Japan Inc pleads for foreign workers
By Hussain Khan

TOKYO - Despite the fact that one in three Japanese oppose increasing foreign immigration, Nippon Keidanren, Japan's most powerful business group, is urging the government to issue green cards to permanently absorb foreigners into Japanese society. While unemployment remains at record levels, the acute labor shortage in certain sectors has led businesses here to put pressure on the government to relax restrictions on foreign workers to boost Japan’s productivity and industrial activity.

Japan's predicament with respect to foreign labor is certainly not surprising, however. As a homogeneous, insular country, Japan has never been comfortable with immigration - or even tourism for that matter. A recent survey found that roughly a third of Japanese said they do not want to see an increase in foreign tourists. Atsushi Kondo of Kyushu Sangyo University, in a discussion paper, describes how Japanese lawmakers tend to sidestep the question of permanent residence for resident aliens. But with an aging population and a declining birth rate, there are few options left as Japan aims to bolster its fragile economic recovery.

Kondo, in his paper, cited a 2000 report by the Population Division of Japan’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs saying that "in order to keep the size of working age population at 1995 levels [87.2 million] Japan will need 33.5 million immigrants between 1995 and 2050".

However, serious consideration of this issue has been stymied by xenophobic comments from politicians and sensational media coverage of rising crimes committed by foreigners. After all, Japan has traditionally espoused "island-country mentality", or shimaguni konjou, which encompasses an inherent distrust of foreigners. "Some politicians talked about the rise in foreign crime during the recent elections," Hidenori Sakanaka, director general of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, told a symposium on immigration in November. "But I don't think anybody in the Diet has really begun to discuss the issue of how to accept migrant labor over the long term. That's a shame because it is an issue that is in great need of careful deliberation."

To a large extent, Japan seems unable to deal with this problem. Any attempt to create immigration policy is half-hearted, and while the Ministry of Justice deals with immigration control, there is no government office designed specifically to handle immigration policy, according to Kondo’s study, which was first published in the Asia Pacific Migration Journal in 2002.

Sakanaka went on to say that Japanese attitudes towards foreigners are shaped by sensational media reports and consist of two opposing views. The first view "is that a future Japan should be a 'small country' that accepts a population decline and makes adjustments without resorting to importing foreign labor en masse". One senior central government bureaucrat, for instance, commented that if Japan takes in many talented people from abroad, there would be fewer jobs available for the Japanese themselves. As a result, young people could end up doing "3K" jobs - kitsui (hard), kitanai (dirty) and kikken (dangerous).

The second argument is that Japan should remain a "big country" and an economic powerhouse by responding to the population decline by importing foreign workers. This strategy is clearly the one favored by Nippon Keidanren, which is headed by Hiroshi Okuda, the president of Toyota, Japan’s biggest automaker. The business lobby has been arguing for the establishment of a green card system that would increase the number of foreign workers while discouraging them from overstaying. A green card system, according to a preliminary report by Nippon Keidanren, would allow foreign professionals in fields such as law, medicine and accounting to live in Japan permanently. Nippon Keidanren and other business groups argue that the number of fields in which foreigners receive training should be expanded to include nursing care and aesthetic businesses such as hair salons, the report added.

Other political figures argue that Japan should first exploit all other options, including employing more women and elderly people, before simply inviting more foreigners to come - except in certain sectors. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested in 1999 that Japan "should recognize 'nursing care provider' as a visa category", where needs are certain to skyrocket in the coming years as Japan's elderly population expands.

The Population Division of the United Nations, Kondo wrote, has estimated that the total population of Japan would decrease by 21.8 million without immigration by the year 2050 and 32 percent of the population would be over 65 years of age. In contrast, the US is expected to gain 70.9 million people by 2050 even if immigration were halted altogether.

Japan has managed to industrialize without a major immigration influx thus far, unlike Europe and the United States, partly because of large-scale domestic immigration. In fact, more farmers have moved off the land in Japan than in most Western countries. The country has also succeeded in automating many production processes through microelectronics and robotics. Even housewives and the elderly are now part of the work force, along with countless numbers of part-time student employees. The Japanese also work longer hours - an average of 2,100 a year, compared with 1,690 in Germany and 1,650 in France.

Many Japanese bureaucrats continue to argue that any labor shortage should be dealt with by reversing the slide in Japan's birthrate and increasing job opportunities for women and senior citizens. Nippon Keidanren contends, however, that declining birthrates and barriers to immigration pose a serious threat to Japan’s industrial base. Indeed, Japan’s labor market is essentially closed to foreigners, with non-Japanese workers comprising less than 1 percent of the total work force, whereas 5 to 10 percent of the labor force in the US and Europe is made up of foreign workers. These numbers are deceiving though, as government officials have estimated that in the year 2000 about a third of all foreign workers in Japan were descendents of Japanese emigrants, returning from countries such as Peru and Brazil.

Further, the Keidanren report claims, "There is much the government can and should do to increase the legitimate employment of foreigners, including unskilled workers. It should, for example, expand student-exchange programs, provide employment support and ease restrictions on residence. Labor market liberalization, if implemented carefully and in stages, will bring substantial benefits to the Japanese economy."

Certainly, Japan's demand for foreign engineers is growing despite the presence of systemic barriers such as the limited period foreign workers are allowed to stay. Engineers, for examples, are only allowed to stay for three years. In contrast, engineers can stay at least six years in the US and have the option to renew their residency.

In an editorial, The Japan Times commented, "Japan is far behind other advanced industrial countries in the employment of foreign engineers. For example, Japan receives more than 1,000 IT (information technology) engineers each year from India, with which it has a technical-exchange program. But the number does not begin to compare with those in the United States, particularly in California's Silicon Valley where more than a third of the engineers are Chinese and Indians."

The head of a domestic IT firm agrees. "We have excellent Chinese and Indian engineers working with us, and they are making great contributions to the company. But many Japanese firms hold them in low esteem because they are from developing countries. Japan is a backward country when it comes to hiring foreign IT engineers," he says.

According to a recent editorial in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, "It goes without saying that immigration law enforcement should be enhanced, including closer cooperation with counterpart authorities in the countries of origin, but it is equally important to establish fair approval criteria while dispelling the lingering tendency of the Japanese public to discriminate against people of other countries. For Japan to keep its economy and society in lively form, the need to increase intakes of human resources from abroad, under the insurance of appropriate anti-crime measures, seems beyond question."

Nippon Keidanren will deliver its final report in March next year. So far, the organization has suggested that Japan needs more foreign workers to improve the competitiveness of the nation's industrial sector and to cover labor shortages in some sectors such as nursing care, for instance, where Japan is facing an acute shortage of trained nurses.

Despite the recommendations made by Nippon Keidanren and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that caregiver visas be increased, Japan's reluctance to accept foreign nurses and other caregivers was a major sticking point during bilateral trade agreement negotiations between Japan and the Philippines. The Philippines is urging Japan to accept Filipino nurses, who are already a ubiquitous part of the health care profession in the US and European countries. Tokyo has refused to make concessions on this issue and insists that foreign nurses acquire Japanese qualifications in order to work in Japan. In response, the Philippine Ambassador to Japan, Domingo Siazon, has warned that Japan's nursing-care system will collapse unless it becomes "more practical".

To promote Manila's case, Siazon has referred to data compiled by the US Census Bureau showing that working Filipinos between the ages of 15 and 64 will surpass Japan's working population by 2025. And Vietnam will match Japan in this category the same year. Japan's work force is nearly double that of the Philippines or Vietnam, but this population gap will soon be negligible as Japan's elderly population increases and population growth in these two Southeast Asian nations climbs. Siazon therefore stressed that Japan's nursing-care system will be unworkable unless it accepts caregivers from other countries.

Despite these arguments, the government effectively decided in 1999 that it would be inappropriate to accept foreign workers to cope with labor shortages. With regard to unskilled labor, there are general restrictions on the employment of foreigners, with the exception of returning Japanese emigrants to countries such as Brazil and their offspring. There are ways to get around immigration barriers though, in the form of government-backed training and technical internship programs where workers from developing countries effectively join the work force of host companies for up to three years. The president of an apparel maker in Gifu prefecture currently hosting 27 Chinese women under this program remarked, "They're good with their hands and hard-working. I wish they could stay longer, say for five years."

Osamu Shimohira, a representative of a Gifu-based association of garment companies that accepts trainees from China, explained, "We would have no choice but to go out of business without Chinese workers." He went on to say that no Japanese are applying for jobs in his industry. Shimohira said his association's member companies are struggling to secure enough workers to keep up with the demand for quick sewing work.

Japanese companies faced with labor shortages often accept foreign workers as "trainees", a practice that has spread from textile and metal-processing companies to fisheries and agriculture.

The Gifu industrial association sends experienced officials to China to carry out examinations before hiring workers, and only a few Chinese workers have abused their admission to Japan under this system, according to association officials.

Japanese businesses in need of foreign labor maintain that in order to avoid illegal immigration, Japan should follow the example of Taiwan, which accepts foreigners under the provisions of bilateral labor accords with countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam.

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