On Wednesday last week, US President Joe Biden called the immigration policies of Japan and India “xenophobic,” lumping them in with China and Russia. Comparing them with the US’ principle of welcoming immigrants, he accounted for their troubled economies by saying that “they don’t want immigrants.”
This is not the impression one gets from walking around certain areas of Japan. There are places in the country where Indians and Southeast Asians can frequently be seen working in the streets and shops. It is also a rather simplistic analysis of the economic situation in these different societies, and ignores the perceived impact of demographic changes and possible social tensions that large-scale immigration and the offer of permanent residency might entail.
The White House said Biden’s words were not intended to offend India or Japan. It was certainly an inadvisable choice of word and one that could reasonably have caused offense, even if none was intended. Former US deputy assistant secretary of defence Elbridge Colby wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that voicing “parochial progressive views” to allies was “patronising and foolish.”
More cultural sensitivity would be advised.
Tokyo’s policy on streamlining the introduction of foreign workers to increase the number of non-Japanese in the workforce would suggest that it is far from the truth that Japan “does not want” immigrants. It certainly does, as do many other nations in the region — including South Korea and Taiwan — that are having to adjust policy to address falling birthrates and shrinking numbers of working-age nationals.
In these countries, the debate has shifted from how to bolster the birthrate to how to attract more foreign workers.
Neither does the need to increase foreign labor exist in isolation of other nations: The question is about how to vie with other countries to attract workers and not lose them to other destinations.
The Japanese government’s initiatives to change the broken Technical Intern Training Program for unskilled foreign workers have sought to give them more freedom and agency in Japan, such as the ability to change employers and improve the framework governing supervisory agencies and support. However, labor law expert Yoshihisa Saito, an associate professor of the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies in Kobe, in August last year said that Japan continues to view foreign workers as disposable objects to which a bare minimum of support should be given.
Xenophobic is too strong a word, but there is little doubt that the system needs to be reformed to bring it into line with more progressive international standards focusing on the rights of the individual.
Biden did not mention Taiwan, but the nation does not fare too well in this regard, either. There is so much to do in terms of reforming the foreign labor recruitment system to address high fees payable by the worker, not the employer, leading to a form of debt bondage and higher incidence of absconding. It is regrettable that the most recent opportunity to address this issue, the presidential campaigns before the elections on Jan. 13, passed by without the candidates broaching solutions.
Nations in the region need to augment their working age populations, and do so despite objections by more conservative elements in society that are concerned with dilution of local culture and with demographic changes. Instead of treating foreign workers as short-term solutions to a long-term problem, they need to look into ways to integrate them and recognize them as full, legitimate members of society.
They need to be aware that it is increasingly a sellers’ market, and that there is a race on.
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