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Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

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Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#201

Post by fromthestart »

Apocryphon wrote: post #69
fromthestart wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture. There's a difference between gradual assimilation of cultural elements over hundreds of years, and flooding a country with change on the scale of a generation. It's perfectly reasonable to want to preserve what amounts to a cultural identity by limiting cultural influx. >Anyone who espouses cultural purity is simply ignorant of culture Nonsense. The…

The ancestral post of this thread is bemoaning supposed cultural deracination in Japan because of changes to immigration policy. It is hysterical to presume that the Japanese are about to flood their country "with change on the scale of a generation". > does not mean that it is not itself pure By what metric is a culture pure? How can information be pure? How far back in the timeline do you want to gauge purity? And…

>By what metric is a culture pure?

By the degree to which it has uniquely evolved in relative isolation.

>How can information be pure?

By the degree to which the combination of information that defines a particular culture is unique. Again, if we model culture as a linear combination of cultural traits, purity may be measured as, for example, euclidean distance between clusters, reflecting unique developments that occur as a function of isolation. As an extreme case, compare an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon, or the Amish, to a cosmopolitan population like residents of New York City.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#202

Post by coldtea »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #106
barry-cotter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That assumes both the cost will remain the same (or a factor), and that children mortality rate will continue to be low, neither or which are a given.

Add a couple climate catastrophes and wars for resources, and we can see the landscape in 2100 or 2200...

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#203

Post by duxup »

sprash wrote: post #197
duxup wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep saying "multiculturalism" but I'm not sure what you mean. You talk about tribalism and war, that's a choice someone makes, and that's on those who choose it.

> that's a choice someone makes If you have a vastly non-tribalistic society (.e.g. western society) and introduce masses of highly tribalistic immigrants then the host society has no choice but to either become tribalistic itself or die. There is no choice. The survivor will always be the strongest, most ruthless, brutal and tribalisitc tribe. We had a great technology that shielded us from that kind of tribal confl…

Humans are prone tribalism, that's a human trait. I feel like your comments here effectively prove that.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#204

Post by CydeWeys »

htfy96 wrote: post #100
GreaterFool wrote: post #21

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.

It always seems strange to me how much deference is given to masters degrees for immigration purposes when in many industries they aren't worth getting, and can actually correlate negatively with someone's skill. And you get no points for a "mere" undergrad degree, even though in many fields such as CS that's more meaningful as it represents twice as much work. At my alma mater, the undergrad CS holders are much more capable than the graduate CS holders on average, simply because the undergrads know they don't need the grad degree and thus don't get one, whereas the grad students had a different undergrad degree and may have only gotten those two years' worth of exposure to CS. So the undergrads have twice the experience, which is substantial. This phenomenon is widespread in CS.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#205

Post by program_whiz »

Some are saying this is a response to needing more people due to decreasing fertility rates. At least in the US, I was shocked to learn that people actually _want_ children at the same rates as before (about 2.5 kids, and 95% of people want children). However, according to these sources, the major reason is that its too expensive (~65%) and the economy seems uncertain (~12%).

Gallup Data: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp...

Article Overview: https://ifstudies.org/blog/how-many-kids-do-women-want

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#206

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #167
Apocryphon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Japan, with its own unique culture and governance distinct from Western nations, is not pursuing a course of mass migration but something more regulated and careful.

They were, for a while. Isn't the point of this article that they're moving to a much more Western-style policy? Japan was a unique culture, but already feels a lot less so than it used to be.

[deleted]

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#207

Post by program_whiz »

Perhaps partially due to the fact that people just aren't procreating?

A survey published last week of Japanese attitudes towards sex caused a stir with the claim that about 40% of young single men and women have never had sex – a phenomenon that is being blamed for the low birthrate in Japan, where it is predicted the population will plummet from 127 million over the next century.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research’s poll of 5,000 single men and women aged 18-34 found that the proportion of virgins had increased significantly over the past decade: among men, 42% said they had never had sex; among women the figure was 44%.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/japan-poll-lin...

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#208

Post by mter »

sridca wrote: post #135
Complexicate wrote: post #99

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…

> Many Japanese will always consider them "less Japanese" or outsiders. Isn't this true of other nations?

Japan is extra special in this regard. My brother who is japanese, married a japanese national, speaks japanese and lives in japan is not "Japanese". That's what the article is referring to.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#209

Post by llamathrowaway »

It’s funny to see the comments lamenting the projected destruction of Japanese culture, while in fact

- the Japanese language is littered with loan words written in katakana even though native words of the same meaning often exist already

- office workers all wear suits

- the music scene is not very different from the west. Rock is huge and there is a great jazz scene. While bands playing Japanese instruments are rare and will be seen as a speciality, the same way bagpipes make you feel ethnic and traditional but pianos and guitars don’t.

- 'western' food is everywhere. I am not talking about what you can actually order in a restaurant in Europe, but Saizeriya and it’s peers. Western inspired cuisine. Japanese curry is also a thing.

- and don’t forget about whiskey.

And that

- no one forced Japan to do so. They have being open to foreign cultural influences since Meiji era, and I don’t see that changing. Seems to me that if it works for the Japanese people, it can and will become Japanese culture.

I am open to hear about some opinion from a native Japanese viewpoint. But from what I have read in this thread, much of the speculation about the loss of the 'unique' Japanese culture has more to do about what is happening in the west than what will happen in Japan.

Re: Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration

#210

Post by mvid »

rockinghigh wrote: post #199
bliblah wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very accurate, countries do not share citizenship data so it is impossible for them to know who has 2 or more passports. I have several friends that have remained in possessions of their previous passports and still renew them in case they ever need them.

No, it’s highly dependent on the countries involved. When you apply for the second citizenship, that country knows about your first citizenship. They can decide to force you to choose one. And the first country may or may not allow you to give up that citizenship. As an example, you can read about dual citizenship in Europe here: https://m.dw.com/cda/en/dual-citizenship-in-europe-which-rul... You will see that the ru…

Yes, but I believe the point is that you can lie that you gave up the first one, even if you didn’t. There isn’t a way of checking
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