| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago |
| The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity. Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism. |
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| ▲ | cedws an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| It’s actually the opposite, the Japanese government may not realise it yet, but these rules ensure basically only economic migrants will come to Japan. I’ve been living in Japan for a cumulative ~11 months and the number of white people I’ve seen working in 7-11 is zero. Why? Because such roles are simply not attractive for them, and they don’t want to put up with the BS. The people who will do anything to live in Japan are the people with little prospects in their home country. In a sense you’re right, but the people from developed countries coming to Japan will be the handful of millionaires who can afford to essentially buy their way in through the business visa, like the YouTuber PewDiePie did. |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class Not true - a youtuber from Germany who lives in Japan since about 10 years,
was denied citizenship recently. And he'd make more than enough money. https://www.youtube.com/@NihonGoo The thing is really true: Japan is against more immigration. You'll always
be a gaijin there if you come from the outside. > there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism Other countries are also very much against mass immigration. Japan just does it in a very strange way. |
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| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're misunderstanding the immigration requirements: who is considered doesn't necessarily mean everyone that fits the requirements will be accepted. It's a requirements list for exclusion, doesn't say fitting the requirements implies inclusion. |
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| ▲ | anal_reactor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity. It can be asked the other way around. Is it worth it to completely destroy the order in the society for the sake of one generation of elderly? I live in the Netherlands in a black neighborhood, and let me tell you, it's a real shithole. These people are not interested in getting jobs, they just live off neverending money from social programs - with the most expensive one funnily designed to keep them poor for generations - lots of social housing that prevents them from taking part in the housing market going to the moon. The crime rate is unbelievable. Children literally carry guns around. How do I know? I witnessed a kid shooting another kid with a real gun on my street. Before that I also saw a similar situation from my window one street away. The lack of respect to anything is obvious. They drop trash on the street because naive taxpayer like me will pay for cleaning. Dudes often harass people on ebikes or scooters because they know that can get away before you react. Loud noise at night? Suck it up. With the new generation of Dutch teenagers being significantly non-European, homophobia is on the rise. Also, it's pure luck we didn't have terrorist attacks like Belgium, Germany or France. Naturally, these people have Dutch citizenship, so it's not easy to kick them out. Not that the Dutch are interested - I was legally considered a victim of yet another shooting so I got updates on the legal case, and it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. That's Dutch justice system for you. The Japanese understand this. A generation of tough times is something a society can easily recover from. Meanwhile you can undo a failed immigration program only with ethnic cleansing, and nobody wants that. |
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| ▲ | mc32 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I mean, to get the Japanese take on immigration, you could go to 5chan and check out the temperature over there. Japanese don't frequent this board, so what you will get is mostly North American and Western European (not even eastern European) |
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| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not saying I'm surprised it's largely western people (like myself) that are commenting here, what's surprising is how much nationalism they have for Japan without living there or being ethnically Japanese. |
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| ▲ | Izikiel43 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > but the wealthiest News flash, poor people are not wanted in most countries of the world, everyone already has their own poor population to deal with. |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Equating anyone with less than 30 years of median pension payouts with 'poor' is an absurd premise, why would you make such a ridiculous argument | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I said nothing about that, it’s not news to me. That might be the case today, but there was a time when countries in the western hemisphere like America were importing massive numbers of the poor and destitute, not to mention even enslaved people. Not that I’m arguing for a return to indentured servitude and slavery, but there are clearly times when poor people are wanted or at least tolerated en masse. Such as when you are building a new country and need settlers and frontiersmen, or when your population is struggling to keep the economy up due to an aging native population with hardly anybody to look after them. | |
| ▲ | beedeebeedee 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > everyone already has their own poor population to deal with Yikes, that is quite the dehumanizing framing Edit: A person commented "why?" before deleting their comment, which I had started responding to. I still want to give my response: Because an enlightened government is for the people (and an unenlightened government is not worth having). The purpose of a government is to care for the welfare of the people, not to be the securer of private wealth for the wealthy. The above comment frames it as "dealing with" an undesirable population. That population is the people, and it is a perversion to think otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | happytoexplain 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How? It seems realistic, not brutal (though reality is a bit brutal). Edit: Your update seems unrelated. I can't connect it to what the parent said. They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor, and you responded as if they said we should not support even our own poor, in favor of supporting the wealthy. There's no connection there. | | |
| ▲ | beedeebeedee 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor The original comment did not say what you claim. The original comment framed it as “dealing with” the poor population. That is bad framing. The role of government is to take care of the people, not to “deal with” them. That framing is important because the people are not a problem to be dealt with. They are to be protected and cared for. The framing is important because it dictates what is accepted and what gets done. |
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| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | manquer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Most immigration seems to me as some form of wealth differential to attract the relatively poor foreigners giving them less rights than local population. Middle East runs on poor people from the subcontinent and Africa. Hong Kong depends on live-in foreign labor who have to camp out in public spaces on their day-off. America is built on poorer labor of every kind - enslaved African cotton farmers , indentured Chinese railway workers, famine stricken Irish, or more recently Latin American or H1B Indians in tech. Some countries try to attract the richest percent like New Zealand, however it is not economically meaningful nor is major portion of immigrants globally or within their countries even. Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > as they definitely work harder for less pay and rights than the local poor. Why would I want to support the introduction in my country of what is virtually modern slave labor practices by abusing and exploiting the poor and desperate foreigners so that some business can get richer because they don't want to pay or provide decent working conditions or invest into automation? Especially that a lot of those cheap laborers without rights aren't even doing work to the benefit of the community (elderly care, construction etc) but to the benefit of a few wealthy and unscrupulous business owners (Amazon, Uber Eats, etc) who are addicted to cheap exploitable labor. >Countries may not like foreign poor immigrants, but they certainly need them to work harder for less pay and rights. Yeah, but there a major differences in which these are implemented that can make immigration a success or a failure. Some countries that you also mentioned like Middle East, Hong Kong, but also Singapore import those workers for cheap labor so they can do the work the locals don't want and in exchange migrants make money to send back home, making it mutually beneficial, but they don't get the right to permanently settle there or gain citizenship because they don't want them as citizens, they just want temporary workers that will work and then leave when they're no longer useful or wanted. This however does not apply to most western nations where migrants can settle permanently and relatively easily become citizens with voting rights in a relatively short timeframe(at least in EU), and that's where the anxiety of the locals comes from and also their hatred of migrants. They're importing an alien culture they're not fond of as cheap labor, that once settled and granted voting rights, if not integrated properly and harboring animosity, can demographically displace them via their higher fertility rates(natives are already minorities in some major EU cities) managing to out-vote them and force their culture onto them democratically, or worse, use their majority status to take revenge for how their ancestors being treated as cheap labor. Either way, this is a recipe for endless racial tensions or even conflicts in the future, that isn't being priced in to the economic upsides of mass migration which only looks at GDP. |
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| ▲ | CPLX 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wanted by whom? That, of course, is the actual real question in this debate and all the other similar debates. Some people benefit from an influx of very low-pay people, and some people don't. |
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| ▲ | poulpy123 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | ks2048 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I agree, but “US culture” can spread without movement of people. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness despite immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai. If the immigrants in Japan were behaving exactly the same as Japanese, just saving money on sunscreen, you wouldn’t be seeing these measures. |
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| ▲ | donbox 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | For Dubai specifically, there is a mix of foreigners, a large percentage being labourers from South Asia. The orderliness we see, I think is largely due to strict* and harsh laws. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The laborers are heavily segregated from the native population. I think it’s morally bankrupt to have a quasi-slave class of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis that does all the work, but is hidden from view. But that is the only way anybody has found to maintain a clean and orderly environment like Dubai while having low skill immigration from the subcontinent. |
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| ▲ | arichardsmith an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The number of times I (white, living in Japan) have raised concerns about anti-foreigner sentiment, only to be told “they’re not talking about people like you”, would beg to differ. | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Oh please, everyone not in denial can certainly see there is a racial component to this. I also didn't only include "black" and "brown," some kinds of Asians are also being gatekept. Do you deny that Japanese society (like countless others) has a racism/xenophobia problem? Isn't it commonly known information that even people of other races/ethnicities who have successfully immigrated there or are just visiting as tourists are sometimes not allowed in certain venues with explicit messaging? And that this is commonly tolerated there? Isn't Japan the same country that barely 80-odd years ago was on a brutal campaign across several parts of Asia where they targeted non-Japanese with massacres, torture and live human experimentation among other things? Many of those people are still alive (ironically, some are probably among the elderly and isolated who need help right now). Isn't Japan the same country that still regularly denies their well-known and documented atrocities during that period? | | |
| ▲ | anon-3988 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | ??? There's literally a white person in the article that is also reconsidering their situation? Why do you keep making this about "black, brown and east Asian" people?? They are xenophobic to literally everyone on Earth. | | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It has nothing to do with race. It’s about keeping our foreign cultural and social norms. If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted, then you’d have a point. But that’s not the case. All of your handwaving is irrelevant to a Japanese person in 2026. What matters is that democratic societies are entitled to use the levers of government to create the kind of society they want to live in. I visit Japan regularly, and the last time I went with my kids it was very apparent that my rowdy Bangladeshi-American kids were inconveniencing people. In a country where I see people walk blocks out of the way to cross at a crosswalk, instead of crossing in the middle of the street, I can understand and accept our permanent presence there would be unwelcome. Japanese people shouldn’t have to welcome American or Bangladeshi or any other foreign social and cultural norms into their community. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you showed me a community of Bangladeshis who behaved exactly like Japanese people but weren’t accepted Koreans fit that bill; there's a lot of ethnically Korean people whose families have been in Japan multiple generations (not just assimilated as first-gen immigrants) but there's still significant social prejudice against them; life people of Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai descent who've grown up in Japan as opposed to being recent arrivals. If you haunt Japanese nationalist online communities you can see this on a daily basis. | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As it turns out, I'm also of a very similar background to your kids, a South Asian American that is, and one who would be accepted in Japan just fine (I already have highly educated and well off relatives living there permanently). Frankly, I have to say, you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority and looking up to the great Japanese people; you probably have a similar perception of America/Canada and western Europe. I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way (if only your kids are desi but not you). Also, what exactly are you asking me to do here? See people rejected by the enactment of a law that just recently passed and in all likelihood is just barely beginning to impact people's lives? Are you actually thinking before writing your comments? You seem fine as long as you're allowed to visit and ogle at their society, but oh no, how can we/those brown people from the same place/background as me or my kids be allowed on this holy land permanently when we/they don't know how to behave!? To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better because the circumstances of my life led me to be richer or more "cultured" than them. I believe this is what some circles consider a "colonized" mindset, but funny thing is your mind is colonized by the western perception of glorious Japan and you're not even remotely Japanese. Funny you call my questions handwaving but attempt no answer to them and just declare "it has nothing to do with race." I expected as much. It's all about 2026 now ("it's CURRENT YEAR don't ya know?!"), not even recent history matters nor future contingents. This is not even an argument, put the keyboard down man, you're drunk. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner an hour ago | parent [-] | | > you sound like a typical self-hating (if you're also desi) brown person who is thoroughly convinced of his/her own ethnic/racial inferiority ... I would hate to have my parents think of my race/culture that way Why are you saying "race/culture" like it's the same thing? It's like you're trying to use race, which is superficial and irrelevant, to shield culture from criticism. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, but hated the culture, so he left. That's not a problem, it's smart. There are better ways to think and act and worse ways to think and act. > To be honest, I don't even disagree that a lot of people of South Asian origin are hard to get along with, I struggle sometimes myself, but I would never think that I had any right to think of myself as their better So you're just in denial! You can see it, but you can't make yourself acknowledge it. |
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| ▲ | pojzon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you saying that behaviour is strictly determined by one’s race ? Didn’t we abolish that and agreed there is no such a thing as race in case of humans ? | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Who brought up the question of tying behavior to race? Whether race exists is not the question being discussed here, regardless of the biological existence of race or not, there is a social perception of it existing and that is commonly used in the society in which (and I presume this is true for most of us) I live. I was asked an implied question about bringing up race and thus answered with the social perception in mind. You might need to ask yourself what or whom you are actually arguing with, because it doesn't appear to be me. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You’re the one who brought up race when nobody mentioned it. Race is a red herring when talking about immigration. Japanese people come in a wide variety of skin colors. People in Japan aren’t upset about skin color. People in Japan are upset about having to deal with other people who have a different cultural background, social norms, habits, language, etc. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Hey, it's the self-hating brown person again, stalking another one like yourself through the comments for disagreeing with you now, are you? Race is an inherent part of any immigration discussion in the modern world. Do you think US immigration policies have nothing to do with race right now? You'd be a dumbass to think so (not surprising in the least). | | |
| ▲ | rayiner an hour ago | parent [-] | | Race only comes up because cultural relativists like yourself try to inject it into the discussion to derail any discussion of culture. The funny thing is that you acknowledged in your post above that you have problems with the culture too! You accuse me of being a “self hating” “brown” person. But in reality you have an irrational loyalty to your ethnic group. You feel compelled to defend a culture you don’t necessarily share because you see it as linked to an ethnicity that you do share. |
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| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Also really? Japanese people come in different skin colors is part of your argument? The overwhelming majority are very similar, and you know very well perception of race has little to do with color or is at least not exclusively about color. There is no way an adult human being living America today doesn't understand that. And are you aware that even natives to the islands of Japan like the Ainu who are actually of a different race and color also face discrimination there and have long struggled against this? Again, please try to use your head a bit instead of commenting while emotional/drunk. |
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| ▲ | xyzsparetimexyz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is 1000% a race thing. Chinese and Korean immigrants who look and sound Japanese won't face problems. Westerners will. And I'm okay with that | | |
| ▲ | meredithbloom 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | As a resident of Japan, this is particularly funny to me since those two countries are exactly the ones the authorities are trying to limit immigration from. Japan is _very_ racist when it comes to Korea, and China "buying all the land" this past decade is a frequent trope of the news (also that the Chinese cheat the NTA and pension system and never pay a dime). Then of course you have crime (Vietnamese) and the right-wing idea that the Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians come here to steal Japanese (low wage) jobs (that nobody wants to do). Nobody gives two fucks about immigration from north America, Europe or Australia. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I believe this is normally the point where a typical HN or reddit user is supposed to come in and mention "whataboutism." Criticism of Japan's immigration policies (which the OP article is about) is in no way an approval (or even comment) on immigration policies of other countries. | | |
| ▲ | meredithbloom 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I don't see how what were doing here is shocking, considering what everyone else is doing right now. | | |
| ▲ | Revanche1367 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Nobody claimed it was very different or that others are doing things better, at least I have not claimed such. Think logically for a minute, does (nearly) everyone doing something naturally make it a good thing? Are we not allowed to be critical of things every nation state does? I would wager every nation state has some degree and kind of corruption baked into its political process, if not officially then at least in practice. Should I then hold back on criticizing corruption in Indian or Chinese or Russian or American politics because hey every country has some degree of it? |
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