Japan Will Allow More Immigration, Official Says
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Jason Clenfield, Bloomberg, May 23, 2007
Japan will open its borders to more foreign workers to keep the economy growing as its population ages, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mitoji Yabunaka said.
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Japan’s population began declining in 2005 and the government said earlier this year that it may fall by as much as a quarter by 2050. Japan has never had to rely on mass immigration, unlike countries such as the U.S. and Australia that were founded by migrants.
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Foreigners accounted for 1.6 percent of Japan’s 128 million population last year. Almost half of the 2 million people that the government classifies as foreigners are people of Chinese, Korean and Brazilian descent who were born in Japan, said Sakanaka, who is a former head of the Tokyo immigration bureau.
The Foreign Ministry’s Yabunaka said the government’s decision last September to allow 1,000 Filipino nurses to work in Japan is an example of a more open immigration policy.
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Japanese Test
The proposed partnership, still subject to approval by the Philippines congress, requires workers to take six months of lessons in Japanese and nursing, followed by a supervised internship culminating in an examination in Japanese that critics say is so onerous as to make the program impossible.
“This won’t address the nursing shortage,” said Sakanaka. “Nobody will be able to pass the tests and they’ll all be sent home.”
Japan had six nurses for every 1,000 people in 2004, the most recent year for which government data are available, compared with 8.3 in the U.S. About a fifth of Japan’s population is over 65 years old and the percentage is climbing, increasing the demand for health-care services.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s key economic panel last week proposed that the number of foreign students in the country be more than doubled as a way to bring in skilled labor from abroad.
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Email Jason Clenfield at jclenfield@bloomberg.net.
(Posted on May 24, 2007)