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Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

bloomberg.com

101–110 of 285 posts

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ageing and shrinking population is a temporary, one-off problem. There's no fundamental reason why a replacement or below-replacement birth rate is a problem - in many ways it's advantageous - but it's a really big problem over the next few decades because we didn't plan for it. Taking a perhaps unwarranted broad view, economies of scale allow for us to achieve certain productive activities that we would otherwi…

UN forecasts suggest that the global population will plateau at between 9 and 11 billion by 2100 to 2150, followed by stasis or a very gradual decline. IMO, those are excellent numbers - more than large enough to launch an interplanetary civilisation, but manageable within the resource constraints of Earth. I'd be worried if the population was forecast to shrink below a billion, but that's highly unlikely on any reas…

The UN forecasts are ridiculous at any long term timescale. They assume that desire for children is not heritable so everywhere will undergo the demographic transition and just somehow magically the world will reach replacement fertility and stay there. In reality the share of births to women who already have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8+ children has been increasing in the US for over a decade and the ultra orthodox have gone from politically marginal in Israel to over 1/4 of the population. They’ll probably be a majority in my lifetime. In the US Mormons, Amish, Hutterites and Hasidim all have high to very high fertility. Absent a deliberate state driven destruction of their culture, Soviet style, that’s likely to continue and the same dynamic of cultural and biological evolution for greater fertility will just keep on working somewhere.

There will be no stabilisation of population.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#102

I was in Tokyo a few years ago, went back recently and I noticed the changes described in this article too. Every sign and menu are now in Japanese/Chinese/English. Waiters, salesclerks, metro station assistants now speaks English. And every 7-Eleven, Starbucks, etc… seems to employ foreigners instead of Japanese people (mostly from countries like Vietnam, Philippine, Thailand and India tho), who speak English perfec…

A lot of this is most likely in preparation for the 2020 Olympics. Especially the street signs. Its made Tokyo way more easily navigable though, especially combined with Google maps. :)

From my observations the Chinese signs are more a reaction to the hordes flocking into the country to buy hygiene products in bulk and also do a little sightseeing on the side.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#103
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is true. In fact, by far the fastest route to permanent residence in Japan is marriage. You can get PR in 3 years if you are married to a Japanese national vs 10 years if you aren't. More details on that. Getting a wedding visa the first time gives 1 year. At the second application one year later, one gets once again 1 year. At the third application one year later, you get 3 three. At this point, you could ask…

> Getting a wedding visa the first time gives 1 year. At the second application one year later, one gets once again 1 year. At the third application one year later, you get 3 three This is case-by-case. I went 1y-3y-5y. I've met people who got 3y on their first. > but after that there is no need to go to the immigration office You still need to renew your physical card every 7 years (new photo etc), but at least you…

Indeed preparing mine now for the 5 year and once that's done I'll be turning around and starting the permanent visa paperwork. Finally! Lol

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#104
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute fastest way to PR is through Highly Skilled Foreign Professional Type 1 visa. PR after a year. That's incredibly fast. Type 2 visa after 3 years IIRC. The difference between 1 and 2 is the number of points one scores.

The points calculation table can be found here: https://www.juridique.jp/visa/hsp.php It seems that if you have a master's degree from top 300 universities, passed N2, aged under 30 and have high salary (10M yen+) you can easily get 100 points. Type 1 visa only requires 80 points and guarantees permanent residency in one year.

Note that "N2" is Level 2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is the 2nd highest level of 5 and entails multiple years of study.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#105

The Bloomberg article exacerbates the bigotry many Japanese have against their own fellow citizens. In the caption of the first picture: "She’s not all Japanese, but she was Miss Universe Japan 2015." Yes, she is "all" Japanese. She grew up in Japan, with her Japanese mother, attending Japanese schools. This is the subtle bigotry toward people who are "half" (as they're called in Japan) rather than "dual". Many Japan…

No it’s not bigotry to say that someone that is half-japanese is ‘not all Japanese”. Bigotry is if you treat her worse because of it.

Citizenship may be “dual” but biological race isn’t, it has to add up to 100%. Clearly that is what they are referring to here.

Not all countries are America, there are plenty of places with a pretty well defined ethnicity, like Japan.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UN forecasts suggest that the global population will plateau at between 9 and 11 billion by 2100 to 2150, followed by stasis or a very gradual decline. IMO, those are excellent numbers - more than large enough to launch an interplanetary civilisation, but manageable within the resource constraints of Earth. I'd be worried if the population was forecast to shrink below a billion, but that's highly unlikely on any reas…

The UN forecasts are ridiculous at any long term timescale. They assume that desire for children is not heritable so everywhere will undergo the demographic transition and just somehow magically the world will reach replacement fertility and stay there. In reality the share of births to women who already have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8+ children has been increasing in the US for over a decade and the ultra orthodox have gone from…

All population data for the last century disagrees, and no magic is needed to explain why: the cost of raising children in modern society is so high and the child mortality rate so low that there is strong societal pressure to have less children. Sure, some fringe groups can resist this in the same way that the Amish resist electricity, but this will not be mainstream. Even the Haredim are having less children than they used to:

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5439005,00.html

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#107

The Bloomberg article exacerbates the bigotry many Japanese have against their own fellow citizens. In the caption of the first picture: "She’s not all Japanese, but she was Miss Universe Japan 2015." Yes, she is "all" Japanese. She grew up in Japan, with her Japanese mother, attending Japanese schools. This is the subtle bigotry toward people who are "half" (as they're called in Japan) rather than "dual". Many Japan…

The word Japanese can refer to both nationality and ethnicity, no?

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#108

> but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! > it will inevitably introduce social strains Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.

> I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! I’m quite surprised to hear this actually. I visited Japan recently and I consistently saw other foreigners around the center of Tokyo. I think the only time I _didn’t_ see any other foreigners was when I was out in Ōtsu, but that’s sort of out there for most visitors anyway. EDIT: I should add that I tried to make a point of walk…

>I’m quite surprised to hear this actually. I visited Japan recently and I consistently saw other foreigners around the center of Tokyo

Of course, but those were mostly tourists?

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#109
post #67

> but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! > it will inevitably introduce social strains Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.

How can you know? Can you reliably identify Koreans from Japanese?

It's not very difficult if you've lived in either place...

(And they don't exactly have a mutual love for each other)

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#110

> but it’s no longer quite right to call it homogeneous Are you sure? Japan is maybe 99% homogeneous? I live in central Tokyo and I can go on for days and days without seeing a foreigner! > it will inevitably introduce social strains Sadly, yes. I've observed this on few occasions.

Maybe many people you see are Asian foreigners (Chinese, Korean, Filipinos, etc) and you just don't realize it. I hear Chinese spoken on the streets all the time.

Chinese and Fiipinos don't look much like Japanese if you're not totally alien to asians and consider them all the same. And even Koreans have some different characteristics, which one can tell for the most part.
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