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What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

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Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#81

Post by pseudo0 »

Tor3 wrote: post #70
fastball wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define insignificant? From 1950 to 2000 (50 years), the foreign born percentage of the UK doubled from 4% to 8%. In the 20 years after that, the percentage doubled again to 16%. In the five years since 2020, the percentage has increased another 4 points to ~20%. Not only is 13 million people not "insignificant" in my book, but clearly the trend is accelerating.

Look back a few hundred years and you'll find that the country you grew up in, in Europe, was constantly in that situation. People moved a lot back then too. And the countries are today.. the countries. It'll be fine.

The last migration of equivalent magnitude was the Anglo-Saxons 1500 years ago... Most people did not move around much at all. An average person would be born and die in the same village, or the same region. A handful of people travelled a lot, generally merchants, sailors, and such, but they were a pretty tiny percentage of the population compared to the people engaged in subsistence agriculture.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#82

Post by malicka »

jojobas wrote: post #8

Whatever the answer to people having fewer kids is, it's not "cede your land to some other people who will". Japan's population around 1900 was mere 43 million people - when most of them were required to work the fields. Japan will be fine. Europe, on the other hand...

> cede your land to some other people who will

This is an insane way to frame immigration reform. It isn’t “ceding” anything, it just means being OK that not every single person you know is the same race. Having some cultural exchange, growing as a person, learning about the world beyond your borders… these are virtues.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#83

Post by diericx »

bulbar wrote: post #30
eska wrote: post #10

There is no “zero” immigration policy, this is a strawman. Controlled immigration is different from opening the floodgates. Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

> Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution. Because those "floodgates" for the most part have never existed and are just fear inducing rhetoric. Immigration has always been insignificant in terms of the whole population and therefore can not solve systemic problems alone.

The US opened the border significantly during the Biden administration and it caused plenty of issues worth worrying about. I think that is a good example of opening the floodgates. But if you mean only in terms of affecting the population numbers then prob irrelevant.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#84

Post by bulbar »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #65
bulbar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that solutions would be very expensive and, unfortunately, politicians don't get (re-)elected to solve problems that manifest over the span of decades.

What solutions though? From my tangential experience (brother and wife live in Tokyo), there are a ton of programs that are extremely desirable from the US birthrate/childcare perspective already. Base level of 8 weeks Maternity leave , with 6 weeks ahead of birth as well. And government pays a lump sum to help cover hospital costs per birth. The community support and available activities. Seesh the only things that…

> extremely desirable from the US birthrate/childcare perspective already.

Always a bad idea to compare with the US which is known to have a terrible social net.

> The community support and available activities.

Interesting. Is it easy to find high quality daycare for children? That seems to be a huge pain point in Germany. Also child support is too low.

I agree that solutions might not be so simple that you can just "buy them". What you can buy at least is removing pain points and giving incentives.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#85

Post by skeledrew »

Neither immigrants nor robots will prevent them from becoming essentially extinct as an ethno-national group if they don't do something serious to stimulate the fertility rate. They need to find the root of why Japanese aren't having kids and resolve it.

I'd say it's due primarily to the collision of their values with Western values, particularly concerning family and workplace roles. The core issue is actually being faced by all developed nations, but it hits Japan really hard due to their immigration stance as well as lack of natural resources (they need to excel in providing globally scoped services).

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#86

Post by pseudo0 »

Tor3 wrote: post #32
jojobas wrote: post #8

Whatever the answer to people having fewer kids is, it's not "cede your land to some other people who will". Japan's population around 1900 was mere 43 million people - when most of them were required to work the fields. Japan will be fine. Europe, on the other hand...

Around 1900 the median age of the Japanese population was somewhere in the twenties, in other words, they had a healthy and able work force relative to the population size. Today the median age is above 50, and there aren't many who can work the fields. In fact around here I see very old people doing that, and a lot of them can hardly walk normally, they're permanently bent.

What percentage of the Japanese workforce is working in the fields? Most industrial economies are in the 1-2% range for agriculture. And someone in their 50s can easily ride a tractor. Manual labor in the fields is not a productive use of labor in a first-world economy - the fact that it's still happening demonstrates slack in the system that can be absorbed.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#87

Post by bulbar »

Tor3 wrote: post #67
bulbar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that solutions would be very expensive and, unfortunately, politicians don't get (re-)elected to solve problems that manifest over the span of decades.

I don't think that's correct. Saying that "solutions would be very expensive" implies that there are actual solutions in existence. I've seen a lot of suggestions, and many have been implemented, some do slow down the dropping birthrate problem (countries with good maternity leave systems and regulated working hours are doing way better than those without), but nowhere have I seen any true fix presented, with or with…

I argue nobody dared to try. Would be a significant undertaking for the whole society. It's manifesting way to slow so nobody sees the acute urgency, so politicians tend to think about other topic most of the time.

Also pretty hard with a society full of people that don't want to have children that they must pay a lot of money to people that have children. All that while also paying a lot of money to people that are too old to work.

It will only becomes worse over time, though.

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#88

Post by invalidOrTaken »

malicka wrote: post #24
jesterson wrote: post #7

[flagged]

> crime rate hikes. No, not really. Broadly, immigration has no effect on crime-rates. In case-study after case-study, it’s shown immigration has little to no impact on crime-rates. This was even disproven after the height of the Syrian refuge crisis! But media likes sensationalist reporting, so public perception doesn’t match the statistics. > cultural demise. Meaningless, also created by the media. If you listen to…

>Broadly, immigration has no effect on crime-rates.

This just isn't true. There are a lot of studies that purport this. There are also a lot of studies that purport the opposite. A quick look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime shows a bit of the field here.

The details get really important when talking about this. Details like:

- immigrant crime rates are often compared to non-immigrant rates, as if the native-born are a single bloc, rather than distinct segments

- "immigrants" treated as a single bloc

- immigrant crime getting controlled for by age, gender, income, and education --- which is cold comfort if the bulk of your immigration is poor uneducated young men

- first-gen immigrants, if immigrating to work, often have lower crime rates. This effect disappears with second-generation. But when they do crime, it is counted as native crime, rather than immigrant crime. That...doesn't quite cleave reality at the joints.

- labor law violations, tax evasion, etc., often not counted as "crime."

Re: What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

#89

Post by yaris »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #65
bulbar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that solutions would be very expensive and, unfortunately, politicians don't get (re-)elected to solve problems that manifest over the span of decades.

What solutions though? From my tangential experience (brother and wife live in Tokyo), there are a ton of programs that are extremely desirable from the US birthrate/childcare perspective already. Base level of 8 weeks Maternity leave , with 6 weeks ahead of birth as well. And government pays a lump sum to help cover hospital costs per birth. The community support and available activities. Seesh the only things that…

From all I've read or heard about birth rate rise the measures that sociologists see as the most effective are: provide cheap housing and pay much more to families (i.e. mostly to women) with children to compensate for their loss of potential career. The latter has a twist that the payment should start (or significantly increase) with the birth of the second child (and continue to rise with the third etc). Paying for the first child does next to nothing to the birth rate. Some countries already do that, but the amount of money poured into this should increase by order(s) of magnitude to achieve the replacement level. Or we can go full medieval - completely deprive women of education possibilities and financial independence, like Taliban does.
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