Japan's Immigration Debate in an Era of Population Decline & Labor Shortage 

29 years ago I came to Japan. As a young teacher in Canada I was making $4,000 a month with two months off in summer and a VERY good pension program. I took a big cut in pay to work in Japan at an international school. 29 years later, working full time in a university as a tenured associate professor I STILL make less than I would if I had stayed as a high school teacher in Canada and my pension here is PATHETIC, by Canadian standards. What's ironic to me is that now, 29 years later, the yen is weak, Japanese taxes are much higher, and that starting salary I took 29 years ago is even lower now. I would NEVER recommend a fellow Canadian come to work in Japan except for a year, as a way to travel and spend your money. These people in charge are utterly out of touch with reality.

Your current senior/retirees are suffering in poverty alone. Housing is in shambles. You can renovate abandoned homes but who is going to live in them?? Especially in villages of elderly. Western country graduates will not come and work for peanuts. Who would give up their citizenship for Japan? No babies because young people don’t want to live like their parents did. Father’s never home, always working. They want better more fulfilling careers then being a slave working 14 hour days for peanuts. Can’t afford housing, daycare on current salaries. Get rid of old politicians and get younger politicians who can fix these problems. You can’t force women to have babies or marry.

I wanted to move to Japan and start a business, until this Monday, after speaking with a consulate official regarding the "business manager" visa. I have assets, I wanted to buy a home (with cash) and start a business (with cash). I would have provided a benefit to Japan. The business manager visa (and most visas in Japan) have such an unrealistic, extremely high barrier of entry (which is done on purpose). Every visa there basically has someone in the Japanese hierarchy (or a citizen) controlling your fate, you have no freedom and you can basically be kicked out for no fault of your own. This is because the geritocracy that runs that country are simply just too racist. They still carry that far right, fascist mentality from ww2. The main problem is that because of the population demographics there (much more older people than younger), the older generations control the voting, keep voting in these racists to continue their way of life and are happy to watch their country be destroyed out of selfishness. The young people have no hope because of this, they are not having babies because they dont want to live under that pig headed geritocracy. For Christs sake, they still use fax machines. If a young person suggests a better method, they are punished (if not sacked from their jobs) because they made some old fart lose face. It seems that the old people there dont care about Japans future because they are going to be gone in a decade or so. I am not a far left fascist (like the Australian govt, where I am from) where its an open border policy, designed to break apart the community with immigrants who dont assimilate etc, but Japan needs to understand that we live in a global community and economy. If they continue to stay stuck in the early 20th century mentality, the country will continue to die. Its already too late now.

Trying to attract high income foreigners to work in Japan is wishful thinking. There are some significant disadvantages for such foreigners to live in Japan long term. Japanese inheritance taxes already kick in on inheritance amounts over 30000000 Yen which is only about $200,000. In the USA, inheritances are only taxed on the amount over $11,000,000. When my father recently died in America, my sisters had a good laugh at my expense when I had to pay almost $40,000 in inheritance taxes to Japan and they had to pay nothing in the USA.

That’s not the issue. Stop stealing money from people and pay a reasonable pension to elders

Salary and GDP per capita in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as mainland China Tier 1 cities, already far outstripped Japan.

Japan should make a similar institution to Germany's Goethe Institut which promotes the country's language and culture. This would tremendously help those aspiring foreign workers who want to move, study, and/or work in Japan. This institute will also need to integrate with the foreign skilled workers scheme, by providing them with language courses and resources needed to help them pass the Japanese language and skilled worker application tests.

75? So basically working for life cause school isnt easy either. Lol, their own youth has high unemployment and pay is too low compared to other countries for high skills and having to learn japanese

And why would highly educated foreigner and high income business foreigner would want to work in a repressive work culture of Japan? Why would these educated and business foreigner want to live in an oppressive society like Japan with weak currency? See, Japan's old way of thinking is gonna continue to keep this country going downward spiral. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something else. 🤣

If they only target graduate and ivy league school graduates, then you are going to have a foreign population that can and will on average outcompete japanese workers in terms of tyoes of jobs. And most of those graduates why would they choose Japan with its cheap salaries? They cant pay back student loans with that? The second guy who says they should target other asians is rational. I realised thay living here 5 years. Japan is not a long term place to live for a westerner. But to other asians this is utopia.

Conservative gaijin only please!

this is 3-6 times the average wage in japan. Without opening up to other languages, I cant see a lot of people making this type of money doing this. Why not just get young workers making at least the average.

Oh man i can't stand the male presenter of Rea(l)ove, Atsushi Tamura

they've still got covid sheilds between them

I am from India and currently working towards getting a work visa to move to Japan, I look to move there permanently and eventually bring my family too. From my understanding, Japan as a country will simply not survive without immigration. They do not have enough children to sustain their economy, and I'm not sure why they do not do this. In India it is normal for a family to have many children, so hopefully Japan may become more like India in the future. We can do the heavy lifting from here, they simply need to make it easier for us to gain residency and they should be more generous with health care, housing, education and financial assistance for foreigners. I really don't understand why they are so stubborn and insistent on remaining Japanese, it doesn't matter. They are too attached to their culture and ethnicity to save their own country and I hope to see this change in the future.

East and South East Asians can filled that void, they're practically almost the same as the Japanese when it comes to religion, food, deep respect for elders... etc. These people would get along fine in Japanese society. You will only have problems when you have different views in religion and what you eat. Like Muslims, you bring those into your country, farther down the road there will be some kind of clash.

Where in japan can you even get a salary of 20000000 yen? This law wouldnt have any effect if this is the kind of standards that they implement