Japan must open borders or face slow decline
By David Pilling and Michiyo Nakamoto
Published: February 3 2003 20:54 | Last Updated: February 3 2003 20:54
<<The press always talk about it after EWlmatdor writes it here. This sounds like Elmat's prescription of mass migration as the solution for the decadency of OECD countries. >>
It was not until the subject of immigration came up that the man grimaced. Until then the Japanese official had given every impression of being a confident internationalist.
But asked whether Japan's demographics meant it would need to open its borders to immigrants, he was unequivocal. "No," he said. "We have seen what has happened in the US and Europe. For the rewards you get in terms of economic rejuvenation, the costs are simply too high."
The official's reaction is by no means universal. Yet it helps explain why Japan has remained more of a monoculture than any other big industrial nation despite a dwindling population likely to halve by the end of the century. Many officials privately say they would prefer to see Japan suffer a slow economic decline than the social turmoil of multiculturalism.
David Willetts, a member of the Global Ageing Commission, says Japan has become a test case for how countries deal with a declining population. "Japan has got the most dramatic demographic challenge of any country," he says.
Nobuko Fukuhara, a deputy director at Japan's immigration bureau, says: "There needs to be a public consensus. If the public decides that it doesn't want immigrants and it doesn't care whether Japan maintains its productivity level, we can only make policy on that basis."
Japan's immigrant population is tiny in comparison with that of the US and most of Europe. Of Japan's 127m people, the number of foreigners who have obtained permanent residency, a process that usually takes 10 years, was just 184,071 in 2001, according to the immigration bureau. That figure rises to 1.7m if all "foreigners" are counted but official statistics include several hundred thousand Korean and other long-term residents, many of whom were born to families that have lived in Japan for generations.
The question of whether to relax immigration or working-visa regulations is no longer academic. Part of the Japanese establishment wants to open the country to more immigrants to replenish the working population. This is shrinking by 0.6 per cent a year and will have dropped by 36 per cent between 2000 and 2050, according to UN projections.
A senior government adviser says: "It's obvious that there's no future for Japan unless it opens up its borders. Japan's labour population is already beginning to decline. We definitely need human resources from neighbouring countries." An early test could come with proposals to relax extremely tight visa restrictions on foreign healthcare workers. The Philippines and Thailand are pressing Japan to allow the freer entry of nurses as part of talks aimed at concluding bilateral free-trade agreements. Advocates in Japan say that this would help fill the gaps in the chronically understaffed health service.
If present trends continue, by 2040 there will be only one working-age adult for each person over 60. Japan has acted pragmatically in the past. In late 2001 it relaxed rules for IT workers to ease a chronic skills shortage. More generally, working visas in some categories of employment can be extended to three years, against a former maximum of one.
But relaxation only goes so far. Wataru Aso, governor of Fukuoka, a prefecture in western Japan, which is trying to make a virtue of its proximity to South Korea and China, complains that tight visa restrictions impede plans to recruit skilled high-tech workers from abroad.
At the other end of the spectrum, unskilled workers are, in effect, banned. Officials in the health, labour and welfare ministry argue that an influx of foreign healthcare workers would endanger quality and depress wages. Besides, with unemployment creeping up, they say, labour shortages can be filled by Japanese.
There has also been an upsurge in media reports linking crime with immigration. The arrest ratio has fallen in recent years from 60 per cent of reported crimes to less than 20 per cent. For the first time, the police department's annual report had an extensive section on crime committed by foreign nationals.
Yet even some of the most conservative elements in Japan appear to be giving more serious thought to immigration. According to a study by the Keidanren, the main business federation, Japan could get away with a 10 per cent consumption tax rate by 2025 if it allowed in enough immigrants. If not, the rate would need to be 18 per cent, just to keep Japan's finances afloat.
The Keidanren calculation only serves to highlight the scale of Japan's challenge. Its model assumes that Japan will have to admit millions of foreign workers to make up for a 6.1m shortfall in the workforce by 2025. Japan's history suggests it is far from ready even to contemplate such an influx. |
