On Wednesday last week, US President Joe Biden called the immigration policies of Japan and India “xenophobic,” lumping them in with China and Russia. Comparing them with the US’ principle of welcoming immigrants, he accounted for their troubled economies by saying that “they don’t want immigrants.”
This is not the impression one gets from walking around certain areas of Japan. There are places in the country where Indians and Southeast Asians can frequently be seen working in the streets and shops. It is also a rather simplistic analysis of the economic situation in these different societies, and ignores the perceived impact of demographic changes and possible social tensions that large-scale immigration and the offer of permanent residency might entail.
The White House said Biden’s words were not intended to offend India or Japan. It was certainly an inadvisable choice of word and one that could reasonably have caused offense, even if none was intended. Former US deputy assistant secretary of defence Elbridge Colby wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that voicing “parochial progressive views” to allies was “patronising and foolish.”
More cultural sensitivity would be advised.
Tokyo’s policy on streamlining the introduction of foreign workers to increase the number of non-Japanese in the workforce would suggest that it is far from the truth that Japan “does not want” immigrants. It certainly does, as do many other nations in the region — including South Korea and Taiwan — that are having to adjust policy to address falling birthrates and shrinking numbers of working-age nationals.
In these countries, the debate has shifted from how to bolster the birthrate to how to attract more foreign workers.
Neither does the need to increase foreign labor exist in isolation of other nations: The question is about how to vie with other countries to attract workers and not lose them to other destinations.
The Japanese government’s initiatives to change the broken Technical Intern Training Program for unskilled foreign workers have sought to give them more freedom and agency in Japan, such as the ability to change employers and improve the framework governing supervisory agencies and support. However, labor law expert Yoshihisa Saito, an associate professor of the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies in Kobe, in August last year said that Japan continues to view foreign workers as disposable objects to which a bare minimum of support should be given.
Xenophobic is too strong a word, but there is little doubt that the system needs to be reformed to bring it into line with more progressive international standards focusing on the rights of the individual.
Biden did not mention Taiwan, but the nation does not fare too well in this regard, either. There is so much to do in terms of reforming the foreign labor recruitment system to address high fees payable by the worker, not the employer, leading to a form of debt bondage and higher incidence of absconding. It is regrettable that the most recent opportunity to address this issue, the presidential campaigns before the elections on Jan. 13, passed by without the candidates broaching solutions.
Nations in the region need to augment their working age populations, and do so despite objections by more conservative elements in society that are concerned with dilution of local culture and with demographic changes. Instead of treating foreign workers as short-term solutions to a long-term problem, they need to look into ways to integrate them and recognize them as full, legitimate members of society.
They need to be aware that it is increasingly a sellers’ market, and that there is a race on.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
The Iran war has exposed a fundamental vulnerability in the global energy system. The escalating confrontation between Iran, Israel and the US has begun to shake international energy markets, largely because Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway carries roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne oil, making it one of the most strategically sensitive energy corridors in the world. Even the possibility of disruption has triggered sharp volatility in global oil prices. The duration and scope of the conflict remain uncertain, with senior US officials offering contradictory signals about how long military operations might continue.
RSS