Low birthrate and ageing population pose ‘an urgent risk to society’, but can opening its borders to skilled overseas workers fix the problem?
Japan is not alone in this.
The three countries that are getting hit with declining population are also the ones with some of the lowest migration rates in the world.
Japan.
Sth Korea.
China.
South Korea is running into the same problem. Most advanced economies have low birthrate, but South Korea has the lowest in the entire world. This has created an issue of a looming population crisis.
Typically countries fix this by allowing more immigration, but South Korea is incredibly xenophobic and many would rather attempt to deal with a population collapse than allow non-koreans into the country.
The amount of xenophobia in those countries, they would def have a population collapse. But hey happy earth!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A certified IT specialist, he arrived in Tokyo from Sri Lanka a year ago, hoping to take advantage of job opportunities that have opened up as part of Japan’s efforts to tackle its population crisis and encourage more immigration.
With the population expected to decline dramatically in the coming decades – leaving a gaping hole in the workforce – Japan is quietly easing restrictions and accepting record numbers of migrants, mostly from Asian countries such as Vietnam, China, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Data released in July showed a record population fall of nearly 800,000 but it also revealed a jump in overseas-born residents, to an all-time high of around 3 million, almost 50% up on a decade ago.
Bringing skilled workers from overseas is requiring a significant shift in a nation that not so long ago treated foreign labour as something akin to a necessary, if temporary, nuisance.
Despite the demographic challenges, Japan has remained reluctant to accept refugees and the number of applicants it grants asylum to annually rarely exceeds double digits.
Park believes it will be hard for Japan to lure large numbers of skilled workers due to language difficulties, dealing with the complexities of Japanese culture, and uncompetitive wages in many sectors.
The original article contains 1,043 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I shouldn’t have let that slight giggle about xenophobia slowly strangling a country to death, but it just feels so absurd. Mix or die mf, lmao. Get your gaijin swirl on y’all.
