 90's. Those kids in the 90's that still can't get a job should be in their peak earning years and have strong talent skills, (and having kids) which was all sacrificed. They don't have the skills or tax base they should and they are unwilling to actually fix it because the stock market needs to crash big time and the rich need to pay for it.
I completely agree with your comment about Japan killing every generation since the bubble popped. It has been wild to witness.
The subtle but profound ways those generations have experienced being essentially abandoned by the government and “Japan Inc” will have a lasting impact on Japan for many decades to come.
There are some leaders who actually grasp the problem and actually have decent ideas for solutions, but the will and capacity to execute those ideas just isn’t there.
This is not news anymore in that it has been going on for
several months already. The first time I really noticed
this was on Paolo from Tokyo, where he suddenly praised
japanese cops on becoming tougher. Since then I noticed
more and more complaints from non-japanese upon moving to
Japan. Recently it was a guy from Germany who lives in Japan
for like +10 years already and was denied being granted
Japanese citizenship basically because ... he is gaijin.
Something really fundamental has been changing in Japan
in the last few years, kind of an anti-globalisation
movement tied to more nationalism - and I have a SLIGHT
suspicion that this will become ultra-nationalism. In
turn, a second prediction I make is that Japan will become
militarily more aggressive and invest more in that. We
can already see the writing on the wall here that more
conflict will be brewing in the area.
It's a bit unfortunate in that if a country does not really
want people to visit it, well - one does not have to go
there. There are many other countries in the asian area
that aren't as hostile to foreigners now. (Also interesting
to see how an aging society suddenly changes to offset
immigration. Hopefully we won't hear a single japanese
complain about lack of people in Japan. Ironically Paolo
is, or rather was, also kind of a gaijin, even though he
speaks perfect Japanese of course.)
> Applicants will also be required to have a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts.
Does this take into account the amount of pension a person would still accumulate under Japanese employment, or will this immediately disqualify anyone under 45?
That’s like 12 x 30 x ¥35000 = 12600000 yen. ＄84000. I don’t know about others, but I consider myself pretty well off and I do not have that kind of money.
That's too low.
The National Basic Pension is around 60,000 yen per month and with traditional employer part on top (not everyone has it), it's 140,000 yen/month. I would think a foreigner immigrant would need to bring the equivalent of around $160k in a retirement savings account or similar.
I think Japan thinks they can still attract enough foreigners to perform necessary service and manual labor jobs without the promise of permanent residency. That along with increasing automation - serving robots are a common sight at many restaurants these days, for example.
Permanent residency is reserved for those who can be a net benefit to social welfare programs - by earning and contributing more than the average Japanese household (about USD $36,000 - $42,000 according to google). There are also new language requirements to promote assimilation.
I don’t think it’s anything too radical by global standards, and I have read there are similarities to what Singapore and South Korea already do [1] (though I don’t know too much about their programs).
It’s important to note that the exact details haven’t been finalized yet. So exact income requirements could change from current proposals/rumors. There was a lot of outrage about proposed provisions to revoke permanent residency for people who commit crimes or don’t pay taxes, but when they actually came through they were pretty fair, common sense type changes.
These changes come on the heels of drastically increasing requirements for the business manager visa (which, to be fair, was heavily abused as a kind of “golden visa” in the past). They’ve also significantly increased visa application costs - I think I paid like ¥5,000 for my PR application, and it is now ¥200,000.
It does feel cruel to apply new requirements retroactively to people who have already submitted applications. And the stories of people whose lives are being completely upended by the changes are heartbreaking.
Japan has a heavy shortage of workers [0], and it has been so for many years now. Your link cites the efforts from 2017, the reason wasn't some olive branch to humanity, Japan already was in dire need of working class people.
Right now the yen is so weak Japan salary look ridiculously low, there is the language barrier, and the low hanging jobs aren't great either (a ton in elderly care).
Their policies to restrict immigration will have few impact short term, as immigration is already slowing down and even Filinos, who have always been on the better side of immigration, are looking for better opportunities [1]. Longer term though, people will remember how it goes when Japan economy trends down, and the immigration going away might not come back even when the trend reverses. Especially as there will already be a probably better community built elsewhere.
To put that in perspective, US companies report similar rates of worker shortages in surveys [1]:
> The survey found that company size influenced hiring outcomes. Seventy-six percent of companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees reported shortages, followed by 75% of firms with 5,000 employees or more and 74% of those with 250 to 999 employees. Among smaller firms, 69% of organizations with 50 to 249 employees, 66% with 10 to 49 employees and 61% with fewer than 10 employees reported hiring challenges.
I'm not saying that there isn't a shortage of labor in Japan - just that business owners are never satisifed with the amount of labor available at the wages they wish to pay. And it may not be an existential shortage of labor like a lot of commenters are saying. Especially with recent developments in AI and automation.
The declining birthrate in general does seem to be an existential issue if it cannot be stabilized. But it is hard to predict population trends long term (when I was growing up the big concern was overpopulation and China was running its one-child policy - now they are facing population decline).
The weak yen is also definitely an issue right now - but it's impossible to predict where it will be in the future.
So yes, Japan is facing real problems. And stricter immigration requirements likely will come at some cost to economic output. But if they feel it is necessary to protect their social welfare programs and cultural identity, then those tradeoffs are theirs to make. And all of the doom and gloom comments saying things like "it's suicide" feel like a bit of an overreaction to me when you look at the actual proposed changes.
Racism, xenophobia, amplified by social media and far right political parties. It’s not too different from the dynamics we’ve seen in the rest of the western world
You know what creates 100 more trouble than immigrants ? Japan’s birth rate.
You know who have babies? Immigrants.
You know who pays social security for peuple when they get older ? Those grown up babies.
Do the math. Japan has much to teach the world but the most important lesson they are now teaching, is that people are stupid, easily manipulated, excessively xenophobic and absolutely happy to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly if it means not admitting they’re wrong. In Japan, in the US, in Europe and elsewhere.
And yet, according to available statistics, there's no a single western country where Muslim and African immigrants are not an additional financial burden. Even if we forget about safety, crime, ...
As a liberal in California, my views on immigration actually hardened a bit after a recent trip to Japan. I appreciated that everything there was just so Japanese. No ethnic enclaves, no zones or industry that I could see dominated by non-Japanese people. I just loved the fact that I was in Japan and surrounded exclusively by Japanese culture. Made me think of what international travel must have been like 150 years ago, where visiting another country was like traveling to a different world.
I think according to the official regulations of modern US liberalism, this makes me slightly racist, and I'm supposed to be dismayed that Japan doesn't have more multiculturalism??
I wonder if you'd feel the same in Brazil, if you'd say "Everything there was just so Brazilian" when there is no such thing as "Brazilian" without the necessary multi ethnic aspect. It's a country without ethnic enclaves but instead a culture that is very much a mix of all.
You don't have to be exclusively one race to be a unique country. The US just hasn't achieved a blended culture, but it doesn't mean it's not possible.
> But letting anybody do anything that would benefit them is of course not reasonable.
Who is talking about letting anybody do anything? The parent is talking about people working in tech as a means of upwards mobility. Is that not reasonable?
They are unfortunately the most common example of (subjectively) bad immigration policies seen first-hand among tech folks in the West (I.e. people likely to be on HN). The parent was obviously referring to this fact sarcastically. It's a tech trope.
As usual, the meme is ever alive around these parts. Anything Japan does is heralded as a good move™ and no impartial discussion can be had without the weeaboos coming out of the woodwork to put a positive spin on it.
But sure, we’ll see if limiting these odious gaijin coming in will solve their stagnant economy, fertility crisis and obsolete business practices. Good luck with their isolationism, it’s not the first time they’ve gone down that path, all to appease the right-leaning imbeciles that blame the immigrant for their politicians’ ineptitude at dealing with systemic problems. It’s the same all over the world.
I see roughly the same ratio of agreement and disagreement as usual. And even if it is different, it's probably more due to the specifics of the case, rather than an internet meme. Based on your writing, it sounds more like you have a grudge against Japan, rather than everybody else having some kind of opposite bias.
Doesn't seem they're really aware that they're something of an endangered "species". Although technically they'd still be endangered even if they open up seriously, as then there's heightened possibility of bloodline dilution. I wonder sometimes if that'd be a good or bad thing in the long run: loss of that which makes them pretty unique vs blending more with the world.
In my experience, born/raised in Japan, domestic Japanese people have a very different reaction to local "Hafu" people where one of their parents is a Caucasian person from the US, UK, AU, NZ (or similar), vs "other" countries.
I have a personal unscientific theory that some of it, domestically within Japan, is as simple as a heightened degree of racism towards people with darker skin color.
From research I've learned that placing a high value on blending in is a cultural thing. There's the resulting good, like the focus on harmony which promotes good relationships (and is a major contributor to the low crime rate), and there's the bad, like spurning those who look/speak different (I've heard stories from a few who went to visit seeing signs that gaijin aren't allowed in certain establishments, etc).
> (I've heard stories from a few who went to visit seeing signs that gaijin aren't allowed in certain establishments, etc)
I've heard stories more specifically that certain type of gaijin were allowed in certain gaijin-suspicious establishments (US/UK/Canadian tourists), while their counterparts of Indian, Bangladeshi descent were not.
That, and things like being an enthusiastic and early customer of British industrial/steam powered equipment in what we would broadly call the Victorian era. The early Japanese pre-dreadnought and dreadnought class battleships, for instance, were a clear descendent of British (or competing French) designs. Railway stuff as well. Lots of things that weren't British origin were American.
It seems they are very well aware. They've probably seen what happens to other "endangered species" (eg. the English or Swedes) when the floodgates are opened by treasonous bureaucrats chasing votes, economic metrics, or appeasing their destructive oikophobia.
Korean men and Japanese women make up the biggest share of international marriages in Japan so there's something more going on here that makes Japanese women highly desirable to men in general.
Requiring proficiency in the language is reasonable, but requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane. That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population
In the UK, only 47% are net tax contributors. I can't find what the same statistic is for Japan. I don't believe it's wrong for there to be an expectation that they be a net contributor.
Most countries need both VAT and income tax to fund their budget. Importing well off immigrants means they subsidize the VAT part only and likely do not generate income from Japan salaries. This is basically same problem as with digital nomads: they use the infrastructure which they do not fund proportionally compared to regular citizens.
Am I missing something here?
Dollar multipliers and sources.
A digital nomad is still economically positive when a) their money circulates locally, eg at cafes and restaurants and b) comes from outside the region. That’s because they’re bringing wealth generated elsewhere (ie, at their employer) into the region.
While you’re correct the state misses out on income taxes, they get taxes on further spending, eg, when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe.
Not specifically about digital nomads, but Amazon used to estimate their salary dollars induce $2.5 of additional local economic activity — as Amazon employees bought from local stores, the store employees did in turn, etc.
>when those digital nomad supplied dollars are used to pay wages at the cafe
Nations whose economies depend on foreign tourist coming to spend their money there, are some of the worst developed out there, have a disproportionately high low wage sector, and some of the highest wealth inequalities out there with the lowest opportunities for upwards mobility. Basically a dutch disease. Nobody wants their economy to be like that if they can avoid it.
Countries aren't gonna be improved by you moving to buy 2$ lattes there while you gentrify the locals in the process and making life more expensive for them, trapping them in perpetual indentured servitude catering to the digital nomad/tourist industry with little to no possibility of moving up the value chain. The only ones who will be happy you do this will be landlords and business owners in the hospitality industry but no developed economy is built with those two as its pillars.
Developed nations want an export economy of products and services aided by imported skilled workers to stay as long term residents and contribute in income taxes, not in latte purchases, and maybe even become citizens so they can become eligible for the draft in case shit were to hit the fan. Digital nomads are like locusts by comparisons, they come to treat your country like and amusement park in a race to the bottom while the going is good, but leave at the slightest inconvenience if now the 2$ latte now has to be 3$ due to increased labor protections, when the impoverished country next door sells it for 2.50$.
>In the UK, only 47% are net tax contributors.
47% of what? Of the immigrants coming in the UK are net tax contributors or 47% of the total population including locals?
47% of individuals live in households that are net contributors.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
> Across the UK, 53.3% of people lived in households that were net recipients in FYE 2024. This means that they lived in households that received more in benefits (cash and benefits in kind) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect).
The situation is skewed by the fact that 3.1 million people receive in-work credit because pay is so poor.
It's a straightforward subsidy for employer profits.
There are also 13.2 million pensioners. That's close to 20% of the population.
That stat is bogus though when used in this context. The least payed workers contribute the most to every day life of society in my opinion and pay the least tax.
If we consider outright slavery, would that statistic count a slave as a "non-contributing" member of society? After all, they must be fed, and housed, but pay no taxes. What a burden they are!
I do. It's like needing a credit check to get a job. It's a horrible death spiral: Japanese jobs can decrease wages from more supply, which can out you under the line, which makes it harder for you to contribute to the economy.
Isn’t this just a reflection of wealth inequality though? A “net negative” tax payer is just working a job that makes one of the net positive payers richer thus still bringing in more income for the country.
Depends how much of a burden you are to the social systems, if they exist in that particular country.
Or, you know, they live off of welfare without contributing to the surrounding society in any way.
The idea that 53% of people live off of welfare without contributing to society in any way seems pretty far-fetched.
I think I heard a crazy high number for how many in the u.s. use foodstamps? 12.3% according to this: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-people-receive-snap-be...
That doesn't necessarily mean recipients are unemployed. It could mean taxpayers are subsidizing low-wage employers through public assistance to their employees, with a minimum wage that hasn't increased since 2009.
And in some communities it's 90% and collected by people driving BMWs.
What percentage of immigrants being dependents on welfare would you consider reasonable?
You've missed the original point. Someone can be working a job and realistically pulling their own weight, but the system we have distributes that money to the owners and investors, who then pay tax and give some part back to the worker through welfare.
The country is better off having this person even if they are receiving welfare. Of course that's not the situation for all people on welfare, but the idea that the top percent of earners are doing all the work while the majority of people sit around getting stuff for free is obviously untrue.
0
The fact that we're assuming the tax code is correct and that humans are faulty for not measuring up to it is wild.
But is populists wet dream
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane
It would be insane for a country that is already dealing with an overburdened social welfare system to grant permanent residency to someone who is, say, 60 years old and doesn't have any savings or pension income to support them in retirement.
That's fair, but the stereotypical immigrant isn't near retirement. Positive migration tends to be related to youth, and it's hard to imagine that this will work for most.
Which, fair, it's their right to close the door fully, but lack of immigration and a greatly aged population sounds like a recipe for collapse.
The requirement is that your projected pension benefit, at your current income level, needs to match the average pension benefit for someone who worked for 30 years. And if you don't meet that requirement, whatever shortfall you have can be offset with an equivalent amount of savings.
It does not mean that you need to have 30 years of savings right now. Just that you are on track to get there by the time you retire.
There are a lot of people who won't qualify (and while it certainly sucks for people affected, this is by design) - but those who earn more than the Japanese average should generally qualify.
The US has something like this, but the income threshold is lower.[1] US immigrants in most categories have to show that they will not become a "public charge", that is, need US welfare benefits.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-issues-guidance-...
That's reasonable too. People who move to a new country should be able to support themselves there and have a good chance to thrive in their new home. If the average income of the population isn't enough for that to be possible, your country has bigger problems than immigrants
Manu tings are reasonable but not done. For example, it seems unreasonable that one country can print any amount of money due to being called the reserve currency and use it to influence countries around the world.
If you want fairness, start from the top and don’t punch down. I’m not against any definitions of immigration but generally most definitions aren’t reasonable. They are just downstream and issues of an upstream systems problem.
Mostly you need immigrants for the jobs that your osn population doesn’t want. Nobody is going to pay above average for those jobs.
If there aren’t any immigrants to work them, either the pay will increase or the product/service will disappear. Essential services and products won’t disappear, so this seems okay?
If we look at it from the other direction, we are artificially increasing quality of life by taking advantage of foreigners who have no better option than to work for little pay. Getting rid of this seems positive?
The US requirements are so much lower that calling them similar does a disservice.
The proposed requirements in Japan require earnings to exceed Japan's average and also for them to have an equivalent of 30 years of pension payouts saved up.
The US requirements are not as specific, but for comparison one of the numbers is that that families need to have an income requirement 25% higher than federal poverty guidelines, which very low compared to average US incomes.
they don't require 30 years saved up, only showing (somehow) that you will be able to generate such a pension equivalent over time. I suspect that will be very squishy in practice.
I was going by the article, which says this:
> Applicants will also be required to have a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts.
If there's a better article to read, I'd appreciate a link.
https://public-comment.e-gov.go.jp/pcm/download?seqNo=000031...
Google Translate:
> Draft Revisions to the Guidelines for Permission for Permanent Residence (Summary)
...
> Regarding the positioning of the "Permanent Resident" status of residence:
> ・ Explicitly stated for the first time that, as it is "the most stable legal status—entailing no restrictions on activities or duration of stay and presupposing a lifetime spent in Japan"—there is a "need for particularly careful screening."
...
> Regarding "2. Requirement for Independent Livelihood"
> ・ Underlying Principle: Explicitly requires an economic status equal to or better than that of Japanese nationals, both currently and in the future.
> ・ Income: Whether income consistently meets or exceeds the average income level of Japanese households based on household size (raising the standard).
> ・ Pension: Whether the projected future pension benefit amount reaches the level corresponding to 30 years of enrollment in the Employees' Pension Insurance at the aforementioned annual income level (newly added requirement; however, financial assets that can cover any shortfall will also be taken into account).
> “ive me your tired, your poor, > Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, > The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. > Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, > I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
The U.S. was founded as a nation of immigrants, and has a cultural history of being exceptionally immigrant-friendly (compared to other nations), especially with regard to immigrants without much means.
I don't believe other nations have any obligation to follow this example. On the contrary, they should be able to set whatever immigration policies make sense for them. But this model of letting in poor immigrants, letting them do the work that nobody else wants to do, and letting their kids become net contributors, does seem to have benefited the U.S. greatly over the past few centuries.
I dunno... 1790 Naturalization Act says only white people could become citizens. Sounds like they were friendly towards immigration from very specific countries.
Roosevelt's 1915 Americanism address also reveals this:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68152/68152-h/68152-h.htm
He says americanism "is a matter of the spirit and of the soul". In the very next paragraph, the so called "hyphenated americans" are condemned. This is perfectly reasonable.
However, note the examples used:
The implication is only the souls of white europeans were eligible for americanization.There is even legal precedent for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_...
In 1923, the supreme court decided an indian was not eligible for citizenship because he was not white.
So arguably the US was a white ethnoatate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, just over half a century ago.
I mean yes, obviously: the nation was founded with a giant genocide of native peoples.
I do imagine original white people were perhaps more keenly aware of the fact that this land was not originally theirs, and that other people should be let in and given a fair shot, even if they're poor.
I was merely making the argument that U.S. immigration policy has historically not been very classist (even if it was immensely racist), and not caring about the wealth of the incoming immigrants has worked out immensely well for the country over its lifespan.
Every single person who came through Ellis Island <https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-...>
* was a legal immigrant
* had passed a medical inspection
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Also don’t forget:
1) Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years.
2) 30-40% returned home
3) The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
4) Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York. And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York and Chicago today.
> Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years.
About ten and a half million of those in 15 years, from 1900 to 1914. Against a 1900 US population of about 76 million.
> The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants.
Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
> Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York.
Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
> And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York
The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
> and Chicago today.
Chicago Democrats were immigrants around the relevant time. Chicago Republicans were from older stock. Both were corrupt.
> Or, you know, because the political wind changed.
Assimilation was the effect of immigration restriction, whether or not that was the motivation. It broke up the chains of migration that facilitated maintenance of separate cultural enclaves.
> Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche.
Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
> The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island.
Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789. According to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall ("Following the 1854 mayoral election and the resulting mayoralty of Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over a century through its organized network of loyal, well-rewarded, and largely Irish Catholic district and precinct leaders.").
To be clear, the point isn't that they were Irish. As far as I can tell, Ireland isn't more corrupt than other western european countries. It was the political dynamics that arose from the presence of a large culturally distinct immigrant population.
> and Chicago today.
Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era, well into the 1970s: https://www.thelastward.org/p/what-happened-to-chicagos-iris....
> Canada and Australia never had a similar problem.
Greetings from Canada. I live in Montreal. We have more of a Mafia problem nowadays than New York (no RICO here), and we were comparable in the 1930s. Bootleggers, remember? Where do you think they were running the booze from? Same "market", same mob. Yeah, they managed to dominate everybody else. That's what I mean about "niches". In fact they did it worldwide, and according to Wikipedia they're prominent in Australia, too. These are transnational groups. The Mafia is also big in Sicily. Are you going to say that's because of (checks notes) Sicilian immigration? Specifically because of a huge wave around 1900?
We also have Hell's Angels here. Ethnically "white". No immigrant identification whatsoever, totally acculturated... although I assume some of them moved here from the US. Pretty racist and anti-immigrant, actually. Cool fact: I used to live two houses away from Sonny Barger in beautiful Oakland, California. OK, it wasn't actually that cool. Those guys were really noisy. But I assure you they did not come through Ellis Island.
Apparently Winnipeg has First Nations gangs (Indians to you). Kinda the opposite of immigrants.
... plus a grab bag of others, some of them organized by immigrants. Yes, organized crime tends to segregate itself ethnically, so if one group gets the upper hand, you're likely to see its ethnicity as the face of the problem. But all ethnicities get to play, and they will expand into any available vacuum. If you hadn't had the Italian Mafia (worldwide), you'd have had something else (at least regionally).
And it's not always ethnic. Apparently there's a gang in BC that actually calls itself the United Nations.
> Tammany Hall was not a political machine in 1789.
It sure was by 1854, eh, according to your own quote? That was 38 years before Ellis Island opened. Before the specific wave of immigration that you're claiming caused the problem. Goalposts. You are moving them.
> Irish domination of Chicago's political machine long outlasted the Ellis Island era
... and preceded it. Your own link says "Of the 28 most influential Chicago aldermen of the 1890s, 24 were Irish.". I don't think they teleported from Ellis Island and took over in under 8 years.
Would be nice if the people downvoting this tried to make an argument instead
> was a legal immigrant
Technically true, extremely misleading. The law placed vastly fewer restrictions on who was a legal immigrant for much of that period. Of course, it is true starting in 1921, and 1924, legislation was put in place to limit immigration by "undesirables" such as Asians, Italians and Slavs.
Curious...which one of those regimes do you want to bring back?
I'm not sure people should be forced to live with those they feel xenophobia towards, even if one grants that the feelings of xenophobia have no basis in reality.
Alright, how do I get rid of you?
Before I read your comment, can I see your papers?
They are free to move somewhere else. I don't see why you need to coddle that sort.
OK, so considering Sweden, if Sweden is flooded with immigrants, where should the Swedes who just want to live with other Swedes go? Australia??
Also you do realize that your preferred migration policy will lead to microaggressions (and possibly macroaggressions) against immigrants? If people don't have democratic means to keep out disliked foreigners, they may be tempted to try alternatives. The ballot box is ultimately an alternative to violence.
They can go anywhere they want to. If they can't handle it, they can leave.
And no, we don't negotiate with terrorists. If people try violence, they go to prison. We don't want antisocial people in our society.
Race-hate is a syndrome, not an entitlement.
Are you suggesting that all the immigrants in Sweden are acting and thinking exactly like Swedish people, and differ only in "race?" You think the Swedes are jealous about the people who don't need as much sunscreen? Otherwise, your comment is simply irrelevant.
Nah. Most people get along with others just fine. If you can't, there's something wrong with you.
Your preferred policy also leads to microagressions, where the mere presence of someone who doesn't 'look' swedish would set these 'people' off.
It seems more like 'xenophobia' is the real culprit here, and should be tackled directly instead of 'granting' it as a preference that doesn't need to be interrogated.
Now do a realistic summary of what it took to pass these checks, eg how details of a medical inspection or what level of resources (inflation adjusted) were required. Equating past practices with current standards is a bait-and-switch.
> was a legal immigrant
... as determined by an on-the-spot interview. Which was admittedly done in a very bigoted way.
> had passed a medical inspection
... which took about one minute to check for red flags. If you had red flags, they diverted you to quarantine. They were mostly looking for TB and some eye disease.
> had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
... by which they meant having as much as $25 on hand (call it $1000 in 2026, though that's a bit high), and convincing the interviewer that you could probably get a job. That convincing step did include claiming, in a way the interviewer found credible, to have skills beyond the "day laborer" level. But only just beyond.
> I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Good news: the medical requirements now are equivalent, the financial/self-support requirements are now much, much higher, and the vetting is vastly more thorough.
Why? The US doesn’t have a problem of too many people „draining“ the country resources.
Something like two thirds of the US federal budget is spent on some form of welfare. Assuming you want to keep that ratio you could spend more per person with fewer people withdrawing from that system.
Completely wrong, except possibly if you're defining Social Security as welfare, in which case honesty would compel you to note that no one draws Social Security except based on having previously made contributions via dedicated taxation for social security.
Just a reminder... Social Security requires 40 quarters (ie, 10 years) of income to even qualify for a pension. And the pension is based on what you earn, which is what you pay into the system.
Only 10 years? Damn, here in many EU countries you need to contribute much longer than that to qualify for receiving a pension. And supposedly we're the "socialist" ones.
I agree that Social Security is not plain welfare, but it has significant welfare components. Simplifying some, you get back something like 90% of the first $15,432 income per year but only 32% of income above that up to $92,988. (And above that, it's 15%.) Only getting 32% back of what you pay in so that the rest can be redistributed to others who made less could be considered partly welfare. Also, if you die too young, you don't get the money back, nor can you give it to your children. It's redistributed to other people. I'm not saying it's bad (I think it's probably good overall), but I can see how it's partly welfare.
The US doesn’t lack the capital for welfare. The country decides to instead waste its resources fighting wars, fighting its allies, fighting its trade partners. The money is here, there is no will to allocate it to welfare. You could reduce the number of people on welfare by a massive amount and none of the savings from that would get distributed to the remaining recipient
Those wars are essential to protecting our economic interests. An isolationist US is impossible. We're pretty much a modern imperial power.
The US economy did great prior to 1900 or so. During this period, we did not have significant military action outside of the Americas, and we avoided peacetime alliances. From 1820-1900 the US economy exploded from about 40% the size of the UK economy to about 200% the size of the UK economy.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-maddison-project-data...
Switzerland has a per capita GDP exceeding the US while pursuing isolationist foreign policy. They are the world's most popular country in opinion polls.
I hate to break it to you, but the world of pre-1900 has been dead and gone for a solid 120+ years, it was killed off by Europe getting itself into two stupid wars that the Americans had to come over and save them from. Nothing works the same anymore.
All those European countries get to invest in those nice social programs and isolationism because the US has at least up until now acted as world police and handled their foreign affairs for the most part.
Why shouldn't we let Europe do the world policing for a while? They're always complaining about whatever we do.
>"Those wars are essential to protecting our economic interests"
Translation - we bomb people for money. well thanks for being frank anyways. otherwise it is sick to hear all that moralizing about "us being a good guys"
No, they're essential to protecting Benjamin Netanyahu's ass. No more and no less.
Less vindictively, the only economic interest the US has in the Middle East is oil. Relying on oil for your energy needs is, in 2026, a choice and not a requirement. Wind, solar, and the batteries you need to store them are continuously getting cheaper. And for the people who are net consumers of energy - primarily the US, Europe, and China - renewables are better for everything, but especially they're better for energy independence!
The only things that require oil are airplanes, plastics, and industrial chemical processes (like we make asphalt out of oil and certain inks out of naphtha). Eliminating most of the energy demand for oil would mean a significantly reduced dependence on foreign oil, and more specifically, the political dependence on low gas prices. America rebuilt all its cities in the image of the car and, as a result, made gasoline/petrol a necessary ingredient of urban mobility. This was, again, a choice - we absolutely could have retained and grown our dense urban cores and we can still rebuild what was destroyed.
But this requires an entire governing body at every level that is not a corpse paraded by the ghosts of Tammany Hall, Standard Oil, and Hitler. The primary crisis in America that is driving these wars is a fundamental lack of political will for alternatives.
The US is now the world's top oil exporter thanks to fracking:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels?fuel=oil&met...
Then why is gas so expensive?
Because more money is made exporting it? You didn't think this was about you, did you?
Because we are keeping all the other dealers out...
On average, foreign born US residents use less public assistance then native born.
This is a statistic that is technically true but has some hidden nuance.
Depending on what gets counted, "public assistance" stats like this usually include medicare and social security. (Social security gets debated because of how it's paid-in, but I'm not here to argue that. The fact is, it gets included in these stats). Those two make up the dominant consumption of public assistance to the point that things we hear about in the media like food stamps are kind of a rounding error.
Medicare and social security are collected primarily by older people. Foreign born populations have much lower numbers of people in that age bracket than the general popualtion.
Combine those two facts and it's not surprising that when you look at charts of foreign born vs native born, the foreign born population uses less public assistance.
It's a statistic that is more about age distribution than anything. Like when you one of those bad maps trying to prove a point but really just showing population density of big cities.
Natives also use more in SNAP and medicade
I'd love to see some source for this, because from what I've seen, 59% of undocumented immigrants receive some form of welfare (the state of California spends roughly $10 billion a year alone on this) and documented migrants are at roughly the same rate, double the native born population's rate of 28%.
> I'd love to see some source for this [proceeds to throw out a bunch of source-free numbers]
I looked up the source for these numbers.
It's the Center for Immigration Studies, and they are notorious for being a right-wing think tank used to dress up up anti-immigration policy using misleading statistics.
How notorious are they? Well, they are listed as a hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center[1].
The numbers you're citing aren't 'welfare,' the biggest thing is using the education system. The thing that, long term, makes they into productive taxpayers. CIS doesn't figure the long-term benefits into their numbers because that would destroy their thesis.
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/center-i...
The HUD secretary mentioned the number, and the number was also included in a Congressional report, though it ended up being through testimony, also from that same source, which I hadn't realized. I'd been under the impression the one claim was independently sourced from actual federal data, rather being from CIS.
In any case, none of this amounts to immigrants using less welfare than native born residents, which is what I was asking sources for.
Not hard to find, here is a right wing, anti-immigrant anti-service source:
https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-wel...
The vast majority of the difference, according to the article, is social security benefits and Medicare. The non-retirement difference is very small.
> Native-born Americans use an average of ... $3,638 in means-tested benefits in 2023. By comparison, immigrants used ... $3,370 in means-tested benefits.
The article also ignores state provided benefits, and thus the disparity between documented and undocumented migrant populations. The article 's "much less" headline is not really supported by the evidence provided.
> That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
I am not sure in understand the issue, if Japanese want this, what’s the problem?
Just because some people want something that doesn't suddenly make it reasonable or wise. In this case it's a problem for many already successful people living in Japan currently who will be forced to leave. It's also a problem for Japanese companies who have hired those people or who want to attract foreign talent to positions that pay well, but don't typically leave someone fabulously wealthy compared to most of the people living around them. It's also a problem because the policy is coming in at a time of increased xenophobia and overt racism and while this policy is likely to reduce the total number of foreigners living in Japan, it's unlikely to address the problems people have with the foreigners who will remain, and it could actually make those problems worse.
It's their country. They can do what they want as long as they don't start another war.
I don't think anyone plans on trying to step in and intervene, but I hope people also don't shy from talking about how foolish this move is, the problems it won't solve, the problems it's likely to cause, and the people whose lives are being negatively impacted by it.
Why don't you trust the Japanese to know wha they're doing when it comes to their own society? After all, they're the ones who built an amazing country everyone wants to visit!
Because the yen is weak is a big reason why visiting is appealing. Its also a big reason why their population is dwindling.
The govt is just trying to point fingers at foreigners to hide their weakness. I think recently they made a big deal about foreign owned real estate then quickly forgot about that talking point when their own study showed it equated to something like .05% of their total housing.
That’s not the point I’m making. Japan is clearly a wonderful society, seeing as how many people want to visit and immigrate. Why not trust the people who built that society that they know what they’re doing?
you're on a discussion forum. The point is to discuss things. Why are you being such a scold about what we're allowed to talk about.
If you think this is true then you simply lack the creativity to understand how bad domestic laws can get.
Something must be done, this is something, we must do it!
Just because something can be done doesn't make it good for the society. Japan has a shrinking population and is currently dependent on immigrants for low wage work. Plenty of actions can make the current problem worse and have unintended consequences. Whether they happen or not is a political question, not a moral one.
Who determined "what they want?" Did you want your government to attack Iran? Are you responsible for it? Why not?
> Just because something can be done doesn't make it good for the society.
In this case the consequences will make people to elect a better government next time and try better ideas. Democracy at work.
That's their problem to solve however they want, if they want. The population shrinking by some large percentage doesn't seem to be inherently bad to me, and probably is good.
It's so laughable to me when people say "BUT THE SHAREHOLDER VALUE!" when we talk about things like the important life trends of millions of people.
For Japan, shrinking population will mean an aging population with no one to care for them.
Not if we have robots and AI.
A people can recover from that, though. That's not an existential threat. They may be in for hard times, but they will survive.
Can the same be said of all the populations importing millions of foreigners to prop up "muh GDP"?
> A people can recover from that, though
Absolutely. They’ll just go through a period of a bunch of social workers discovering a new corpse every three days. Whole towns dying because there is nobody to maintain the public services. The people will get exactly what they were asking for, and they’ll die for it.
>and they’ll die for it
I've yet to meet people immune from the inevitability of death, via the immigration policies of their country.
What exactly was your argument here? Because I'm not seeing the downside in what you wrote.
Your response reminds me of The Onion:
https://theonion.com/15-000-brown-people-dead-somewhere-1819...
A few generations ago they were enslaving people [0]. This is what racism can lead to. Maintaining their heritage, their way of life, some would say.
Hopefully their population decline doesn't hit them too hard. But that, and their lack natural of resources, could lead to bad things. Fascists and their ilk thrive in such situations.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan#World_War_II
> I am not sure in understand the issue, if Japanese want this, what’s the problem?
The problem is I’ve built my life here and they keep treating foreigners as a lesser life form. People here can unironically be standing next to me bitching about foreigners. Then turn to me and say something like “not you, you are fine.”
Clearly Japanese feel like they don't want immigrants or want very few of them, which is fine.
With these laws, they are pushing 99% of people out while saving face from being called racists.
I think every country should have a right over their borders. Japan wasn't built on multiculturalism like United States or Canada, so I'm not surprised.
That being said, I would probably think twice about traveling to Japan as a tourist.
United States wasn't exactly built on multiculturalism either.
Laws dating back to 1790 restricted naturalization to white people, which arguably makes the US a sort of white ethnostate from the very beginning. This stuff only really went away after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and repealing that act appears to be an objective of the american right wing as of 2026.
It really made me question whether it was possible for a third worlder like me to ever become an american.
I disagree, it's not fine.
Plenty of foreigners are in fact quite rude towards their new hosts though. It can and does bring out the worst in people, and I can't say I blame them.
The whole idea of naturalization is to assimilate into the new culture and become one of them. Far too many people just don't put in the effort to do that.
You are a guest in a home that belongs to others. You're not entitled to their indefinite hospitality
It would be fine if it was a well documented recurring issue that plagued society. As is it, it feels more like a canary in the coal mine, for dirtier times to come.
In practice, most visas are short term, and none of them will allow you to benefit from social aids for very long. At most I imagine you could extend your working visa to 5 years, get sick the first year and be at charge for the remaining 4 years ? There will be ink spent on these cases, but statistically how often does that even happen to need stricter laws ?
The current political climates needs the gov to look "Japan First" and these kind of rule change are very cheap to do, especially as the people directly impacted don't vote nor can complain. It goes well with the very anti-foreigner sentiment, especially as the current wave of tourists is very unpopular despite the money coming in.
The longer view is Japan getting less workers in total, yet more of the worse immigrants as they're calling for people who either don't need Japan (have enough money to go anywhere and don't need to think long term) or are willing to take more risks (high return grifts etc.), in a time where Japanese salaries and productivity are already lower than surrounding countries.
They're basically making a bad situation worse, just for short term political play, giving in on the worse trends.
We’re not allowed to have opinions?
Because it's super fucking cruel, are you a human?
This is cruel, populist politics designed to blame foreigners for all the problems and corruption the Japanese government has allowed to go on which has ruined their economy.
There has been a hard right swing by some radical minority parties which gained a lot of popularity fast by spreading Xenophobia online and the major parties have now adopted some of that to stay relevent.
It hurts innocent people just so those in power can stay in power.
Also Japan is a country which basically 100% relies on foreign countries to survive, so maybe the government there should be a bit more careful. For example they get most of their Natural gas from Australia for free..
There is nothing cruel about it. Nobody has been forced to go and live in Japan.
telling a person that has build a successful life after eight years, is assimilated and speaks the language and can support themselves that they have to leave on completely absurd conditions that virtually nobody could meet, including native citizens, is cruel by just about every definition of that term.
Those people have only ever paid in, have much better options than Japan at this point economically given how far the country has fallen behind, and the logical terminus of this is basically being some kind of ethnic chauvinist second world clown country.
If you're even turning skilled tech workers and law abiding people away your immigration problem is solved by virtue of being poor in another 10-20 years. Japan fell below replacement fertility in the 70s, 35% of the population is over 60, good luck caring for those tens of millions of people about to retire.
I agree, but unfortunately, looking at the news from Japan, far-right support rates are higher than one might expect.
So it's true that those in power are harming innocent people in order to maintain their power, but it's also true that Japanese people believe they are being harmed by foreign immigrants.
And some of it is actually true. Of course, conversely, there's also the problem of many Japanese companies hiring Southeast Asian workers at low wages and mistreating them.
But whether it's me as a Korean or Japan, both tend to have a certain authoritarian mindset instilled based on "ethnic" identity. So one aspect of this policy is "we only welcome rich foreigners who spend money and leave," and the media responds accordingly.
Strictly speaking, if you look at these policies strengthening restrictions on foreigners from a third-country perspective, you can see them from the angle of far-rightization. That is, sanctions against outsiders for the sake of internal cohesion[1]. But considering the severe aging population in Japanese industry right now, it's effectively cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face.
However, East Asians receive a somewhat different education from you, so that's how it is.
The real cause is the failure of Abenomics and the resulting weak yen, which benefits financial companies and exports but sacrifices the Japanese people—the incompetence of the regime is the problem. But because it's hard to grasp all of that complex background, people want to attack something else that's near them.
And also, because the morality of some underdeveloped countries (I know it's an example...) differs from that of developed countries, friction often occurs. Just as the sense of time differs between agricultural regions and cities, for instance.
[1]https://csrda.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/socialresearch/pr/26PressRel...
whats the saying? everything is downstream from economics?
They don't want to risk someone coming for a job, getting fired and becoming a drain on the social safety net. Able to care for themselves not just now, but for a while. It's a reasonable position.
That’s the case for every western country, and none ask for enough money to cover 30y of life. That’s way, way above the goal you mention
And Japan isn’t either. They are requiring that by the time you retire you’ll have paid at least 30 years into the pension system or have equivalent financial resources any gap.
Reasonable, but they're going about it in irrational ways. For example, a person on a student visa is allowed to set up a company in Japan, but technically they're not allowed to put in any hours managing it. There's a strict 28-hour/week working limit, and a person is allowed to operate as a sole trader performing very specific tass, but the moment they rent an office or hire an employee they're in violation of their visa.
So while it's very rational to demand strong language skills, and very rational to expect people to go with a certified school given the unique difficulty of the language, potential residents are essentially limited to earning part-time wages (typically much lower than full time) during that period, and virtually barred from proactively engaging in any other kind of economic activity. They could transition to a business manager visa after that, but it will have to be a new business set up from scratch which must include at least one Japanese hire as well as minimum language skills; essentially requiring business activity/know how and business planning which the person was barred from doing during the language acquisition phase.
It's not impossible to meet these criteria by any means, but it actively discourages bootstrapping and efficient use of available time.
To qualify to long term residence means that they worked for years and contributed with taxes during that period, so it’s only fair that they get protection in case they happen to lose their jobs.
For the government, the cost for any worker in the same circumstances would be the same. On the other side, the foreigners cost less to the government overall when they were educated and raised elsewhere.
I’m not saying you are wrong, just that the previous rules are already in place in that very direction, and the changes are being placed instead to please and gain political support.
If they can't find a new job in 30 years then there are larger problems.
That's not how good risk analysis works. You also have to consider the alternative that you exclude someone coming for a job they excel at while becoming a net benefit to society just because they couldn't support themselves in an eventuality that didn't come to pass.
> That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
That’s not the standard. The standard is making sure someone is really a huge contribution to the society such that it offsets the burden of immigration.
I wonder how big the population of people that know enough Japanese, would be a huge contribution to Japanese society and wouldn't be able to get a better deal somewhere else really is. Can't imagine it's more than a million people. And putting in the effort seems quite futile as you could lose your status at any point in time for political gain.
Of course it's Japans decision.
I think the argument is that the requirements should be stricter than "able to care for themselves".
From the article: In an announcement detailing the changes, Japan’s Immigration Services Agency stressed the need for foreigners to “live independently” and have “a stable life without the risk of becoming a burden”.
Their new requirements far exceed what is needed to meet that stated goal
You are failing to read between the lines. They simply want less foreigners. It is the same as the 100k fee for H1B.
> They simply want less foreigners
How is that "between the lines"? Yes, that is the goal. If your argument is that it's just because of simple racism or something, then make that argument.
There really needs to be a term like "racism" without the negative connotations that it now carries. Yes, in the strictest sense, Japanese people wanting fewer foreigners in their territory is "racist", but it's not racist.
I've heard "culturalism". It's devastating that this game even needs to be played. It should go without saying that rejecting foreigners under certain circumstances is not automatically "racism" in the petty sense.
It’s xenophobia. Doesn’t smell much better.
That's just the word we use for racism when the "other" isn't primarily a single visually distinct race. They're both low-quality words used mostly as insults rather than literally.
There's nothing wrong with the words. People with those beliefs just don't like their opinions accurately described lol. Hit dogs holler and all that.
Maybe it's and taking into consideration unforeseen calls upon their cash. Sounds reasonable to me.
Let's see how it works out for them. Screwing around with immigration on the precipice of a population crash seems like... Not a great idea.
The more welfare you have, the better of an idea this is. An aging country especially cannot afford to risk more wards of the state.
> and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years
It's a confusing guideline but this isn't accurate. You need to show an expected future pension (could be savings) equivalent to a salaried worker who paid into an employee's pension for 30 years. That's strict, but there will probably be a bunch of ways to show that.
> requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane
It isn't that hard to have above-average income – around 40% of Japanese workers do.
I think "a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts" may be much more challenging to meet, however.
The 30 years thing is insane for sure. Making more money than the average might be insane, it depends on how much more (which I didn't spot in the article, maybe I missed it).
the other issue is, there are lots of people who work and help out in the countryside where cost of living (and hence wages) are very low and forcing them to be above the whole average of the county is a bit onerous i think.
probably a better idea is average for the prefecture they live in, but i guess they want to simplify things or discourage ppl from moving to the countryside? idk; most people are in tokyo/osaka to be sure...
It's not about being reasonable, it's about having a good reason to kick basically everyone out who isn't 100% Japanese, or who has enough money to prop up their aging population and get almost nothing in return.
Seems like they want to keep their culture and their country for their people. Yes… villains, apparently.
If the goal is to preserve their culture I doubt that insisting that everyone who moves there have "fuck you" money is going to help as much as they think it will. At least some percentage of those who meet that bar will be people who are selfish and very accustomed to just doing whatever they want. The more money people have, the greater their ability to reshape the environment and culture around them to suit their individual preferences. Rich people aren't moving to remote villages in bumblefuku nowhere either. Having a bunch of rich foreigners concentrated in the major (and culturally influential) cities will only make it worse.
yea really. The reality is that people who want to move to Japan, learn Japanese, devote their life to this are probably very interested in Japanese culture. There is no risk to Japanese culture from these people.
It's absolutely more likely that the very wealthy that aren't taking as many risks in moving to Japan are not going to care about Japanese culture.
They have a rapidly aging society and a high national debt load (which also means a more shallow economic growth curve into the future), it’s reasonable to exclude anyone who might even have a chance of being a burden. High value immigrants always have value, either in wealth or economic potential, anyone else is charity if they cannot provide surplus economic value once their own needs have been met or support themselves off of wealth or income they bring with them.
It’s unfortunate when we don’t get picked for the dodgeball team. Life is inherently unfair and mostly a lottery.
(not against foreign aid charity by any means, but delivering it distinct from immigration policy is potentially more efficient and optimal in many ways)
I'm not certain. In an aging society, the thing they'd need are young laborers. People with 30 years of savings are unlikely to be either young, nor laborers.
Maybe those wealthy immigrants are very talented people who are very good at, say, managing an insurance company or researching pharmaceuticals, but Japan has a glut of 55-year-olds who can do that stuff very well. They're running short of young people who can be nurses, junior machinists, and construction workers.
In a macroeconomic sense, wealthy people might be able to pay for the services they need from their own pockets, but functionally it's not that different than being unemployed (unless they choose to work). They would be almost purely adding demand to the economy. The wealth they are bringing represents supply that they added into the economy in the past and abroad, and now they have a wallet full of paper with which they can buy services for the next 30 years in Japan without having to do any further productive work.
I don’t disagree, and a lot of this discussion is about the future of automation and having sufficient nation state capacity to meet an aging populations’ needs. With that said, you want to attract the right young immigrants to come and stay: willing to integrate, supportive of their adoptive culture, and a net positive to the economy and community. They are a guest until chosen to become a fellow citizen.
High value immigrants always have value
No they don't. Such a person might use their existing wealth to import goods or commodities, undercutting domestic competitors, extract wealth from the local economy, and then decamp. I'm not arguing that people with high net worth necessarily behave like this, but economic benefit to the host is by no means a given.
For example, the market for vaping-type products in Japan (technically 'heated tobacco') is dominated by American companies (legally) and SE Asian criminal syndicates (illegally). The legal products generate high tax revenue for the government (but not for Japanese tobacco companies) but it's foreseeable that much of the tax benefit will be offset by higher future healthcare costs, while the net profits of the business operation disappear overseas rather than remaining within the economy.
They have issues so they had better import people who won’t share their culture and beliefs?
Sweet deal.
The percentage of the global population with fuck you money is so vanishingly small that a nation of 100 million such as Japan, could import them all with almost zero impact on their culture.
Furthermore, it’s deeply disingenuous to suggest that inconsiderate people only exist on the upper end of the income distribution. Assholes who want to take over and control others are found at every income level. If you want to keep your country from descending into Marxist dystopia then making fuck you money a requirement for immigration is not a terrible idea.
Well stated
50th percentile + 30 years subsistence is not "fuck you" money, but regardless, income has multiple effects, not only cultural. They don't want to be financially supporting foreigners, of course.
30 years of money banked is quite a bit no matter which way you slice it.
"Quite a bit", yes, I agree with that location for the goalposts.
A rough calculation suggests the floor for '30 years subsistence' is about ¥120m/$800k, a sum that's pretty much impossible to accumulate at the 50th percentile of wages.
It’s pretty much the definition of fuck you money
Having enough money to not lift a finger until the year 2056 is absolutely in the "fuck you" zone.
That's fine, it's just a semantic argument about how people use the term, which doesn't affect my actual assertion, which is that it's not an unreasonable bar.
30 years of living expenses banked is absolutely "fuck you" money. 50th percentile income is not.
There is exactly one solution to that problem: raising the birth rate by any means necessary. There is no nation without natalism.
Also, reducing immigration without natalism will result in economic collapse. Old people are extremely expensive. The old tax the young to pay for themselves. If there are no young people to tax, the music will stop quite abruptly.
They also want foreigners to not depend on their welfare system. The horror.
That seems completely sane and I am happy for the people of Japan that they get to enjoy such a law.
It's their country, can't they do what they want?
The basic premise is absurd on its face that a country should ever be expected to even allow immigration especially if it does not want it.
I just find it odd so many non-Japanese media and commentators weigh in on this.
Japan is not a multicultural country. You can't become Japanese through paperwork. It is very much through blood heritage, your language and cultural proficiency.
The bar to be Japanese is much higher than say Canadian or French. So why shouldn't they create laws that is aimed at benefiting themselves and their country without depending on foreigners?
Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
> I just find it odd so many non-Japanese media and commentators weigh in on this
What is odd about it? People comment on every country immigration policies. Why would Japan get a special exemption
> People comment on every country [sic] immigration policies
That's the world as it is, not necessarily as it should be. Not being a citizen of the country in question, or part of the culture, and most importantly, not being one of the people that deals with the consequences of whichever choice is made, means your opinion counts for so little as to be barely worth sharing
So, who or what organization authorizes your opinions?
> Also if you have a business and you don't have $125,000 you are not going to make it in Canada or America either.
I had less than $10k to my name when I moved to Canada. I have done very well since.
> I have done very well since
How about Canada? Did it become better or worse since then?
My ancestors were dirt farmers with absolutely nothing despite their health and work ethic that moved here in the 1930s. Do we think Canada is better than then?
We really, really under value the impact of low income, low education immigrants imo.
Eg. The railway that created this country was built by low income Chinese workers that probably didn't even speak English.
Canada doesn't exist without the effort of low income, low education people.
I was born Canada. Lived here my whole life. I'm ~40ish years old
It's absolutely become worse since the 80s
I get a lot of shit from my fellow countrymen when I say it. Rose colored glasses, etc
But nah. It's way harder to be successful here than it was even 20 years ago
This is just true everywhere though.
Not, it's not. Most of asian countries got better in the last 20 years
And ironically, not Japan.
because of outsourcing?
It feels normal in a globalized world for commentators around the globe to observe and weigh in on the decisions of any country, especially one of such economic importance and cultural significance as Japan.
That being said, I wholeheartedly agree on your points regarding Japan not being a multi-cultural country. And this, indeed, is rarely (if ever) mentioned in articles such as the one posted here.
Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
> Japan is an island. It has always been and not just from a geographical perspective. Its very culture and history are ones of isolation. The restrictions are not new, the perspective "Japan first" is not new - these have always been there, they are at the very core of the nation.
That's not at accurate from what I know of Japanese history. You seem to be over-indexing on the (relatively) brief Tokugawa-era sakoku policy and ignoring the thousands of years surrounding it where Japan was an active importer of culture.
Kanji, government structure, Buddhism, law, art and more were all imported from China and hugely influential in Japanese history. After the the Meiji Restoration, Japan explicitly set out to Westernize and went abroad to study European and American institutions, invited Westerners in to help build European-style banking systems and government systems, adopted Western clothing, architecture, military organization, legal codes, etc. etc.
If anything the Japanese are masters at importing the things they like of foreign culture and then modifying to make it their own. They have always been importers of culture.
There lies the thesis you pointed out. The point of these articles and coverage seems to be aimed at "Why isn't Japan multicultural yet, so racist!" which makes no sense. Japan has been inhabited by Japanese language, culture and homogeneous people for thousands of years.
There is absolutely no need for Japan to become multicultural or any other country for that matter because not being multicultural isn't a fault or a sin.
I don't know why so many in the West demand this on other countries. There's just something very unnatural and unrealistic and scary to expect a homogeneous country like Japan to suddenly start calling a clearly non-Japanese looking person Japanese. It's going to create huge problems for Japan that won't benefit it or its people by any measure.
> Japan is an island
So is Sicily… and yet it's quite diverse…
People criticize everything all the time. Why wouldn't people?
I mean should we shut down hacker news? the whole point is discussing.
Through blood heritage ?
Explain why the blood is needed. Is it perhaps because Japan uses a different type of oxygen that needs different hemoglobin?
Dude ethnically Japanese people that were born in Japan, lived their entire childhoods in Japan, are no longer considered Japanese if they live outside of Japan for 5-10 years.
People who have lived their entire lives in Japan, but are not 100% ethnically Japanese, will literally never be accepted as Japanese.
this is colloquially referred to as blood-and-soil...
The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
It’s actually the opposite, the Japanese government may not realise it yet, but these rules ensure basically only economic migrants will come to Japan.
I’ve been living in Japan for a cumulative ~11 months and the number of white people I’ve seen working in 7-11 is zero. Why? Because such roles are simply not attractive for them, and they don’t want to put up with the BS. The people who will do anything to live in Japan are the people with little prospects in their home country.
In a sense you’re right, but the people from developed countries coming to Japan will be the handful of millionaires who can afford to essentially buy their way in through the business visa, like the YouTuber PewDiePie did.
> The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class
Not true - a youtuber from Germany who lives in Japan since about 10 years, was denied citizenship recently. And he'd make more than enough money.
https://www.youtube.com/@NihonGoo
The thing is really true: Japan is against more immigration. You'll always be a gaijin there if you come from the outside.
> there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism
Other countries are also very much against mass immigration. Japan just does it in a very strange way.
You're misunderstanding the immigration requirements: who is considered doesn't necessarily mean everyone that fits the requirements will be accepted. It's a requirements list for exclusion, doesn't say fitting the requirements implies inclusion.
I mean, to get the Japanese take on immigration, you could go to 5chan and check out the temperature over there. Japanese don't frequent this board, so what you will get is mostly North American and Western European (not even eastern European)
I'm not saying I'm surprised it's largely western people (like myself) that are commenting here, what's surprising is how much nationalism they have for Japan without living there or being ethnically Japanese.
> I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
It can be asked the other way around. Is it worth it to completely destroy the order in the society for the sake of one generation of elderly?
I live in the Netherlands in a black neighborhood, and let me tell you, it's a real shithole. These people are not interested in getting jobs, they just live off neverending money from social programs - with the most expensive one funnily designed to keep them poor for generations - lots of social housing that prevents them from taking part in the housing market going to the moon.
The crime rate is unbelievable. Children literally carry guns around. How do I know? I witnessed a kid shooting another kid with a real gun on my street. Before that I also saw a similar situation from my window one street away.
The lack of respect to anything is obvious. They drop trash on the street because naive taxpayer like me will pay for cleaning. Dudes often harass people on ebikes or scooters because they know that can get away before you react. Loud noise at night? Suck it up.
With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France.
Naturally, these people have Dutch citizenship, so it's not easy to kick them out. Not that the Dutch are interested - I was legally considered a victim of yet another shooting so I got updates on the legal case, and it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. That's Dutch justice system for you.
The Japanese understand this. A generation of tough times is something a society can easily recover from. Meanwhile you can undo a failed immigration program only with ethnic cleansing, and nobody wants that.
> but the wealthiest
News flash, poor people are not wanted in most countries of the world, everyone already has their own poor population to deal with.
Equating anyone with less than 30 years of median pension payouts with 'poor' is an absurd premise, why would you make such a ridiculous argument
I said nothing about that, it’s not news to me. That might be the case today, but there was a time when countries in the western hemisphere like America were importing massive numbers of the poor and destitute, not to mention even enslaved people. Not that I’m arguing for a return to indentured servitude and slavery, but there are clearly times when poor people are wanted or at least tolerated en masse. Such as when you are building a new country and need settlers and frontiersmen, or when your population is struggling to keep the economy up due to an aging native population with hardly anybody to look after them.
> everyone already has their own poor population to deal with
Yikes, that is quite the dehumanizing framing
Edit: A person commented "why?" before deleting their comment, which I had started responding to. I still want to give my response:
Because an enlightened government is for the people (and an unenlightened government is not worth having). The purpose of a government is to care for the welfare of the people, not to be the securer of private wealth for the wealthy. The above comment frames it as "dealing with" an undesirable population. That population is the people, and it is a perversion to think otherwise.
How? It seems realistic, not brutal (though reality is a bit brutal).
Edit: Your update seems unrelated. I can't connect it to what the parent said. They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor, and you responded as if they said we should not support even our own poor, in favor of supporting the wealthy. There's no connection there.
> They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor
The original comment did not say what you claim.
The original comment framed it as “dealing with” the poor population. That is bad framing. The role of government is to take care of the people, not to “deal with” them. That framing is important because the people are not a problem to be dealt with. They are to be protected and cared for. The framing is important because it dictates what is accepted and what gets done.
Most immigration seems to me as some form of wealth differential to attract the relatively poor foreigners giving them less rights than local population.
Middle East runs on poor people from the subcontinent and Africa.
Hong Kong depends on live-in foreign labor who have to camp out in public spaces on their day-off.
America is built on poorer labor of every kind - enslaved African cotton farmers , indentured Chinese railway workers, famine stricken Irish, or more recently Latin American or H1B Indians in tech.
Some countries try to attract the richest percent like New Zealand, however it is not economically meaningful nor is major portion of immigrants globally or within their countries even.
Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights.
> as they definitely work harder for less pay and rights than the local poor.
Why would I want to support the introduction in my country of what is virtually modern slave labor practices by abusing and exploiting the poor and desperate foreigners so that some business can get richer because they don't want to pay or provide decent working conditions or invest into automation?
Especially that a lot of those cheap laborers without rights aren't even doing work to the benefit of the community (elderly care, construction etc) but to the benefit of a few wealthy and unscrupulous business owners (Amazon, Uber Eats, etc) who are addicted to cheap exploitable labor.
>Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights.
Yeah, but there a major differences in which these are implemented that can make immigration a success or a failure.
Some countries that you also mentioned like Middle East, Hong Kong, but also Singapore import those workers for cheap labor so they can do the work the locals don't want and in exchange migrants make money to send back home, making it mutually beneficial, but they don't get the right to permanently settle there or gain citizenship because they don't want them as citizens, they just want temporary workers that will work and then leave when they're no longer useful or wanted.
This however does not apply to most western nations where migrants can settle permanently and relatively easily become citizens with voting rights in a relatively short timeframe(at least in EU), and that's where the anxiety of the locals comes from and also their hatred of migrants. They're importing an alien culture they're not fond of as cheap labor, that once settled and granted voting rights, if not integrated properly and harboring animosity, can demographically displace them via their higher fertility rates(natives are already minorities in some major EU cities) managing to out-vote them and force their culture onto them democratically, or worse, use their majority status to take revenge for how their ancestors being treated as cheap labor. Either way, this is a recipe for endless racial tensions or even conflicts in the future, that isn't being priced in to the economic upsides of mass migration which only looks at GDP.
Wanted by whom?
That, of course, is the actual real question in this debate and all the other similar debates. Some people benefit from an influx of very low-pay people, and some people don't.
Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness despite immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai. If the immigrants in Japan were behaving exactly the same as Japanese, just saving money on sunscreen, you wouldn’t be seeing these measures.
For Dubai specifically, there is a mix of foreigners, a large percentage being labourers from South Asia. The orderliness we see, I think is largely due to strict* and harsh laws.
The laborers are heavily segregated from the native population. I think it’s morally bankrupt to have a quasi-slave class of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis that does all the work, but is hidden from view. But that is the only way anybody has found to maintain a clean and orderly environment like Dubai while having low skill immigration from the subcontinent.
The number of times I (white, living in Japan) have raised concerns about anti-foreigner sentiment, only to be told “they’re not talking about people like you”, would beg to differ.
Oh please, everyone not in denial can certainly see there is a racial component to this. I also didn't only include "black" and "brown," some kinds of Asians are also being gatekept. Do you deny that Japanese society (like countless others) has a racism/xenophobia problem? Isn't it commonly known information that even people of other races/ethnicities who have successfully immigrated there or are just visiting as tourists are sometimes not allowed in certain venues with explicit messaging? And that this is commonly tolerated there? Isn't Japan the same country that barely 80-odd years ago was on a brutal campaign across several parts of Asia where they targeted non-Japanese with massacres, torture and live human experimentation among other things? Many of those people are still alive (ironically, some are probably among the elderly and isolated who need help right now). Isn't Japan the same country that still regularly denies their well-known and documented atrocities during that period?
??? There's literally a white person in the article that is also reconsidering their situation? Why do you keep making this about "black, brown and east Asian" people?? They are xenophobic to literally everyone on Earth.
I included white people too in the original comment, maybe try reading.
> Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
This? I am not commenting on this part. Hot take: I actually want Japan to stay Japan, I don't want Japan to turn into anything other than Japan. Its a good place to live in exactly because it is Japan. They don't have to change to accept more tourists, you have to change to be accepted by them.
No, I am not white, I am East Asian.
It has nothing to do with race. It’s about keeping our foreign cultural and social norms. If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted, then you’d have a point. But that’s not the case.
All of your handwaving is irrelevant to a Japanese person in 2026. What matters is that democratic societies are entitled to use the levers of government to create the kind of society they want to live in. I visit Japan regularly, and the last time I went with my kids it was very apparent that my rowdy Bangladeshi-American kids were inconveniencing people. In a country where I see people walk blocks out of the way to cross at a crosswalk, instead of crossing in the middle of the street, I can understand and accept our permanent presence there would be unwelcome. Japanese people shouldn’t have to welcome American or Bangladeshi or any other foreign social and cultural norms into their community.
If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted
Koreans fit that bill; there's a lot of ethnically Korean people whose families have been in Japan multiple generations (not just assimilated as first-gen immigrants) but there's still significant social prejudice against them; life people of Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai descent who've grown up in Japan as opposed to being recent arrivals. If you haunt Japanese nationalist online communities you can see this on a daily basis.
I don’t think you can categorize the conflict between Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese as “racism.” Those countries are neighbors with a tremendous amount of history. That’s its own, separate thing, like Greeks versus Turks or Bangladeshis versus Pakistanis.
As it turns out, I'm also of a very similar background to your kids, a South Asian American that is, and one who would be accepted in Japan just fine (I already have highly educated and well off relatives living there permanently). Frankly, I have to say, you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority and looking up to the great Japanese people; you probably have a similar perception of America/Canada and western Europe. I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way (if only your kids are desi but not you).
Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place/background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when we/they don't know how to behave!? To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese.
Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters nor future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk.
> you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority ... I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way
Why are you saying "race/culture" like it's the same thing? It's like you're trying to use race, which is superficial and irrelevant, to shield culture from criticism. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, but hated the culture, so he left. That's not a problem, it's smart. There are better ways to think and act and worse ways to think and act.
> To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better
So you're just in denial! You can see it, but you can't make yourself acknowledge it.
The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context.
No, I’m not in denial, I just have the rational ability to let principles override my occasional emotional reactions, it’s part of being a truly high-minded and intelligent adult human being, certainly too much to expect from everyone, I’ll acknowledge that.
Race is not superficial or irrelevant, it should be, but racists exist. You’re in denial about this because you have a deep-seated inferiority complex and what some call “internalized racism,” which again, is quite typical of a certain sector of desi immigrant populations, especially those who come from very disadvantaged or discriminated backgrounds. You want to believe race or racism isn’t a thing because otherwise you’d have to face the facts that you’re often thought of as lowly just for the way you look or where you’re from, and you don’t really fit in with the people around you, that you are and will always be thought of as “different.” Again, I know how that feels, but unlike you, I have principles that allow me to engage with the world without being in denial and also not discriminating against others because I faced discrimination myself. I’ll say though, I appreciate you not denying that you feel this way.
Racism and culture are not the same but they are subject to very similar forms of discrimination and very often by the same kinds of people. The Venn diagram of racists and xenophobes is the closest thing to being a circle without actually being one. I am not in denial also that there can be elements of corruption in a culture, and I’ll admit some of those exist among South Asians. But, the reality is there are elements of corruption in every culture, do you think American culture is perfect? If you do, I have to believe you’re not living in the same reality as the rest of us. The glorious Nippon you believe in is also steeped in cultural corruption, you deliberately ignore their recent history and in fact their current culture as well. Ask people belonging to discriminated classes there or even regular Japanese people if things are perfect over there. There is rampant debauchery, exploitation of women and young girls, problems of alcoholism, high levels of work-related stress because of cultural expectations of showing loyalty to the company and leadership. These are all elements of corruption that have negative impact, the only thing Japan does really well is cleanliness and crime prevention. Things aren’t perfect but they do try to be orderly, so why are you regularly visiting them when your brown self is prone to being dirty and committing crimes? Why make more work for them?
Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are and none of them have this kind of self-hating feelings of inferiority. I think it’s because we naturally take for granted the 1st world benefits we grew up with whereas people from disadvantaged backgrounds who immigrated as adolescents sometimes seem to think they’ve reached paradise and go out of their way to present themselves as servile and not concerned with discrimination at all, just being thankful and humble to glorious white people, and in this case even adopting their externalized nationalism towards Japan. This is just a feeling though, I am not saying it with any certainty.
> The oblique or slash doesn’t imply they are the same thing, it stands for “or,” meaning the preceding predicate applies to both, i.e., they are treated the same way essentially in this context
But you shouldn’t treat them the same way. They’re fundamentally different. You can be perfectly happy being Bangladeshi as a matter of DNA, while hating the culture of the country. Shit, that’s like half my extended family. We all got the fuck out. How many people are there in NYC or Chicago from the redneck parts of Alabama who hate the culture back home? It’s the same thing! Those people aren’t “self hating white people.” They are just people who think there are better ways to live and act than the way their ancestors did.
> Lastly, I have this nagging feeling you’re not actually born/raised in the US, because I know a lot of desis like myself who are
Haha, that explains a lot. You’re surrounded by white people, so you feel this affinity to your co-ethnics, which compels you to defend a culture that you didn’t even grow up in. That’s irrational. You’re an individual. You can look at the world and just see who is doing stuff that works and who is doing stuff that doesn’t work. You don’t have to yoke yourself to people you have nothing in common with other than skin color.
You’re correct, I wasn’t born in the U.S., and neither was my mom or my dad. So we actually understand the problem with the culture back in old country. We lived there. We’re not analyzing it through the lens of white people from the other side of the world. You don’t need to psychoanalyze me to understand why I like Japan and dislike Bangladesh. I have eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell. This is objective stuff. The people who talk quietly, cross at crosswalks, queue up, etc., have a better culture than the ones that don’t. And they have every right to be afraid of immigrants from places that don’t do that.
Are you saying that behaviour is strictly determined by one’s race ?
Didn’t we abolish that and agreed there is no such a thing as race in case of humans ?
Who brought up the question of tying behavior to race? Whether race exists is not the question being discussed here, regardless of the biological existence of race or not, there is a social perception of it existing and that is commonly used in the society in which (and I presume this is true for most of us) I live. I was asked an implied question about bringing up race and thus answered with the social perception in mind. You might need to ask yourself what or whom you are actually arguing with, because it doesn't appear to be me.
You’re the one who brought up race when nobody mentioned it. Race is a red herring when talking about immigration. Japanese people come in a wide variety of skin colors. People in Japan aren’t upset about skin color. People in Japan are upset about having to deal with other people who have a different cultural background, social norms, habits, language, etc.
Hey, it's the self-hating brown person again, stalking another one like yourself through the comments for disagreeing with you now, are you? Race is an inherent part of any immigration discussion in the modern world. Do you think US immigration policies have nothing to do with race right now? You'd be a dumbass to think so (not surprising in the least).
Race only comes up because cultural relativists like yourself try to inject it into the discussion to derail any discussion of culture.
The funny thing is that you acknowledged in your post above that you have problems with the culture too! You accuse me of being a “self hating” “brown” person. But in reality you have an irrational loyalty to your ethnic group. You feel compelled to defend a culture you don’t necessarily share because you see it as linked to an ethnicity that you do share.
Also really? Japanese people come in different skin colors is part of your argument? The overwhelming majority are very similar, and you know very well perception of race has little to do with color or is at least not exclusively about color. There is no way an adult human being living America today doesn't understand that. And are you aware that even natives to the islands of Japan like the Ainu who are actually of a different race and color also face discrimination there and have long struggled against this? Again, please try to use your head a bit instead of commenting while emotional/drunk.
This is 1000% a race thing. Chinese and Korean immigrants who look and sound Japanese won't face problems. Westerners will.
And I'm okay with that
As a resident of Japan, this is particularly funny to me since those two countries are exactly the ones the authorities are trying to limit immigration from. Japan is _very_ racist when it comes to Korea, and China "buying all the land" this past decade is a frequent trope of the news (also that the Chinese cheat the NTA and pension system and never pay a dime).
Then of course you have crime (Vietnamese) and the right-wing idea that the Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians come here to steal Japanese (low wage) jobs (that nobody wants to do).
Nobody gives two fucks about immigration from north America, Europe or Australia.
I believe this is normally the point where a typical HN or reddit user is supposed to come in and mention "whataboutism." Criticism of Japan's immigration policies (which the OP article is about) is in no way an approval (or even comment) on immigration policies of other countries.
Yeah I don't see how what were doing here is shocking, considering what everyone else is doing right now.
Nobody claimed it was very different or that others are doing things better, at least I have not claimed such. Think logically for a minute, does (nearly) everyone doing something naturally make it a good thing? Are we not allowed to be critical of things every nation state does? I would wager every nation state has some degree and kind of corruption baked into its political process, if not officially then at least in practice. Should I then hold back on criticizing corruption in Indian or Chinese or Russian or American politics because hey every country has some degree of it?
I didn't claim it's good. I said it's not shocking. The world is turning to shit, but Japan's immigration rules tightening is completely in line with everything everywhere.
It's really unfortunate that they have approved these changes. I know at least 7 people that have decided to leave Japan because of it. They were making enough money to support themselves, but under the rule they basically gave no chance of ever reaching that new income requirement. Some jobs just don't have that much upward financial mobility. Which is fine if you live outside the city without a large family, but these rules are harsh to anyone that isn't working a high pay job. Permanent recidency would have allowed them to work outside their visa category, easily start a business, and utilize their Japanese language skills in a larger market.
Its quite a shock since historically the government has moved extremely slow when implementing policies that have a large impact. But the last 6 months have been extremely anxiety inducing with a new immigration change being announced and approved every month.
>I know at least 7 people that have decided to leave Japan because of it.
Wouldn't that make the Japanese locals happy as that means (in theory) 7 new job vacancies and 7 more free homes on the market for them?
Even if that's not exactly how this works in practice, if that's how voters see it, then they will support it.
A politician can spin it that way sure, despite foreigners owning 0.12 percent of property and most foreigner jobs (at least the ones my friends have) requiring fluent English. It's not a threat to Japanese people, but with the right populist figure, anything can sound like a threat. What I find so sad about this is the lack of empathy for people that worked hard to build a life here, paid their taxes, and followed the law. They did nothing wrong, but are the targets of a population primed to take their economic woes and anger out on people simply living their life peacefully.
Shitty situation I'm sure but no matter how you spin it or complain its shouting into the void. Whether there was real plus or minus ultimately as you pointed out make up a very microscopic fraction of Japanese economy and priority from the Japanese point of view, who's voice almost always override those of foreigners.
It would be nice for everybody to be happy but its clear Japanese who are the rightful owners of the land are not, and thus they have a right to vote and through consensus decide on what they perceive to be best for their national interests.
Maybe it's good for them maybe it's not but it won't be heard like all the comments here including mine or visible to real Japanese people living in Japan.
>They did nothing wrong, but are the targets of a population primed to take their economic woes and anger out on people simply living their life peacefully.
If you check out history books, you'll be surprised(or not) by how often that happens.
>What I find so sad about this is the lack of empathy for people that worked hard to build a life here, paid their taxes, and followed the law.
Economic hardships and scarcity will turn everyone into animals. Every society, even the most kind, peaceful and orderly is only 3 missing meals away from killing each other for the last piece of bread. Except before killing each other, they'll first kill foreigners. Story as old as time.
Japan does not have a shortage of homes - they have a surplus. Their economy very much need younger workers as their birth rates have fallen. But instead of simply allowing new workers in, they're choosing to devalue the shit out of their currency, then complaining about the huge influx of tourism that it triggered.
(in theory) 7 new job vacancies and 7 more free homes
No. Japan already has low unemployment and high overtime demands due to worker shortages, and property is already cheap (even in most cities other than Tokyo) due to a combination of falling population, complex construction/demolition codes, changing lifestyles, and a different view of asset classes/investment practices from the US.
It's kinda like how nobody likes inflation (other than certain kinds of debtors) but a deflationary economy isn't a good solution to that problem. This will have a similar effect because the people leaving are likely to be the most culturally assimilated/affiliated with decent language skills etc., but their departure won't alleviate the demand for additional labor in industry and agriculture so there will probably still be a net increase in short-term and illegal foreign residency.
yeah a misguided fixed pie scarcity mindset
This is certainly going to conflict with their moves to make it easier to attract aged care workers to the country. Perhaps all the elderly people are expected to patriotically look after themselves?
https://unseen-japan.com/foreign-elderly-care-workers-japan/
They're banking on robots with advanced AI brains to take care of them.
Notoriously they have been since about the 90s ...
This is not a joke - they're actually banking on this.
Perhaps they have simply realized that no political decisions are without downsides, including unchecked immigration, and that on balance, they’ve decided it’s not for them?
It’s silly to claim that immigration is the only way to care for old people. We have been caring for old people for the entire history of the human race. We can start doing it again anytime.
It’s true, that it’s inconsistent to demand no immigration and simultaneously defendthe right to produce no children. But it is Japanese people who need to square that circle, not people who want to immigrate to Japan, nor people outside Japan, who feel Japan should allow immigration.
Japan, notoriously a country with an immigration policy that could in good faith be described as "unchecked".
It’s the rate of increase in immigration, which makes it harder for a country to “take it in and give room for assimilation”. Same problem in Canada, and a good chunk of pathways have been rolled back.
It’s not a simple issue, but very obviously citizens of countries where immigration rate has gone through the roof aren’t happy. Also the usual hatred starts when low income immigrants move into the country, as they’re more likely to work in public-facing jobs (markets, hotels, etc).
Agree, those in public facing roles are hated the most.
You don't have to make every mistake yourself in order to learn from it.
This. The Japanese people have made up their mind on the "migration for cheap labor" topic based on their experiences they saw in Europe.
Exactly - they choose not to commit that mistake.
> 56.3 percent of Japanese people said they opposed accepting more foreigners, up from 35.6 percent in 2024
that's a huge jump in 1 year. What happened?
Extreme tourism influx due to covid rebound and weak yen. And most Japanese people not being observant enough to understand that those foreigners causing trouble (or simply just putting pressure on existing infrastructure) is not the residents but shitty tourists.
Most of the issue they have would be reduced if the yen got stronger or they introduced some expensive tourist fee, but that's very unlikely
Sanseito scapegoating foreigners for every problem (particularly Chinese and SE Asian), highly organized social media campaigns with a lot of help from western right wingers, nuisance video streamers exploiting the weak yen to do 'insult/abuse the locals vacations' for cheap, and a rise in anti-Chinese sentiment since the beginning of the year.
Early in Takaichi's premiership, she answered a parliamentary question about the possibility of a Chinese attack on taiwan by sying that this would present an 'existential' problem for Japan. This alarmed the Chinese who saw it as an intrusion on their private business and a reminder of Japanese war atrocities; but before they could make a restrained diplomatic complaint, a Chinese consul in (iirc) Osaka went nuts on social media telling Takaichi to pull her filthy neck in before it was chopped off. After that neither side could back down without losing face so they're stuck in a diplomatic deep freeze.
There are a lot of other structural factors I could go into but those are the major differences since 2024. Actual incidence of crime or large population shifts seem to be absent.
>What happened?
Johnny Somali.
This is the actual answer but too many people are invested in their own narratives to see it.
When you visit someone's country you are not just a guest, you are the model for everyone else who comes from where you do and who looks like you do. The assumption is that how you behave is how others from where you came from will behave. In an age where social media exposes everyone all the time, bad behavior gets seen and shown to others and conclusions drawn based on that behavior.
But rather than admit that this is a thing which exists, others just want to press tired arguments about race and racism. Which even if true, who cares? It's their country. They're allowed to welcome or decline anyone they wish. How arrogant are we really to think that we can dictate who and what others allow in their homes?
Amazing.
Good question. I wonder about the validity of these surveys.
In my experience, having lived in Japan for a bit, I would estimate the opposition rate to be much, much higher.
I don’t support xenophobia, but after visiting Japan, I can see how it happens. Foreigners are disruptive and disrespectful, often carelessly, but also often when they are trying not to be. I was really trying to be polite and respectful, and I learned some Japanese (not nearly enough), and I could tell I was bumbling at times.
It is one thing when it is one person, it is another when it is every tenth person.
I came away with more empathy for Japanese xenophobic sentiment. I was getting frustrated by rude gaijin and I was one (well I was trying really hard not to be rude).
Large social media campaigns full of misinformation about how foreigners are all getting free fully-paid higher education, cheating welfare, and how foreigners don't pay any taxes at all, complete with AI-generated infographics showing sad japanese families handing over cash to foreigners wearing hijab.
foreigners
The 30 years of pension is a bit ridiculous. Why not make the requirement scale with the applicant’s age?
Someone applying for PR at 30 has far more time to contribute than someone applying for PR at 50.
I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws, in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
Countries have a right to change their laws, but I believe it’s in everyone’s interest for those laws to be changed while respecting principles of predictability and legal certainty.
People planned and rearranged their entire lives around immigration law in force at one point, perhaps 5 years ago, and now a new law is going into force that slams the door shut to having a basic sense of stability, with only a 6 month transition period. It’s cruel. And it sends a bad sign to anyone looking to move.
The USA can afford to be cruel because people will deal with it for high wages. Japan can maybe afford to be cruel because their cultural exports keep the top of their “talent attraction” funnel large. It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
> It’s economic suicide for any other small-to-medium sized nation dependent on foreign labor.
This such a baffling statement, honestly: that the flourishing economy crucially depends on foreign labour. What happened with the role of the technological know-how, and vast material (and financial) capital? The institutions? All of that is still not enough for prosperity unless you can hire a paperless José for $7.40 per hour, with an implied threat of handing him off to ICE if he raises any stink?
I'm having a hard time following the thinking in many of these threads so I'm not sure if you're questioning it genuinely (or hypothetically or sarcastically), but I think essentially yes sadly.
Wealthier areas wonder why it costs so much for house renovations or for daycare or`for farmer's market produce. Or similarly folks move to less wealthy countries as "expats" and hire help, babysitters, tutors. Sense of prosperity seems tied to those things feeling inexpensive and them feeling cheap requires income inequality. There's I think a large amount of feeling poor (or average) when those things are eating your budget. Even though you have them. For example, you pay for expensive childcare so both parents can work, it takes a big bite out of your budget, and so you don't feel wealthy (but you're paying for childcare and your family has an employee). Similarly, you're paying for expensive private school, it eats your budget, you don't feel wealthy (but your child is going to private school).
For those doing well, the surplus goes to what's left—house, education, healthcare (I recall there being a fourth, but I'm blanking). Those things are expensive because they should be, you're wealthy. You're competing with the other wealthy people. I'm stealing this from somewhere, but they're essentially luxury goods—the more money you have, the more (and better quality) you consume. They don't decrease as percent of income as food does.
Most developed countries are quickly losing population. The ones that have a slight deviation from that trend is due to immigration.
Foreign labor is what will keep most of these countries afloat for the following 50 years.
Japan is a good example, they lose about 1 million every year.
Most of developed economies dont need blue collar foreign labor in the future. Some dont even need it now. There are no industries in uk or france and this labor role is mostly to suppress wages (we ve seen it with brexit and english truck drivers) . For industrial nations like germany before they shot themselves you do need this labor until robots and automation makes them obsolete. Way before 50years and then being a nation with low immigration is becoming a key advantage for a country cohesion and future. Finally every country at 25% youth unemployment (like france and spain) shoould block all immigration beside highly skilled immigrants
Robots and automation won’t replace health care workers. Aging countries will need more of those.
And the unemployed youth would be working those low skilled jobs today if they wanted to, fact is they don’t pay enough for them and if those jobs are automated away they will still be unemployed.
It obviously suppress wages, which is a necessary condition for capitalism. Any country where it costs 10x to build infrastructure because there is no cheap labor will be less competitive.
When a person migrates, I would believe that the origin country has one less population. So why is it good that this person props up population in the destination country instead of in the origin country?
And why does the destination country need that persons labour and expertise, but not the origin country?
If the native population is becoming exterminated with or without migration, what exactly is the "country" that needs to be kept "afloat"? Your stock portfolio? Your treasury bills? Your real estate investment?
It’s definitely a possibility that a country dwindles away and is happy to do so in order to avoid immigration. We’ll probably see that with Japan and South Korea by the end of this century.
Ultimately it’s their choice.
Whether a country with high population composed of immigration is still the same country we can look to the Americas. Countries with extreme high degree of immigration and assimilation, yet still very much worthwhile countries. Maybe not the countries the natives from 500 years ago would have imagined, but their culture has survived more than 100 years and contribute significantly to the world still. New Zealand is also a good example of native culture not being wiped out even with assimilation.
The fate of the native North Americans is one of the largest catastrophes in the history of humanity. Just as so many other times through human history when natives were displaced and replaced, whether by violent or non-violent means, or a mix of both.
Immigration doesn't change the fact of natives dwindling away or not. A nation is the native people, not a name on a map. The exceptions are the United States and other new world ex-colonies. But there was a very dear price paid in blood and tears to make them.
America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before. Very good arguments have been made that the Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) did originate from native North American ideas and ideals being brought to Europe through cultural exchange, but it's not assimilation on the part of the settlers.
> America has had almost no assimilation of immigrants into the cultures which existed there before
That's almost a uniquely United States problem, not at all as big of an issue in most of the Americas. Only a few countries in the Americas have had their native population pretty much entirely wiped out without any assimilation whatsoever. The US is one of these few countries (Cuba and Hispaniola would be other examples of total replacement).
The rest has had large degree of intermixing or wholesale population preservation. Aspects of native culture is those countries were suppressed historically but are still preserved in some way to this day.
It's also very fair to say sovereign countries today can build a healthier immigration policy than 1500s Europeans with their extermination campaigns. I'd be the last to say that is an example to be followed.
More to the point here: Japan can be exclusively Japanese for another 200 years and die forever, or be Japanese + something for another 10 thousand years. Unlike 500 years ago, they get a choice.
You don't have a automatic right to live in another country in my opinion. I don't blame Swedes for slamming a door shut that has turned their incredibly safe country into the gun and bomb capital of Europe.
wouldn't the same logic apply to people from say east germany moving to the west? or 'annoying liberals' from california moving to north carolina? yes they can add to the local tax base, but if we want to keep things fair we should probably move to restrict everyone to stay in their own places if thats the logic we are following... but maybe i'm not thinking deeply enough...
>I moved from the USA to Sweden about 6 years ago. Sweden has also been tightening its immigration laws
Context for others: Until 2026 Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship. It now has some basic requirements in these areas.
* 2025 citizenship requirements: <https://web.archive.org/web/20250315034218/https://www.migra...>
* 2026: <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>
>in ways I believe have been and will be detrimental to its future.
In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden after Swedish. <http://web.archive.org/web/20210511231225/https://digitaledi...>.
Also completely unrelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
What is the gap between the first and second most spoken languages in Sweden?
"Arabic" is hundreds of different languages.
It's like saying "anglosaxon" and grouping english, german, swedish, danish, norwegian as one single language.
You should tell the united nation, they seem to have missed the memo despite all the Arab countries being members
If English, German, Swedish, etc. shared a single prestige form, which all educated speakers understand and use for formal purposes, I think it would be reasonable and common to call them dialects of "Germanic".
More generally, you'll drive yourself crazy trying to form an opinion of what a language "really" is independent of what the people who use it believe. Norwegian people can generally read Danish, and Danish people can generally read Norwegian if it's written in Bokmål, but Bokmål is only one of the two equally valid ways to write Norwegian. What's going on there? You can trample over the cultural context to impose some abstract definition of what's "really" a language, or you can accept that Norwegian is a language because Norwegian speakers say so and not worry too much about the metaphysical status of Nynorsk.
I acknowledge and sympathize with the pain this will cause, but in regards to Japan itself: Good for them. Not because it is a rightward shift, but because it is a shift toward pragmatism in the face of the inherent tension between respect for all people and respect for one's own people and culture.
In my humble opinion, an ideal world is a liberal one with cherry-picked, tightly controlled, practical conservative elements that boldly take on the intimidating job of maintaining the balance between love and reason.
This is a shift away from pragmatism; pragmatism would be acknowledging Japan's economic need for immigration.
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
I’d say having a wealth and language filter is pragmatism.
Pragmatism could just as easily be a decision by the public collectively to have more babies. There’s nothing about immigration that makes it inherently pragmatic. It could be, with the agreement of the electorate, away to compensate for the electorates decisions to have fewer babies. But it’s not up for us outside of Japan to lecture them on whether or not they are being consistent on this.
What's pragmatic depends on your values.
I think most people would say that's sort of the opposite of the meaning of the word "pragmatic", actually.
Technically you're probably right, since most people are not terribly rational. Most people believe their values are the only correct ones, in which case there is exactly one "pragmatic" path.
This is going to cause more pain to the Japanese people.
They don't believe so. Maybe they are wrong! There are pros and cons.
I mean, sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences of an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
It's OK if they choose to seek other avenues for dealing with that problem. The easiest solution is often not the best, and sometimes there is no net-positive path forward.
They can just outsource if they really need tech employees.
Oops, i accidentally my whole high-tech economy
> I mean, sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences of an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
They're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
>Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
I'm not following your argument at all, if they had taken no immigrants, the GDP would just be even worse then, and Canada would be even further behind.
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
None of this happens in isolation. If you flood a country with a torrent of migrants, everything else just doesn't continue as is with that one thing happening on the side.
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces[1]. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
[1] So did government spending. Why do major projects, seek new export markets, etc, when you can announce GDP growth regardless, even if the GDP per capita was flat to declining. A decade when we did nothing but celebrate how wonderfully diverse and tolerant we are.
>A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
85% of University of Waterloo software engineering graduates move to the US. <https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062>
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
> the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
Yes, physically that's a good description of the natural flow of things. No, it makes no sense for successful nations to suffer for the benefit of unsuccessful nations, generally speaking. What they should provide is aid, with varying specifics on what that means (e.g. it could be as simple as favorable trade).
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
How are those nations suffering, when the reason that they're destinations is because they have a surplus of resources (I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place)? As long as a significant number of the immigrants aren't committing crimes and play by the rules the citizens go by to the best of their abilities, why is there an issue? Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
> I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place
You literally just did, only in that comedically vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
There is nothing pragmatic about kicking out the workforce you imported because of a shortage of native labour. The pragmatist stance would be to accept those differences, and focus on addressing/alleviating them. Cutting your nose to spite your face is more idealism than pragmatism.
I support countries having the ability to limit who can enter, but “rich people” is a terrible metric. How about “cool people” or “nice people”?
>rich, cool, nice people
I know its a bit of glass half full vs glass half empty, but I suspect those are not quite the right words. Does any of the countries recently doubling down on populist policies about immigration really care about the upper end of whatever the euphemism/approximation metric of the day is? Whether the metric is about money, social behavior, maintaining trust & continuity, or even just purely practical matters of compatibility in non-negotiable beliefs & customs.. none of the policies really seem to be aimed at drawing a line between the top 10% and the top 30%. I think its always more about keeping the bottom X% out.
I think when you ask “what counties care about”, it’s simplifying a situation. Policy makers have different goals than ordinary people (although than can overlap).
> applicants for permanent residency will need to show that their annual household income exceeds the Japanese average
Can someone explain why they think this is a detrimental practice for native Japanese?
you get rich assholes that have an ability to casually leave so aren't really invested in the country.
If there were a significant amount of such people coming in it would push up the cost of living for the average-(or below-average)-income Japanese citizen.
Look at any of the Western cities that became attractive for retirement or "investment properties" for wealthy international folks... it makes everything more expensive for everyone already there.
If the concern was just about preventing things from changing for existing citizens, restrictions across the income band would seem to make much more sense.
Given that that this policy is targeted against low-income foreigners I was under the impression it was meant to prevent downward wage pressure. Given the current political climate it may be more socially focused than I originally thought.
From the article “Japan needs foreign workers because of labour shortages. But if the conditions for long-term settlement become substantially more difficult, this could potentially reduce Japan’s attractiveness to foreign workers who are considering Japan as a place to build their long-term lives,”
Specifically, Japan needs workers in human services to physically care for the very large elderly population. They need them so badly that they are in the process of implementing easier work visas for them. But do you think those jobs pay more than the national average?
No, but that's the point. They don't want long-term residents, they want short-term labor. This has been the goal for a long time, and if you move to Japan expecting anything else you'll be disappointed.
>They don't want long-term residents, they want short-term labor.
So just like Singapore and wealthy Arab Gulf states.
"Labour shortage" is just the business's perspective on "plenty of jobs!"
If there truly is a shortage of outstanding jobs, then they can compete and raise salaries and the least significant roles ultimately won't get filled, which is optimal.
It's my understanding that end-of-life care service workers are paid relatively little (at least in the US). It does seem like this policy would exacerbate those labor shortages.
Think of the US - the reduction of low wage immigrants has been a large factor in our economy lately. Food prices have gone up, and in the long term there's fewer young families getting added to the social security system.
While it's cute to think that suddenly these jobs are going to Americans, but these are mostly undesirable jobs that pay less than typical jobs. To the extent that they even get filled by native workers, it drives real wages down and not up.
Meanwhile, only allowing immigrants from the top of the income bracket crowds out the top side of the job market.
It's a lowering tide that lowers all boats.
This is very one-sided. There are plenty of low income and working class people who have suddenly found more work than they have had in years due to reductions in immigration.
What's the empirical evidence that proves this? If the economy gets worse as a result of lack of immigration, its going to reduce opportunities for low income and working class people.
It restricts immigration to cities where the high wages are, ie. Tokyo which is itself already too crowded, and forces foreigners living in less populated parts of the country to leave, further depopulating it.
It also heavily disadvantages singles.
That makes sense (and seems undesirable). It's my understanding that Japan has a lot of near-ghost-towns with empty houses they badly need people to live in and improve (and presumably spend money in the area).
> Can someone explain why they think this is a detrimental practice for native Japanese?
You're quoting a practice applied to foreigners, but you say "for native Japanese". Maybe there was a typo, or I could be misreading?
That's my bad, it's poorly worded. I meant something closer to "why would this practice of excluding low-earning foreigners be bad for the native Japanese".
Presumably they’re asking why this is being done, since it’s obviously not for the benefit of the immigrants.
gentrification pushing locals out. super simple
irony and fascism
Don't worry, I'm sure they're going to aggressively tackle the cultural and economic problems contributing to their fertility crisis, right? Right?
You mean like when they made daycare and preschool free in 2019? Or when they gave stronger parental-leave rights in 2021 and 2025? Or when they increased the child allowance (a monthly payment to parents per child) in 2024? Or when they made it mandatory for employers to offer things like telework or reduced working hours for parents with children under the age of 3 in 2025?
None of it has worked so far, but they are taking aggressive steps to try to fight the declining birthrate.
Why do you care and how is it related to the current news?
Good for Japan. They are being forward thinking and protective over their existing job supply. America is a great example of what happens with too much offshoring and lax immigration policies. Especially with the effects of AI, there are no longer enough jobs to go around.
looks at unemployment rate
You are living in fantasy land my guy. Put down the FoxNews and learn actual statistics before posting
So they don't view humans as fungible economic units? That's very backward.
This only makes sense if Japan is believing they will fully automate blue collar jobs in the next few years
This only makes sense if you think average migrant is net contributor with is definitely not always the case
If you need them to support your production, then it's ok for them to be a net cost no? Basically you're paying to have goods and services that you wouldn't otherwise, it's like paying for employees, it's a cost, but it brings value still.
My concern with these rules is that they don’t seem likely to address the issues at hand, but they do legitimise a rising xenophobic sentiment.
From what I see, the main drivers of negative sentiment towards foreigners are poorly behaved tourists, investors developing land and municipal issues with short-term residents. Being stricter on long-term workers addresses none of these. I live in Hokkaido and travel to many rural parts of Japan for work, so my experience will differ from someone living in Tokyo. However, I feel the other issues are blown out of proportion to fan the flames.
Requiring permanent residents to maintain an above-average annual income (¥5.9 million) favours people who settle in Tokyo, where the average is ¥6.8 million, over Aomori, where it is ¥4.8 million. This works against using immigration to help repopulate rural areas.
But maybe they just want short-term workers? That seems fundamentally at odds with expecting immigrants to integrate and contribute to society. It is a commitment to learn the language, put down roots in a community and pay into social system. The benefits of which you only see years if not decades later. It’s difficult to expect that when your future in the country is deliberately temporary and uncertain.
I know people who have been here for decades and built businesses who may now have to leave. There was a good example in the news of a Nepalese restaurant that had been in business for over 10 years, whose owner was facing the possibility that his Business Manager visa wouldn’t be renewed under the new investment requirements. Someone who spends years building a business, paying taxes and serving the local community may be pushed out, while a wealthy overseas investor can drop some money into a property investment and get a visa without having paid any tax here. Who thought that one through?
It makes me feel that long-term residents are being targeted because we’re an easy target, rather than because these measures address the causes of the backlash. That erodes trust. The cost of my visa has gone up 10x while my income hasn’t changed; how can I trust they won’t add more arbitrary rules? Remember, this is the same LDP whose leader 10 years ago said, “Japan will become a country where permanent residency can be obtained at one of the fastest speeds in the world.” What changed?
Hot take: I think immigration and multiculturalism is going to be the the biggest and the defining issue of this century. The history books will have "AI" and climate change in the margins as 'exacerbating factors'. We've started to see it in the US, and we're beginning to see the start to it in the EU. Japan--rightly or wrongly--might be averting a future disaster here. Japan is lucky in that they are still a very homogeneous society, and also unlucky in that they are ahead of the curve in population decline. I think the western world is in for a bad time over the next 50 years.
Isn't that the story of the US since birth? It seems immigration is just always a hot topic, everyone always thinks they can just pull up the latter behind them as to not lose what they have to others. I don't feel anything is different now.
I don’t this can even be debated. Immigration is the number one discussed issue in rich countries and immigration policy is causing massive swings in elections.
What disaster is Japan averting?
I don't think there's a limit to the animosity people feel (rightly or wrongly - what's "correct" has no bearing on people's feelings) and we will end up in a place where previously unthinkable force or actions are now permissible due to nasty politics. The US is getting a small taste of that now.
I don't think it takes much imagination to connect the dots... it wasn't that long ago in European history where people were systematically eradicated by the millions.
The current news in the middle east are showing what happens when unregulated immigration happens without assimilation
Demographic suicide.
"they took our jobs!"
more like “they didn’t follow the rules and destroyed our nice society and dumped garbage everywhere”
We're talking about people who have gone to great lengths to set up their life in Japan, doing everything correctly. Not tourists.
There are Ceuta like events of a smaller scale every day at every border of western europe. Dont need to wait 50 years. Not a single european voted for this. French people also voted no to a european economy but those who seized power didnt care
In a time of declining globalism and growing[1] nationalism[2] and anti-immigration sentiment around the world, I think it is unsurprising that a historically[3] xenophobic culture would move in this direction.
[1]: https://thesociopedia.blogspot.com/2026/07/why-nationalism-i...
[2]: often used as a tool by oligarchy to shift blame away from themselves, instead towards vulnerable groups, as the cause of rising inequality and various institutional crisis
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Japan
Let's be honest, the Japanese gov't has killed off every generation since the asian bubble popped in the 90's. Those kids in the 90's that still can't get a job should be in their peak earning years and have strong talent skills, (and having kids) which was all sacrificed. They don't have the skills or tax base they should and they are unwilling to actually fix it because the stock market needs to crash big time and the rich need to pay for it.
I completely agree with your comment about Japan killing every generation since the bubble popped. It has been wild to witness.
The subtle but profound ways those generations have experienced being essentially abandoned by the government and “Japan Inc” will have a lasting impact on Japan for many decades to come.
There are some leaders who actually grasp the problem and actually have decent ideas for solutions, but the will and capacity to execute those ideas just isn’t there.
This is not news anymore in that it has been going on for several months already. The first time I really noticed this was on Paolo from Tokyo, where he suddenly praised japanese cops on becoming tougher. Since then I noticed more and more complaints from non-japanese upon moving to Japan. Recently it was a guy from Germany who lives in Japan for like +10 years already and was denied being granted Japanese citizenship basically because ... he is gaijin.
Something really fundamental has been changing in Japan in the last few years, kind of an anti-globalisation movement tied to more nationalism - and I have a SLIGHT suspicion that this will become ultra-nationalism. In turn, a second prediction I make is that Japan will become militarily more aggressive and invest more in that. We can already see the writing on the wall here that more conflict will be brewing in the area.
It's a bit unfortunate in that if a country does not really want people to visit it, well - one does not have to go there. There are many other countries in the asian area that aren't as hostile to foreigners now. (Also interesting to see how an aging society suddenly changes to offset immigration. Hopefully we won't hear a single japanese complain about lack of people in Japan. Ironically Paolo is, or rather was, also kind of a gaijin, even though he speaks perfect Japanese of course.)
> Applicants will also be required to have a pension pot equivalent to 30 years of payouts.
Does this take into account the amount of pension a person would still accumulate under Japanese employment, or will this immediately disqualify anyone under 45?
That’s like 12 x 30 x ¥35000 = 12600000 yen. ＄84000. I don’t know about others, but I consider myself pretty well off and I do not have that kind of money.
That's too low. The National Basic Pension is around 60,000 yen per month and with traditional employer part on top (not everyone has it), it's 140,000 yen/month. I would think a foreigner immigrant would need to bring the equivalent of around $160k in a retirement savings account or similar.
I very much doubt they count any employer pension toward that because people that get that don’t need the money themselves.
The actual regulation has a carve out for if you have assets of equivalent worth.
Its a great way to favor highly skilled immigrants and bar others from becoming a burden
I think Japan thinks they can still attract enough foreigners to perform necessary service and manual labor jobs without the promise of permanent residency. That along with increasing automation - serving robots are a common sight at many restaurants these days, for example.
Permanent residency is reserved for those who can be a net benefit to social welfare programs - by earning and contributing more than the average Japanese household (about USD $36,000 - $42,000 according to google). There are also new language requirements to promote assimilation.
I don’t think it’s anything too radical by global standards, and I have read there are similarities to what Singapore and South Korea already do [1] (though I don’t know too much about their programs).
It’s important to note that the exact details haven’t been finalized yet. So exact income requirements could change from current proposals/rumors. There was a lot of outrage about proposed provisions to revoke permanent residency for people who commit crimes or don’t pay taxes, but when they actually came through they were pretty fair, common sense type changes.
These changes come on the heels of drastically increasing requirements for the business manager visa (which, to be fair, was heavily abused as a kind of “golden visa” in the past). They’ve also significantly increased visa application costs - I think I paid like ¥5,000 for my PR application, and it is now ¥200,000.
It does feel cruel to apply new requirements retroactively to people who have already submitted applications. And the stories of people whose lives are being completely upended by the changes are heartbreaking.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/09/21/japan/jap...
Japan has a heavy shortage of workers [0], and it has been so for many years now. Your link cites the efforts from 2017, the reason wasn't some olive branch to humanity, Japan already was in dire need of working class people.
Right now the yen is so weak Japan salary look ridiculously low, there is the language barrier, and the low hanging jobs aren't great either (a ton in elderly care).
Their policies to restrict immigration will have few impact short term, as immigration is already slowing down and even Filinos, who have always been on the better side of immigration, are looking for better opportunities [1]. Longer term though, people will remember how it goes when Japan economy trends down, and the immigration going away might not come back even when the trend reverses. Especially as there will already be a probably better community built elsewhere.
[0] https://jp.ibtimes.com/japans-full-time-labor-shortages-pers...
[1] https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3309634/why-filipino-migra...
To put that in perspective, US companies report similar rates of worker shortages in surveys [1]:
> The survey found that company size influenced hiring outcomes. Seventy-six percent of companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees reported shortages, followed by 75% of firms with 5,000 employees or more and 74% of those with 250 to 999 employees. Among smaller firms, 69% of organizations with 50 to 249 employees, 66% with 10 to 49 employees and 61% with fewer than 10 employees reported hiring challenges.
I'm not saying that there isn't a shortage of labor in Japan - just that business owners are never satisifed with the amount of labor available at the wages they wish to pay. And it may not be an existential shortage of labor like a lot of commenters are saying. Especially with recent developments in AI and automation.
The declining birthrate in general does seem to be an existential issue if it cannot be stabilized. But it is hard to predict population trends long term (when I was growing up the big concern was overpopulation and China was running its one-child policy - now they are facing population decline).
The weak yen is also definitely an issue right now - but it's impossible to predict where it will be in the future.
So yes, Japan is facing real problems. And stricter immigration requirements likely will come at some cost to economic output. But if they feel it is necessary to protect their social welfare programs and cultural identity, then those tradeoffs are theirs to make. And all of the doom and gloom comments saying things like "it's suicide" feel like a bit of an overreaction to me when you look at the actual proposed changes.
[1] https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/69-o...
Reading about this makes me wonder what Japan was like during WW2
> public sentiment towards immigrants sours
I'm not up to date with Japanese news, does anyone know the reason for that?
Racism, xenophobia, amplified by social media and far right political parties. It’s not too different from the dynamics we’ve seen in the rest of the western world
The immigrants create a lot or trouble.
You know what creates 100 more trouble than immigrants ? Japan’s birth rate.
You know who have babies? Immigrants.
You know who pays social security for peuple when they get older ? Those grown up babies.
Do the math. Japan has much to teach the world but the most important lesson they are now teaching, is that people are stupid, easily manipulated, excessively xenophobic and absolutely happy to shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly if it means not admitting they’re wrong. In Japan, in the US, in Europe and elsewhere.
Dumb dumb humans…
And yet, according to available statistics, there's no a single western country where Muslim and African immigrants are not an additional financial burden. Even if we forget about safety, crime, ...
Sounds like suicide. Good luck with that
there goes my dream of being a gaijin :(
As a liberal in California, my views on immigration actually hardened a bit after a recent trip to Japan. I appreciated that everything there was just so Japanese. No ethnic enclaves, no zones or industry that I could see dominated by non-Japanese people. I just loved the fact that I was in Japan and surrounded exclusively by Japanese culture. Made me think of what international travel must have been like 150 years ago, where visiting another country was like traveling to a different world.
I think according to the official regulations of modern US liberalism, this makes me slightly racist, and I'm supposed to be dismayed that Japan doesn't have more multiculturalism??
I wonder if you'd feel the same in Brazil, if you'd say "Everything there was just so Brazilian" when there is no such thing as "Brazilian" without the necessary multi ethnic aspect. It's a country without ethnic enclaves but instead a culture that is very much a mix of all.
You don't have to be exclusively one race to be a unique country. The US just hasn't achieved a blended culture, but it doesn't mean it's not possible.
> You don't have to be exclusively one race to be a unique country
You don't. You also dont have to NOT be a homogenous country to be a unique country. Or you dont event have to be unique to be a country.
Bhutan doesn't get as much flack for strict migration policies.
Bhutan is for almost all effects an autonomous state in India, making it part of a larger heterogenous country.
If they wanted to be a more independent country with an independent economy they'd need to revise some of their policies.
So you want to close down Chinatown?
It seems like a difficult problem to me, since there's no right answer.
>Foreigner
>From South Asia
>Works in tech
Go figure.
Edit: Trying to upset people less.
You make it sound like something nefarious and criminal.
> Tech became the greatest trojan horse for south asian immigration.
Weird take, are you against upward mobility? Would you not take the same opportunity in their position?
Not the parent, but yes, of course I would. But letting anybody do anything that would benefit them is of course not reasonable.
> But letting anybody do anything that would benefit them is of course not reasonable.
Who is talking about letting anybody do anything? The parent is talking about people working in tech as a means of upwards mobility. Is that not reasonable?
Nope, go become a doctor. How many people do we need writing PHP?
Do you dislike south asians?
Edit: no-one is upset by what you said lmao cmon. Just clarify what you are really trying to say.
They are unfortunately the most common example of (subjectively) bad immigration policies seen first-hand among tech folks in the West (I.e. people likely to be on HN). The parent was obviously referring to this fact sarcastically. It's a tech trope.
What exactly are south Asians? Serious question
India, Pakistan, and a few smaller countries.
Generally Indians.
Anti-immigration laws: angry face
Anti-immigration laws, Japan: happy face
As usual, the meme is ever alive around these parts. Anything Japan does is heralded as a good move™ and no impartial discussion can be had without the weeaboos coming out of the woodwork to put a positive spin on it.
But sure, we’ll see if limiting these odious gaijin coming in will solve their stagnant economy, fertility crisis and obsolete business practices. Good luck with their isolationism, it’s not the first time they’ve gone down that path, all to appease the right-leaning imbeciles that blame the immigrant for their politicians’ ineptitude at dealing with systemic problems. It’s the same all over the world.
I see roughly the same ratio of agreement and disagreement as usual. And even if it is different, it's probably more due to the specifics of the case, rather than an internet meme. Based on your writing, it sounds more like you have a grudge against Japan, rather than everybody else having some kind of opposite bias.
Doesn't seem they're really aware that they're something of an endangered "species". Although technically they'd still be endangered even if they open up seriously, as then there's heightened possibility of bloodline dilution. I wonder sometimes if that'd be a good or bad thing in the long run: loss of that which makes them pretty unique vs blending more with the world.
> heightened possibility of bloodline dilution
In my experience, born/raised in Japan, domestic Japanese people have a very different reaction to local "Hafu" people where one of their parents is a Caucasian person from the US, UK, AU, NZ (or similar), vs "other" countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C4%81fu
Colonial mentalities carry on for decades.
I have a personal unscientific theory that some of it, domestically within Japan, is as simple as a heightened degree of racism towards people with darker skin color.
From research I've learned that placing a high value on blending in is a cultural thing. There's the resulting good, like the focus on harmony which promotes good relationships (and is a major contributor to the low crime rate), and there's the bad, like spurning those who look/speak different (I've heard stories from a few who went to visit seeing signs that gaijin aren't allowed in certain establishments, etc).
> (I've heard stories from a few who went to visit seeing signs that gaijin aren't allowed in certain establishments, etc)
I've heard stories more specifically that certain type of gaijin were allowed in certain gaijin-suspicious establishments (US/UK/Canadian tourists), while their counterparts of Indian, Bangladeshi descent were not.
I mean, Japan's experience with colonialism was decidedly on the colonist side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperit...
That, and things like being an enthusiastic and early customer of British industrial/steam powered equipment in what we would broadly call the Victorian era. The early Japanese pre-dreadnought and dreadnought class battleships, for instance, were a clear descendent of British (or competing French) designs. Railway stuff as well. Lots of things that weren't British origin were American.
It seems they are very well aware. They've probably seen what happens to other "endangered species" (eg. the English or Swedes) when the floodgates are opened by treasonous bureaucrats chasing votes, economic metrics, or appeasing their destructive oikophobia.
What happened to the swedes? I'm in sweden right now and there's no zombie apocalypse or anything weird going on…
“Bloodline dilution” is only a thing if you believe your race is superior.
I'm pretty sure there are many non-Japanese who're attracted to Japanese primarily because of their homogeneity.
You mean western dudes who fetishize/exotify eastern women?
Korean men and Japanese women make up the biggest share of international marriages in Japan so there's something more going on here that makes Japanese women highly desirable to men in general.
or if you just care about your race, which is a normal thing to do
it's an extended family of sorts
If the extended family incorporates other races, does it stop being extended family?