Yep, almost always in rich world "labor shortage" = I can't / don't want to pay a livable wage.

Over here in Europe my country has a sky high unemployment, yet picking tomatoes is mostly done by immigrants from Southeast Asia. The pay for that hard work is so bad that most natives won't bother, but it's okay if your plan is to save for a few years with absolute minimum budget, and then return to somewhere with much lower cost of living. I guess it's just the same with Latin American migrants in America.

Japan has historically been pretty anti-immigration, so they might prefer robots over this arrangement.