Very basic Japanese immigration thoughts

My main thought reading people throw scathing comments at one another on Twitter regarding Japan making Permanent Residency hard to attain is this:

You can understand how a country dictates its immigration policy and empathize with the people it negatively affects at the same time. Understanding the immigration policy doesn’t mean you have to treat anyone who’s negatively affected like trash, and empathizing with people doesn’t mean you have to call Japan a stupid country that you’ve always hated anyways.

Second, I see immigration like getting a job in many ways. A company isn’t required to hire everyone and a country isn’t required to let everyone in. A company hires someone when there is mutual benefit and a country lets someone in when there’s mutual benefit.

Likewise, going from a temp contract to a permanent contract is based on the company’s discretion. There may be amazing people who worked hard to be permanent, but the company isn’t in a position to have any more permanent workers, and so they have to turn down deserving people. It’s not fair to the people applying, but it is. (labor unions and courts could extend the metaphor and make it cloudy.)

Last, there’s no guarantee and this decreases the number of immigrants in Japan. When I moved to Japan, the idea to move here wasn’t popular for most, and now it’s incredibly popular. It’s feasible that with strict new rules Japan still accepts more immigrants and permanent residents than it did in 2005.

As an aside, my masters in 2013 was on Japanese immigration policy. I went in ready to discuss why it was so strict, and ultimately found that it was only strict to “unskilled workers”, but much less so than most Western countries (with the “back doors” available).

As another aside, I’ve had white people in my periphery complain that Indians are still allowed to get in while it’s impossible for white people. (I’ve heard this about Japan and Canada.) In my experience, non-Europeans are much more likely to do “the impossible”, and not expect things handed to them on a platter. The rules are the same for both.

That’s it. I wish the best for Japan and the non-Japanese people who want to live there permanently.