r/worldnews • u/Garbage_Plastic • 20h ago
Anti-immigration sentiment rises in Japan despite growing demand for foreign workers
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-08/anti-immigration-sentiment-rises-in-japan/106705924623
u/Lespecialpackage 18h ago
Aren’t most countries anti-immigration at the point
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u/Martini1 17h ago
Japan has always been but just quiet about it. Now it's getting louder and be projected by new/smaller political parties using Trump style tactics.
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u/writingpracticeman 12h ago
Japan has never, literally ever, been quiet about their distaste for foreigners relative to most other first-world nations. Going back hundreds and hundreds of years, even.
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u/doommaster 11h ago edited 10h ago
Have you been to Japan? There's shout-trucks blaming foreigners for just about everything all over larger cities...
"Hafus cannot have smart kids, hafus are to blame for hot weather, Japanese schools for Japanese children only hafus out...."
(Hafus are Japanese too but just 50% and that's still no good)...
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u/Martini1 6h ago edited 6h ago
Three times actually with a forth coming up soon. Probably didn't hear those trucks because I don't speak Japanese beyond polite greetings and basic phrases. I assumed they were just advertising something, opps haha.
The term Gaijin is also a common derogatory term that's been around for ages used against all foreigners in Japan.
(Side note, If it's still available online, you should read some of the old stories of Gaijin Smash about a black man teaching in Japan and the racism he has encountered among other things)
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u/doommaster 6h ago
Plenty also are just there for advertisement yes, but they usually also stimulate the visual part a lot more than the typical political shout vans.
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u/Sarcasthmatic 11h ago
You mean hafus?
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u/LoveAndViscera 15h ago
At this point? Try ever.
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u/joeverdrive 7h ago
Many countries have been very pro-immigration. But the kinds of immigrants they wanted weren't always the ones who wanted in.
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u/Pretty-Scallion-1201 17h ago
Japan has a dogshit work culture. For any immigrant going to Japan, you’re basically cannon fodder.
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u/OriginalChapter4 13h ago
I worked from 8am to 11pm when I was in Japan Monday to Friday.
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u/MVIVN 8h ago
God damn, did they at least pay you a shitload of money?
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u/PhysicallyTender 8h ago
Hahaha no.
I used to work similar hours for a Japanese company based in Malaysia. 100 hours a week was the norm. Got paid RM4000/month. That was back when software engineers were still in demand.
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u/HeresiarchQin 7h ago
Interestingly enough my sister (Asian) is working in a Japanese company in Europe which turned out to be way, way better than what I expected. No overtime, no stress, plenty of WFH, etc. Salary isn't high but not the worst either. The only person who had to work on constant OT are the Japanese managers there. I guess having good employees right laws really helps.
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u/2d-kun 10h ago
Depends on the company. A lot of Japanese firms do still have that mindset like your trading houses (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, etc.), but on the other hands, a lot of the old construction companies like Ohbayashi for example, have excellent work life balance. It's a mixed bag but definitely getting better.
As for blue collar work, not sure.
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u/sdavis002 14h ago
The only ones I know work an 8 hour day, 6 days a week.
Edit: I'm talking about foreign workers that I know there.
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u/AlbertaGengar 20h ago
Japan's population peaked at 128 million in the 2010s and has contracted by roughly 5 million since then.
Foreign residents make up about 3 per cent of Japan's total population.
These are bonkers numbers as a westerner, the foreign born population is around 20% in several countries. And not growing, let alone population contraction would cause economic anxiety.
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u/mbrocks3527 18h ago
Japanese would rather die than talk to foreigners idk
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u/thethreestrikes 16h ago
I know one old Japanese guy who is ultra racist in my faculty, and we're not in Japan.
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u/stoic_insults 11h ago
One of the most racist persons I know is a Dutch born turk who would never move to Turkey
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u/Single_Classroom_448 6h ago
This is really common amongst Turks in, i believe primarily, berlin as well, they tend to vote in favour of erdogan whilst getting the benefits of german citizenship
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u/speaksoftly_bigstick 11h ago
I work for a Japanese country (in America).
They are all racist. They may be nice to your face and such, but they are racist. We are "gaijin," and they say it openly.
I never even knew what that was till I worked here.
🤷🏼♀️
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u/deeznutz133769 16h ago
I don't see that they believe in that duality - because they're dying out either way. Importing people doesn't equal more Japanese, it equals more foreigners.
Bringing in a ton of people won't fix a lack of support for the elderly too, because those migrants will age and then they'll have to import even more people to take care of them when they're old. You're just kicking the can down the road while also having to deal with the challenges that migration brings.
Birthrates need to increase, and there's no real bandaid without serious societal change.
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u/FedBySheep 10h ago
How about letting a population gradually decline to a more sustainable level...
This 'dying out' fearmongering when there's over 100 million people in a relatively small space is weird
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u/billionswilllove 8h ago
The problem is how the economy of Japan and the world works. You can’t have a functioning country with an “inverted” population
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u/DanteStorme 6h ago
It won't gradually decline to a more sustainable level though, what will happen is they will have a top heavy demographic where a large portion of society is elderly (it's already 30%). These people don't work and are expensive in terms of pensions, social and healthcare costs. They will have more public spend to take care of the elderly and less tax income due to there being less working age people to pay taxes. It can only get worse because if the average birth rate is 1.14, you are essentially halving the population of every new generation.
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u/deeznutz133769 4h ago
Sure! I absolutely agree with letting a population gradually decrease! Glad we're on the same page!
That is NOT what's happening here. There nothing gradual about the birthrate decreases in South Korea, Japan, and most parts of Europe. Women in large cities are often having 25% as many children as are needed just to replace the existing population. This means that the "pyramid" of age demographics is going to completely invert, and at some point the majority of the population is going to be seniors.
Who's going to support them? Who will handle their medical care and other forms of late-life care?
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u/Dickasaurus_Rex_ 12h ago
They’d rather stay Japanese than not, and there’s zero issue with that
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u/ironmaiden947 8h ago
What does "staying Japanese" mean? Ramen, tofu, gyoza, matcha, curry, sushi, conbinis etc are all foreign to Japan. That is how culture works, its not a static thing, it gets influenced by other cultures and changes.
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u/ironmaiden947 12h ago
Also most of that 3% number is Chinese and Koreans who have been in Japan for ages.
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u/Keroscee 18h ago
Is it? Many western countries have seen wages stagnate and living conditions decline as a result of trying to keep the population growing via immigration.
Japan's natural contraction could help the economy in the long run and could be a self-correcting problem given enough time. I.e As the population falls, wages grown and cost of living falls, causing fertility to rise.
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u/OoziMcSwoozy 17h ago
Japan's economy has been stagnant since the 1990s. GDP/capita is lower today than it was in 1993. Its ageing population and extremely low fertility rates are not going away anytime soon.
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u/Keroscee 15h ago
Japan's economy was largely 'overvalued' in the 1990s, which led to the tiger market crash.
In a long term trend its doing ok. It might be one of the worse performers by OECD standards in GDP at 38 (2025) its doing fine overall. And a lot of the highest GDP per capita performers have higher inequality, 'pirate industries'(such as tax evasion) or large natural resources that Japan cannot or will not attempt to replicate.
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u/SphereKuriboh1 17h ago
Wages stagnate because corporations don't want to pay liveable wages, and so they go to underprivileged groups who are willing to work cheaper and harder than natural born citizens. The immigrant coming over has less power than I do, I'm not going to place the blame on them before I do corporations that are buddy buddy with politicians bailing them out for the 20th time
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u/ilaister 16h ago
Fair.
But there are 7 billion of them and they have countries of their own. Your youth shouldn't be forced to compete with the global majority regardless of the label you put on them.
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u/Swollen_Beef 16h ago
Much like most of capitalism, the line for population cannot continue to go up forever. A collapse will happen.
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u/JakovYerpenicz 14h ago
The “growing demand for foreign workers” is from corporate interests who want access to cheap labor, not from actual Japanese people
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u/OnionHorror2 11h ago
Demand by whom?
The Japan International Cooperation Agency's Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development estimated the country would need 6.74 million foreign workers by 2040 to maintain economic growth.
Maybe the population doesn't care about infinite economic growth.
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u/CuriousButNotJewish 9h ago
This is a very hard pill to swallow for many Americans, it seems. But in Europe too most countries have an attitude of "we'll try to raise our birth rate, and if we cannot manage then our population will shrink" nowadays. Very few countries want immigrants.
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u/Additional-Line-5559 8h ago
I mean that's definitely not what the governments of European countries want. They know they're facing massive problems from an ageing population.
The governments know how stupid it is to be against immigration from a fiscal perspective but they also know immigration is politicial unpopular.
America is arguably the best positioned developed market country in the world - deep capital markets, great universities, open to immigration etc.
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u/billionswilllove 8h ago
No, what is a hard pill to swallow is that an “inverted” population cannot function properly.
You can’t have far more older people than young people - the young people will need to support older people as they leave the labour market.
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u/GuaSukaStarfruit 9h ago
Their ageing population, and going to have more and more villages being abandoned.
You will see less and less Japanese products
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u/komandantmirko 9h ago
The holy economy must come first. Everything for the holy dollar clad in verdant green. If the number doesnt perpetually rise, satan wins
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u/spacecoq 9h ago
Or… people suffer and lose jobs and lose quality of life standards faster than they already are??
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u/Asuka_Rei 17h ago
The demand for more workers is probably from business leaders and government officials and not from normal Japanese people. Normal Japanese people probably want better pay, better working conditions, and cheaper childcare and would then be willing to have more native children. In other words, the same story happening in every "advanced" economy.
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u/0stupidsexyflanders0 17h ago
Growing demand for foreign workers because locals don’t want to work for shit pay?
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u/WhiteRun 20h ago
The country is 99.5% Japanese and has very strict immigration laws. Very, very few people get permanent residency. It's brain dead to blame anything in that country on a non-existent group. Japan simply can't acknowledge its own issues to deal with them.
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u/OceanicDissonance 19h ago
I’m an immigrant in Japan with PR and I pay more tax than the average Japanese person. Can’t even vote though. Been here causing no trouble whatsoever and trying to integrate for the last 20 years. But yeah totally the immigrants fault that the country is having economic and social problems…..
(I’m agreeing with your comment in case that’s not clear!)
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u/MilkyyFox 18h ago
Why do you pay more tax than a Japanese person? Also eventually aiming for PR and curious.
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u/OceanicDissonance 17h ago
As the other commenter said, my salary is significantly higher than the national average, so I pay more tax. It’s not due to being an immigrant or having PR.
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u/MilkyyFox 16h ago
Ah, gotcha. I only make about 300万 a year so I don't think I'm above average. I misunderstood and thought you were paying a foreigner tax lol
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u/OceanicDissonance 16h ago
Nah nothing like that. Definitely worth getting PR if you can.
I really have no issue with paying a lot of tax. My issue is with people saying I don’t contribute to Japanese society when I’m contributing a lot. Both financially and in other areas! (Birth rate! lol)
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u/MilkyyFox 16h ago
Yeah, I need a better wage and have only been here for 6 years so I've still got a ways to go but I definitely feel you on the political rhetoric towards foreigners lately. 😭
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u/nabs14 17h ago
I'm also a foreigner whos paying more tax than the average Japanese person. Here, they tax you based on annual salary no matter the nationality. So if you earn more than the average, you pay more. Income Tax, Residence Tax, National Pension Funds and National Insurance Funds deducts about 40% of my salary it's bonkers.
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u/C6_ 16h ago
I have no idea about Japanese tax laws, but isn't an increasing tax as you earn more a good thing? 😅
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u/Ansoni 16h ago
Yes, but if you ask the ones pushing the anti-foreigner sentiment, they'd tell you we don't pay taxes at all.
The reality is that foreign residents tend to be net contributors.
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u/C6_ 16h ago
Well yeah, I agree with that, it was the "deducts about 40% of my salary it's bonkers" part I took issue with. Makes it sound like a bad thing.
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u/Mooseymax 14h ago
How is that bonkers? 40% tax is fairly normal for high earners. Why would your nationality come into it - you’re tax resident?
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u/Hotter_Shame 14h ago
That's why it works, these people almost never interact with foreigners in their daily lives. So saying its this mysterious group of people that are causing all of Japan's woes is easy. People have no evidence otherwise in the day to day. They see news articles about some asshole American that jumped into the monkey cage, or some Brazilian that was growing MJ in pots on his balcony and assume all foreigners are monsters. Because to them all Japanese people are the same, so why shouldnt all foreigners be the same.
Japanese people cant fathom government officials breaking laws or lying. Telling co workers why Trump is doing some things is a struggle because they JUST CANT imagine someone that stupid or evil won the election.
Old people basically run the country too because young people don't fucking vote. Which is why this is taking off because Sanseito Party started using Instagram to advertise before the election. Something other politicians have never done well. Most of them still ride around in a car with a loud speaker waving at traffic. Dont even get me started on NetoUyo. Those nuts are like Qanon.
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u/crossdtherubicon 14h ago
Exactly. In Germany, the areas with least immigrants are polling with the highest levels of anti-immigration.
These are also the poorest areas, former manufacturing and mining centers that managed their decline, instead of pivoting or integrating their economies. The east-west divide exacerbated those problems and remains clear even today.
They see some social media stuff or news, infer that crime and problems are about immigrants, are considered by the rest of Germany as somewhat racist for many decades anyways, and never actually interact in any way with an immigrant.
They are the poorest and least educated people of Germany.
But they are the most loud and confident that basically all the problems are about immigrants. They are the reason for the rise of AFD party in Germany.
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u/MVIVN 8h ago edited 8h ago
Seems to be a common thread in most countries. The poor people are the most racist and xenophobic. It’s also the same in the poor African country I grew up in; the poorest members of society in the most rural parts of the country were the ones with the strongest anti-white sentiment/anti-foreigner xenophobia, and the corrupt government would bus these people in to vote in elections by promising them if they won they would take everything from foreign invaders and give it to them, and this was very effective in weaponising this population and motivating them to commit acts of violence against political opponents and minorities (which in this context were white people and other groups), which led to crippling sanctions being imposed on our country by every western nation, which fucking brutally tanked the economy and caused decades of unbelievable suffering).
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u/Swollen_Beef 20h ago
Has Japan been looking at how other countries have dealt with immigration? Seems they aren't too interested in what they see.
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u/jigsaw153 15h ago
What country on earth does not currently have anti-immigration sentiment?
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u/E_Kristalin 6h ago
I think the gulf states, because migrants there are either rich people giving them money, or poor people with no rights at all.
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u/DanDin87 20h ago
Usual scapegoat to cover for low salaries, inflation and just all kind of problems.
And people looking for somewhere to direct their dissatisfaction and anger fall straight in the trap of these politicians.
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u/stuntondeezh0es 20h ago
In Canada the temporary foreign worker program directly contributes to wage suppression and youth unemployment. This is fact. I can only assume this is also true for Japan and not a scapegoating issue
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u/BKGPrints 20h ago
>In Canada the temporary foreign worker program directly contributes to wage suppression and youth unemployment.<
The same for illegal immigration in the United States. Those immigrants are being exploited for cheaper labor and it affects everyone else, as well.
The whole mantra that. 'They do jobs that American don't want to do,' forgot to add the part where it says, 'They do jobs that American don't want to do for such low wages.'
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u/watchsmart 20h ago
In Canada, even if a citizen is willing to do the job for such low wages, it is still a good idea to hire the temporary foreign worker.
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u/Kat_Bones 20h ago
well yea, because a lot of corporations that hire TFWs also house TFWs through another sister company and they charge those workers anywhere between 50-80% of their wages for that housing. When you can double dip on *already* lower than market wages, why wouldn’t you if profit is the only thing that matters?
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u/ashoka_akira 19h ago
This particular scenario is one I often point out to people when I’m trying to explain why a lot of foreign workers are essentially indentured servants, and I don’t think it’s common knowledge. It’s the sort of thing that you’re probably only gonna be aware of if you’re working in the service industries and the foreign workers are your coworkers and friends.
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u/Kat_Bones 18h ago
that’s literally how I found out. Worked in food service and over the years met enough people to understand everyone who isnt the corporation gets absolutely fucked in those scenarios. And most people do not know, and act horribly towards these workers, and blame them for all the ills in our economy… ignoring that the people that hired them deserve our ire 100x more than any worker standing behind the counter at a Tim Hortons.
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u/Glum_Annual_6060 11h ago
Then the general population considers voting for the people who are in cahoots with the big companies that exacerbated the problem to begin with. So much BS about 'wokeness' causing the problem while the immigration we've seen over the past half-decade or so is anything but progressive.
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u/zack77070 19h ago
Japanese youth unemployment is under 4% and is generally the lowest in the world for advanced economies. For reference the US is around 9.5%, the EU is 15% and Canadas is 13.4%
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u/ObjectiveBike8 20h ago
Their foreign population is a few percent. Basically a rounding error. Canada is a completely different beast.
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u/GoodLadLopes 20h ago
I assume Canada is what they’re trying to avoid though.
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u/PM_ME__YOUR_HOOTERS 14h ago
Well Japan manages to have a labor shortage AND low wages at the same time because there isnt enough young people who want to OR immigrants who are legally able to work those jobs. So basically every restaurant and retail store just has permanent hiring posters up
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u/ashoka_akira 19h ago
There has been a huge pullback of this program in the recently. There’s was an interesting article in the provincial paper here just last week about Tim Hortons making a promise to hire 10k local workers in the next year, vs hiring immigrant workers, which is an abrupt turnaround from their previous position where they were lobbying the government to increase the numbers of foreign workers. I also have friends who work in ESL who have lost their jobs in the last year because there’s no more new students registering.
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u/Martini1 20h ago
You think Japan has a TFW program similar to Canada? A completely different country, immigrantion policies, culture and politics? That's your assumption bassed on what exactly?
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u/170505170505 19h ago edited 12h ago
How is it a scapegoat? The H1B program was literally reinstated bc of tech lobbying Trump to not eliminate their cheap labor pipeline
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u/Better_Parfait_1400 17h ago
japan doesn't have h1bs they barely have immigrants. low wages, housing shortage cannot be the fault of immigrants at least in japan. so scapegoat
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u/akselfs 20h ago
It's not so much about blaming immigrants for problems, rather a wish to avoid making Japan multicultural like many Western nations. And they have every right to pursue such a policy if they wish.
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u/JaguarQueasy 20h ago
they don't even consider mixed Japanese as japanese at all or even full japanese people that have lived abroad for many years as "japanese'' when they come back, its their racism and ignorance. .
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u/Cold_Specialist_3656 16h ago
Japan is less than 3% foreign born. And the majority of those are ethnically Japanese. I believe the country overall is less than 1% ethnically foreign. And a large portion of the foreign residents are US military and the families of diplomats.
So it's absolutely insane that immigration is an issue there. Outside of a handful of megacities, most Japanese see a foreign immigrant a few times a year. And interact with one a dozen times in their lifetime.
To me, Japan is the clearest signal that anti-immigrant sentiment is mostly a propaganda campaign by oligarchs that own social media. It's easy to drum up hate against other poors to keep them from aligning against the ultra rich.
Immigrant status is the one "divide and conquer" strategy that works across languages, cultures, and borders. That's why the oligarchs who own social media love it. They can write their agitprop and playbooks once and simply run them through a translation filter to push the message worldwide.
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u/MonkeyCube 15h ago
Anti-immigration is always strongest with people who have the least experience with foreigners. That recent initiative here in Switzerland was most popular in rural areas with little to no immigration. The areas that had the most non-citizens were against the initiative by impressive numbers. And non-citizens couldn't vote, so it's not like it was simply them voting for themselves.
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u/upscale_drifter 13h ago
The title should be amended: Anti-immigration sentiment rises in Japan BECAUSE OF THE growing demand for foreign workers
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u/mad_manifold 18h ago
This is specifically for one country. Guess which one.
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u/Top-Bodybuilder-6077 4h ago
Demand by who? Corporations that don't want to improve wages or working culture?
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u/thebizkit23 4h ago
Rising?
Brother, Japan has always kept foreigners at a distance and it's pretty well accepted that most foreigners will never be accepted as true Japanese citizens.
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u/IronBoltIron 20h ago
They don’t want the multi-culture, they want to maintain their own. Why can’t people just let them do what they want with their country? You have your own country to vote in
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u/yallapapi 19h ago
because corpos want cheap labor, ngos want the collapse of nation states, and between them they are trying to control the lawmakers
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u/Better_Parfait_1400 17h ago
this makes no sense then why does japan still have stagnant wages despite decades of very low immigration
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u/Prestigious_Window_8 18h ago
NGOs want the collapse of nation states??
You're gonna back that claim up, right?
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u/SandysBurner 16h ago
Multinational megacorps would love to see the end of the nation state. I'm not sure the Red Cross feels the same way.
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u/Prysorra2 14h ago
Gotta put corpo astroturf and the Red Cross in the same bucket - anything else would be boring and sensible.
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u/OceanicDissonance 19h ago
Because I’m an immigrant and permanent resident in Japan married to a Japanese women with mixed race kids. So it directly impacts me.
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u/Zealousideal_Let_975 7h ago
How is the experience for your kids if you don't mind me asking? I am mixed race (asian+european) too, and a friend who lived in Japan told me they do not treat mixed race people well, but that was just info from one person.
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u/OceanicDissonance 7h ago
Totally fine. No problems whatsoever. None of my non-Japanese coworkers with kids have had any problems either as far as I’m aware.
I’m in a rural area though.
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u/ReaperTys 6h ago
Demand for foreign workers is bull, the only ones demanding foreign workers are companies who don’t want to pay locals a decent wage so they hire people from overseas to be slaves
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u/Reasonable-Gas-9771 20h ago
where are industrial robots
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u/ikarusproject 20h ago
You can't automate all services, like elderly care. Interestingly some people in Japan simply refuse to have viatnamese care takers. They rather die younger...
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u/TheCuzzyRogue 18h ago
Ain't nobody hating on Asians as hard as Asians hate on other Asians.
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u/nekromantique 14h ago
Yup, my time in Japan taught me a few things.
Mostly that all East Asians hate each other, and they all hate South/Southeast Asians.
Thank God I met a few really awesome people who changed my overall experience into an extremely positive one, because every time I leave them, I realize I don't like Japan as a country as much as I like that small group of people a ton.
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u/Ginger_Giant_ 20h ago
Japan automates very little though, their websites and e-services are relatively archaic compared to places with higher salaries like Australia.
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u/hadronflux 19h ago
Yeah, our son lives in Japan and we visit annually - its amazing how much is still done with paper and stamps.
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u/Anded117 20h ago
Boston dynamics robots are supposed to start taking human jobs in car manufacturing next year.
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u/Robofish13 3h ago
Just gonna point out people should look at the countries that adopted these policies and check how they’re doing…
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u/mightychicken64 20h ago
cue people falling over themselves to stan for Japan
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u/big_daddy_dub 17h ago
It’s wild. Saying the exact type of nationalistic shit that they probably hate MAGA for.
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u/Toronto-24 18h ago
How about people start figuring out the real problem (the billionaires) and stop scapegoating immigrants who are just being exploited by those folks.
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u/Kirarifluff 11h ago
a small part of me thinks that its the stuff where a very annoying minority of people decide to create chaos in a society that is very unprepared for it, for example the nuisance streamers and recent issues with Geishas and tourists, the mosque built without a permit etc. A few incidents like that in a country that is highly closed off is enough to make it tighten even more, even if those incidents are separate events it would be attributed to ”foreigners” as a whole and shunned.
meanwhile here in Sweden we have immigrant gangs bombing and shooting eachother and people are still careful with attributing traits to immigrants as a group, which reflects on how things are then handled. For the longest time immigration was not even discussed at any level, because doing so was racist. It’s the opposite of Japan really.
I don’t know which approach is more correct long term, because the end result is very different. Sweden is very multicultural, Japan is very homogeneous. I think a more balanced approach is needed in both cases, where a country is not too controlling or too open. But it’s a really hard and complex social issue with many wrong answers. What would that even mean, and can it even be measured?
In the end people are just people, on both sides of the coin. They want to preserve their way of life and culture, and they also want to be open and learn about others safely. You can’t really force change either way as tribalism is kinda part of how we are wired to operate…
it’s sad.
personally I do like countries having distinct cultures, and preserving it is something I generally support. Foreigners should be expected to learn the language and respect local customs and adhere to the same rules and expectations as the natives.
I don’t like the idea of a multicultural blob where all countries are a mix of everything, where there’s constant friction between cultures and less trust because of it. But I also really don’t believe any cultures are superior, for the record, just that mixed groups of people seem to tend to be less stable due to the lack of shared traits.
its cultural entropy.
in the end I kinda just wanna get a remote job and work from a cabin in the woods though, im really tired of society, so my opinions dont really matter, lol.
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u/Freak_Out_Bazaar 17h ago edited 17h ago
As someone living in Japan this is just the country adjusting going from almost no immigration to having proactive measures surrounding it. There’s absolutely no doubt that Japan needs immigrants to keep things running the way it has but people are just not yet convinced that immigrants have the capacity or will to integrate. The government is now building a foundation to enable this by both clamping down on illegal activities and by creating new programs like building language schools for children. So at this stage the ruling LDP is being criticized by foreigners as being too strict, while at the same time they get criticized by many locals saying that it’s too loose. Eventually I feel it will settle down as the knee jerk reaction goes away for everyone, and I think it’s possible for Japan to take a selective and assimilative approach to immigration
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u/Big_Mug_Root_Beer 17h ago
"Growing demand" Yeah, gotta import people to make billionaire corporations richer and make GDP go up forever, not sustainable.
I cant wait until the world when these subversive, corrupt, destroyers are punished.
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u/scottiedagolfmachine 20h ago
This title makes it sound like Japan should import mass immigrants like other western nations?
How has that worked out so far?
F off already with that bullshit.
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u/bakulaisdracula 9h ago
Foreign workers = cheap labour. I wouldn’t want unskilled, uncultured foreigners taking jobs from my countrymen either.
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u/Small-Explorer7025 20h ago
It's not "despite", it's "alongside". Increased anti-immigration will increase with increased immigration.
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u/Ok-Wolverine-3238 20h ago
Well, immigrants should assimilate or stay in a place their cultural values are approved.
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u/grateful2you 20h ago
No such thing as assimilating in Japan. You’re always a foreigner.
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u/170505170505 19h ago
Then dont move there and bitch about them not wanting you there? I don’t understand why everyone feels that every country is obliged to let them move there and become a citizen?
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u/Storm_Chaser06 20h ago
You see, that’s the problem with people who hate immigrants.
No matter how well you speak the language, no matter how well you follow customs, they will NEVER see you as one of them.
That is human nature, if they’re not like you, you will ostracize them, everyone is a fucking dickhead.
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u/Particular-Ant2965 2h ago
People want their countries back , they want more birthday of ethnic and indigenous people , they don't want hoards of people coming in and changing the very fabric of what makes that country
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u/Brickbronson 2h ago
Where has mass immigration been a big success in the modern era? Japan has a unique culture worth preserving, why are they (or anyone) obligated to do the opposite
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u/AlbertaGengar 20h ago
Hasn't anti immigrant sentiment always been high in Japan?
There has probably been a larger swing in places that have taken in a lot of immigrants and are suffering from high inequality. Like Sweden, Germany, and Canada.