<Charles Jannuzi>-----
> There now around 2,000,000 legal internationals residing in Japan. Add at
> least a couple hundred thousand if you count illegal. Subtract around a half
> million who are really Japanized N. Koreans.
1,500,000 registered foreign nationals (1.2% of the population) -you have to register if you stay for more than 90 days- about 300,000 visa overstayers, a totally unknown count of people who entered illegally. 4,500,000 foreigners enter japan every year and about half leave within a few weeks. there are probably more than half million japanized koreans since about 2,000,000 stayed after the san fransisco peace treaty but only about 600,000 remain as foreigners now. those 600,000 were 95% of the foreign population only 20 years ago. immigration laws have changed a lot and now allow people of japanese descent from south america to enter japan and work as 'unskilled workers', which is a visa category that does not exist (japan does not officially recognize the need for a foreign unskilled work force, which makes it easier to exploit foreigners in unskilled jobs positions). another way to get cheap unskilled work in japan is to use the 'trainee' visa category. although trainees ar! e supposed to stay only for a short amount of time (3-6 months) most are hired on 3 years contracts including no specific training (besides for japanese language teaching) at about 70,000 yen a month. most of them are chinese.
> If you take the male population 18-30 of Japanese, unemployment is 2-3 times
> the reported rates. Some of these guys are getting pretty scary. I wish I
> had an Asian face instead of a S. Italian one when I meet up with them.
companies are firing the men and re-hiring women as a flexible-cheap-part time work force. women seem to be less unemployed now than men...
> No one here feels they need immigrants, except those who run factories or
> services in places where they can't get enough cheap labor.
which is why there are attempts at easing the trainee visa restrictions/creating an unskilled work visa/easing wage restrictions for foreign workers etc. just like anywhere else, it will take some time for workers here to realize that protecting foreigners rights is in the interest of all the workers not only the foreigners.
i suppose importing foreigners is a solution to the demographic problem. but educational costs, the lack of day care facilities, gender discrimination in the working place are problems that need to be addressed before bringing in extra workers.
> I would expect, in the next 20 years, more and more Chinese to find a home
> in Japan. Many already are. Everyone thinks they adapt far better here than
> most other groups.
at least 1-2 millions but in what conditions ? they adapt better probably because they come from the same ideogram culture and because they are used to low income lifes. but even if chinese can adapt to japan 'easily' how will japan adapt to chinese people ? racism is everywhere, the main papers have regular front pages about such and such crime commited by chinese-looking people etc. the immigration law (direct translation: immigration control law) is a set of rules that takes precedence in most legal cases where foreigners are involved. thousands of daily life issues are made difficult to solve because nothing is done to make foreigners life easier, etc...
jc helary