JAPAN Tokyo opens its doors to 820,000 foreign workers to combat demographic decline

On March 29, the Cabinet established a record increase in quotas in the country until 2028. The initiative is accompanied by an unstoppable increase in residents from abroad, which increased to more than 3 million. There are also refugees from Afghanistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka in Japan. The challenges of multiculturalism in a strongly traditional context.

Tokyo () – On March 29, the Japanese Executive launched new measures to counter the demographic crisis that the country has been experiencing for decades. At a Cabinet meeting, it was decided to expand the “specific skilled worker” status to four other areas of the world, thus allowing 820,000 foreign workers to participate in the placement program until fiscal year 2028. As a result of the decline in the birth rate, In fact, there is a labor shortage in Japan that is putting several sectors to the test.

The year 2023 registered the historical minimum number of newborns, 758,631, with a decrease of 5.1 percent. This trend is accompanied by the record increase in the number of foreign workers: last year the increase was 12.4% compared to 2022, reaching 2.04 million employees, according to data published today by the Ministry of Labor. The figure is destined to continue increasing, because Japan urgently needs workers for assembly lines, construction sites, in elderly care and agriculture (vegetable harvesting).

Junji Ikeda, president of Saikaikyo, a Hiroshima-based agency that searches for and supervises foreign workers, said that “Japan is entering an era of mass foreign immigration.” He stated that some measures taken so far, such as “incremental adaptation” actions, are not enough. This latest government decision follows other attempts to counter demographic decline, such as granting refugee status to 303 people in 2032; with an increase of approximately 50 percent compared to the previous year, which was 101 people.

The majority of this group is made up of 237 refugees from Afghanistan, linked to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the government agency that is responsible for coordinating public aid in the field of development. But 27 citizens of Myanmar were also received, a country that is experiencing precarious stability due to the military regime. Added to them are 6 people of Ethiopian origin. Meanwhile, applications for refugee status have risen to 13,823, the second highest number ever recorded, after the peak year of 2017, when asylum applications were 19,629. Sri Lanka was the largest group of applicants, with 3,778 people, but there were also a significant number of people from Turkey and Pakistan.

The refugee status that will be granted to Burmese citizens of the Rohingya ethnic group is a hotly debated issue. In January, for example, the Nagoya High Court ordered the Japanese government to grant it to an asylum seeker. Prior to this, a lower court had ruled that Khin Maung Soe, 44, was Rohingya, but that his ethnicity was not an adequate basis to consider him a refugee. The Supreme Court recognized that the Myanmar military “has committed ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya” since the 2021 coup, and that therefore “there is an objective fact to fear persecution”, thus recognizing the right to status of refugee.

Due to these immigration phenomena, also supported by recent government policies, the number of foreign residents in Japan has increased to 3,410,992 (the country has a population of approximately 125 million), which represents an increase of 10.9%. compared to 2023. This is a record figure for the second consecutive year, as reported by the Immigration Services Agency. This panorama suggests the composition of a more multicultural society; but this collides with social obstacles, such as poorly developed integration initiatives. In fact, the increase in the foreign population in Japan may lead to social friction rather than harmony and peaceful coexistence, due, for example, to religious and linguistic differences. Indeed, the island country has a strong system of shared traditions, values ​​and social norms that has characterized the very identity of the nation over the centuries. That is why new challenges await Japan in the future. For example, a redefinition of the educational system, public services and community programs, which have been designed for a homogeneous population.