WI/AHC: Japan takes in immigrants during Lost Decades

[sakamism]

I've lurked on the site for a while, but I thought I'd start with something from very recent history (hope that's not frowned upon?). So Japan went through a famous period of booming economic growth known as its 'Economic Miracle' roughly from the 1950s to late 80s; following this there has been a period of stagnation known as the 'Lost Decades' where Japan experienced little to no economic growth for over 20 years. In recent times, falling birth rate has actually caused Japan's population to shrink, causing further economic problems as the working population shrinks, decreasing productivity and meaning less working people have to pay for the pensions of more elderly people.

How do you think you can make them move in a direction similar to Western countries like America, Germany, etc. accepting more immigration for the increase in population, workforce and business (since immigrants are statistically more entrepreneurial) in the 1990s and become a more diverse country? What would this be like? Where would most immigrants come from?

 

[Raferty]

I would imagine Japan if it went down this route would take in cheap migrant workers from Korea, Taiwan, and the Phillipines. They'd provide some more manpower for the infrasructure projects necessary to juicing GDP stats and perhaps would act as elder care workers as well, as there is demand for it.

It would not, I think, turnaround Japan's economic decline, which was I think structural and monetary policy had a real part to play.

American immigration is mostly low skilled service work and work that should be eliminated by technological advances but hasn't been because of the cheap labor source. The entrepreneurs in American immigration streams who create large entities are generally skilled immigrants, of the kind that Japan already accepts. They are few and in too short supply, despite the ability of policymakers to prioritize them, who do not because big business and upper middle class people like cheap labor.

German immigration largely has failed and many of the workers that they brought in from refugee streams have not been able to adapt to the workforce because they lacked soft skills. Eastern European workers in Germany generally do jobs paid at rates considered excessively low because of the Schroeder Labor Reforms made it possible, but they have generally acclimated better than migrants from North Africa and the Levant. German economic success is largely due to efficiency among its native born population stemming from effective education that sorts students into trades earlier on. Its immigration experiments have not borne fruit, but like American immigration, it has raised standards of living for the upper middle class.

 

[LeX]

They might let in more immigrants from culturally similar countries like Taiwan or Vietnam, but only because it could be more reasonably expected that they would assimilate into Japan's highly conformist society.

 

[trurle]

I've lurked on the site for a while, but I thought I'd start with something from very recent history (hope that's not frowned upon?). So Japan went through a famous period of booming economic growth known as its 'Economic Miracle' roughly from the 1950s to late 80s; following this there has been a period of stagnation known as the 'Lost Decades' where Japan experienced little to no economic growth for over 20 years. In recent times, falling birth rate has actually caused Japan's population to shrink, causing further economic problems as the working population shrinks, decreasing productivity and meaning less working people have to pay for the pensions of more elderly people.

How do you think you can make them move in a direction similar to Western countries like America, Germany, etc. accepting more immigration for the increase in population, workforce and business (since immigrants are statistically more entrepreneurial) in the 1990s and become a more diverse country? What would this be like? Where would most immigrants come from?

Most of immigrants with business creation capability will be from China. Of course, this mean more economic growth (may be anemic growth instead of nearly full stagnation), but most of this growth will be joint operations with China. Overall, this mean earlier China-Japan economic parity despite better Japanese growth, and earlier growth of ultra-right nationalist attitudes in Japan as we observe today. Overall, combination of foreign interests in Japan will result in delay to the burst of economic bubble, but it will definitely burst by 2010, likely catastrophically.

 

[Alon]

The WI has a pretty clear answer. Politically, it means more far-right national reaction (even more than today), but once the immigrants start coming in, it's hard to crack down because businesses like having them around. This is also why center-right parties that run on nativist platforms, like Trump's Republicans and Cameron and May's Tories, only nibble at the margins - large-scale reductions in labor migration would get pushback from business. Economically, it means Japan gets positive population growth, which means higher natural interest rates, which means a slightly shorter liquidity trap; we see the same thing in Germany, where high immigration rates have altered expectations of investment value. It's not going to give Japan the population growth rates of Canada or Australia, but the growth rate of Germany this decade is fine.

The AHC question is more difficult. Japan evidently does take in immigrants, more so than Westerners think (it's around 5% non-ethnic Japanese, although a lot of that comes from naturalized Korean immigrants and their children). It just takes them at a low rate. Lacking either the domestic civil rights politics of the US or the colonial guilt of Britain and France (and, as spillover, the rest of Europe), I really don't see a change that would make Japan increase the rate at which it takes in immigrants and gives them permanent residence and citizenship.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Japanese business interests were apparently were interested in having a guest worker program akin to those of western Europe as early as the 1960s, but this never materialized for political reasons.

A Japan that was more multiethnic might be more open to foreign immigration. If Taiwan was a Japanese island, say, a Japan that already was home to millions of Chinese might not have a problem with having millions more. How you get that outcome is something I leave to others.

 

[Diez Mil Cantos]

There's also immigration from Brazil in the form of Japanese Brazilians "moving back" to Japan
There is a possibility for more Brazilian immigration if the right circumstances are created by the pod
Also possible is immigration from Peru for similar reasons

 

[Remitonov]

There's also immigration from Brazil in the form of Japanese Brazilians "moving back" to Japan
There is a possibility for more Brazilian immigration if the right circumstances are created by the pod
Also possible is immigration from Peru for similar reasons

Tthe problem with the Japanese-South American migrations is that the Japanese government had assumed that their diaspora there would just integrate back into mainstream Japanese society faster than usual migrants. They didn't realize until the migrants came that the Japanese-South Americans had, to a great extent, assimilated into their respective Hispanic and Brazillian societies, and hence, not as culturally Japanese as they had previously assumed. They even tried paying migrants to go back to Latin America. For shame.

That said, I do think it's possible, though more would need to be done to invite migrants in general.