This is easily the strangest government plan to combat recession I have ever seen. Japan is now offering its hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants to pay for their airline trip back to Latin America, in exchange for their agreement to never seek work in Japan again.
Some background information: Japan's Latin American immigrant workforce primarily came from Brazil, where Japanese citizens were encouraged to move to Brazil and its neighboring countries to work in coffee plantations around the 20th century. These "Nikkei Brazilians" were granted special visas to return to Japan around 1990 when Japan faced an industrial slump. Currently they make up the largest immigrant workforce in Japan, with around 366,000 people.
With the economic recession hitting nearly every country in the world, Japan faced a 45% drop in exports, 4.4% unemployment, and the lowest industrial production in 25 years. In response, the Japanese decided to urge its immigrant works to leave the country, which they reason could lower pressure on domestic labor markets.
The program offers about $3000 in airline fare to Latin American guest workers, as well as $2000 for each dependent in the family. Workers are allowed to keep any leftover money. The catch is that workers who agree to take the money cannot apply for a work visa in Japan. Without that, they essentially can never again work in Japan.
Not surprisingly, this plan caused a lot of shock among both native Japanese and the Brazilian immigrants. From what I understand, the Japanese ministry is trying to open up the vacant jobs left behind by leaving workers to native citizens. The vast majority of the immigrant workers hold jobs involving either more menial labor or dangerous conditions. Can you imagine if the US tried to do this too? I have no idea as to how successful this plan will be in improving Japan's economy, but it definitely wont help make the country more multicultural, something the country has tried to do in recent years. I guess only time will tell.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
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7 comments:
wow this is super risky and radical, maybe this will prove to be a leading example to other countries facing employment issues?
also i never knew about japan & its brazilian workers..crazy!
Well sadly, Japan is not the most ethnically diverse country; it has been criticized for not being inclusive of its other minority populations, like the Ainu, who have been sometimes discriminated against. Though I would not venture to say Japan is a racist country, this is one more bit of evidence of Japan's reluctance to foster diversity within its borders.
It's understandable that Japan wants to worry about its own citizens first before giving jobs to people of other nationalities, especially in this time of economic hardships that is hitting everyone pretty hard, but I think this is a bit much even for wanting to protect your own citizens. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
~Kimiya Bahmanyar
I'm confused. Without a workforce, how can a country work it's way out of this recession? I understand cutting out the unemployed and maybe that's what Japan is trying to do, but if demand for work suddenly goes up and Japan cannot seem to get productivity started, this maybe what holds them back. But as Kevin said, the Brazilian workforce makes up the largest immigrant workforce in Japan, 366,000 workers--without them, who will do their jobs?
This does seem a bit far towards the extreme end. I can't say i'd know how this will turn out, but for better or worse it does clearly show a bit of Japan's isolationist-ish policy that it has had for the better part of the country's history. It seems like an interesting idea for them to protect their own non-immigrant work force, but it seems somewhat counterproductive as they are paying people to leave, thus even further decreasing their work force. It's interesting policy, but I don't think it will do much for them in the long run...
This is an extremely unusual action taken against immigrants. I don't know much about how the Japanese government works, but a democratic republic would not act thisa way. I personally believe that America would not take an action as radical as this. I personally believe that President Obama will try to avoid the immigration problem in the states, because after all immigrants are a cheap workforce.
Wait a minute, everyone
"Some background information: Japan's Latin American immigrant workforce primarily came from Brazil, where Japanese citizens were encouraged to move to Brazil and its neighboring countries to work in coffee plantations around the 20th century. These "Nikkei Brazilians" were granted special visas to return to Japan around 1990 when Japan faced an industrial slump. Currently they make up the largest immigrant workforce in Japan, with around 366,000 people."
These are just Japanese people or "nikkei brazilians" so from the very beginning, they never were diverse ever, they are just kicking out japanese people who happened to move to brazil for a time.
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