Japan needs foreign workers. It's just not sure it wants them to stay

Ngu Thazin wanted to leave her war-torn country for a better future. She set her sights on Japan.

In Myanmar, she studied Japanese and graduated with a chemistry degree from one of her country's most prestigious universities. 

Yet she gladly took a job in Japan changing diapers and bathing residents at a nursing home in a midsize city.

"To be honest, I want to live in Japan because it is safe," said Thazin, who hopes eventually to pass an exam that will allow her to work as a licensed caregiver. "And I want to send my family money."

Japan desperately needs people like Thazin to fill jobs left open by a declining and aging population. 

The number of foreign workers has quadrupled since 2007, to more than 2 million, in a country of 125 million people. 

Many of these workers escaped low wages, political repression or armed conflict in their home countries.

But even as foreign employees become much more visible in Japan, working as convenience store cashiers, hotel clerks and restaurant servers, they are treated with ambivalence. 

Politicians remain reluctant to create pathways for foreign workers, especially those in low-skill jobs, to stay indefinitely. 

That may eventually cost Japan in its competition with neighbors such as South Korea and Taiwan, or even places farther afield including Australia and Europe, that are also scrambling to find labor.

Political resistance to immigration in long-insular Japan, as well as a public that is sometimes wary of integrating newcomers, has led to a nebulous legal and support system that makes it difficult for foreigners to put down roots. 

Foreign-born workers are paid on average about 30% less than their Japanese counterparts, according to government data. 

Fearful of losing their right to stay in Japan, workers often have precarious relationships with their employers, and career advancement can be elusive.

Japan's policies are designed for "people to work in Japan for preferably a short period of time," said Yang Liu, a fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo. 

If the system continues as it is, the probability that foreign workers will stop coming has become very high.

In 2018, the government passed a law authorizing a sharp increase in the number of low-skilled "guest laborers" allowed into the country. 

This year, the government committed to more than doubling the number of such workers over the next five years, to 820,000. 

It also revised a technical internship program that employers had used as a source of cheap labor and that workers and labor activists had criticized as fostering abuses.

Still, politicians are far from flinging open the country's borders. Japan has yet to experience the kind of significant migration that has convulsed Europe or the United States. 

The total number of foreign-born residents in Japan -- including nonworking spouses and children is 3.4 million, less than 3% of the population. 

For instance, the percentage in Germany and the United States is close to five times that.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/work/japan-needs-foreign-workers-its-just-not-sure-it-wants-them-to-stay-/articleshow/112280788.cms