When will they learn?

Image courtesy of Isuto Inouye, Associated Press

So it has been noted that Japan will not be able to compete economically in the future unless it relaxes its negative attitude towards immigrants. The immigrants in Japan make up for 1.7 percent of the population. According to The Washington Post this means 2.2 million people. A majority of the immigrants are from neighboring countries like Korea, Vietnam, China, and the like. There are also immigrants from Brazil and Peru who were able to trace their Japanese ancestry and were "allowed" back into the country in 1990. However, the attitude towards these immigrants makes you wonder why they stay. Many Koreans who have lived in Japan for generations have not been naturalized as citizens and are not allowed to vote. Many of the immigrants are workers and/ or students. There are horrifying stories of farmers who "feared the nwcomers would steal their crops, built a separate dorm for the students and surrounded it with barbed wire." When speaking of their racially homogenous society and how it will not benefit the country in the future, a government official was quoted as saying, " This isn't America. When we go to the hospital to have a baby, we know what we'll get: black hair, dark eyes, skin more or less the color of mine." Japanese are said to intermarry very rarely.

That's okay, because the UN has conducted a report in 2001 that found for Japan to keep a population level close to 125 million people, Japan has to allow net migration of 17 million immigrants over 50 years. To keep the working age where it was in 1995, they would have to allow over 33 million immigrants into their country during the same time span.

Yes Japan, that's your reward for closing your iron gate all this time. If Japan doesn't allow this mass immigration (which it probably won't) then, according to Lee Hockstader of The Washington Post, there won't be enough people to take care of the elderly, nor will their be enough people to work in the agricultural sector...Oh well what will Japan do?.......