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Japan must accept unskilled foreign workers to resolve the serious labor shortage that is hitting small and midsize companies especially hard the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry said in a report released Thursday.

The report calls for admitting unskilled foreign laborers to the nation with no restriction on the types of jobs they can do, although it does lay out some requirements:

— The government will decide the number of workers to be accepted and issue a working visa valid for between three and five years.

— The government will monitor the status of the labor shortage in the manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors as well as the nursing and welfare field.

— Candidates must pass a Japanese-language proficiency test in their home country and complete a training program to learn Japanese customs.

Currently, the country accepts unskilled foreign workers in principle only under a three-year training and technical internship program that comprises one year of basic job training and two years of practical on-the-job training.

The report points out the discrepancy emerging between the intended purpose of human resource development through basic and practical training, and reality in which many trained foreigners are actually [forced to work illegally] as unskilled laborers [and have their passports confiscated by their employers].

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20080621TDY02307.htm

The Kawasaki Municipal Assembly enacted an ordinance Thursday allowing residents aged 18 or older, including foreigners who have lived in the city for three years or longer, to vote in referendums.

Kawasaki is taking a cue from Hiroshima, the first city to adopt a similar ordinance, Kawasaki officials said.

Referendums can be put forth by the mayor, the assembly or residents for “important matters concerning the municipal governance,” the ordinance says.

Foreigners aged 18 or older who are legally registered as Kawasaki residents for three years or longer are given the right to vote regardless of their nationality or their visa status.

As of the end of March, Kawasaki had around 1.122 million residents aged 18 or older. Of them, around 19,000 were foreigners.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080620a4.html

Foreigners will have a much better opportunity to move to, or continue to live in, Japan under a new immigration plan drafted by Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers to accept 10 million immigrants in the next 50 years.

“The plan means (some politicians) are seriously thinking about Japan’s future,” said Debito Arudou, who is originally from the United States but has lived in Japan for 20 years and became a naturalized citizen in 2000. “While it is no surprise by global standards, it is a surprisingly big step forward for Japan.”

The group of some 80 lawmakers, led by former LDP Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa, finalized the plan on June 12 and aims to submit it to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda later this week.

The plan is “the most effective way to counter the labor shortage Japan is doomed to face amid a decreasing number of children,” Nakagawa said.

While establishing an environment to encourage women to continue to work while rearing children is important to counter the expected labor shortage, bringing in foreign workers is the best solution for immediate effect, said the plan’s mastermind, Hidenori Sakanaka, director general of the private think tank Japan Immigration Policy Institute.

“We will train immigrants and make sure they get jobs and their families have decent lives,” Sakanaka said in explaining the major difference between the new plan and current immigration policy. “We will take care of their lives, as opposed to the current policy, in which we demand only highly skilled foreigners or accept foreigners only for a few years to engage in simple labor.”

Japan had 2.08 million foreign residents in 2006, accounting for 1.6 percent of the population of 128 million. Raising the total to 10 million, or close to 10 percent of the population, may sound bold but is actually modest considering that most European countries, not to mention the U.S., have already exceeded this proportion, Sakanaka said.

Fukuda outlined in a policy speech in January his aim to raise the number of foreign students to 300,000 from the current 130,000, but without specifying a timetable.

However, the immigration plan calls for the goal to be achieved soon and for the government to aim for 1 million foreign students by 2025. It also proposes accepting an annual 1,000 asylum seekers and other people who need protection for humanitarian reasons.

Akio Nakayama, manager of the Tokyo office of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, said the important thing about the new plan pitched by the LDP members is that it would guarantee better human rights for immigrants.

“The plan emphasizes that we will accept immigrants, not foreign workers, and let them live in Japan permanently,” Nakayama said.

“The most remarkable point is that immigrants’ family members are included,” he said. “I have never seen this in similar proposals.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080619f1.html

Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers made an ambitious proposal Thursday to raise the ratio of immigrants in Japan to about 10 percent over the next 50 years.

The frankness of the suggestion reflects the seriousness of Japan’s population decline, which is marked by a rapid increase in the elderly population and a falling birthrate that threatens to undermine future economic growth.

“There is no effective cure to save Japan from a population crisis,” the proposal said. “In order for Japan to survive, it must open its doors as an international state to the world and shift toward establishing an ‘immigrant nation’ by accepting immigrants and revitalizing Japan.”

Headed by ex-LDP Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa, the group of about 80 lawmakers drafted a “Japanese-model immigration policy” that they plan to submit to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda next week.

The group said its definition of “immigrant” is the same as that used by the United Nations, and can count individuals who have lived outside their home countries for more than 12 months. This includes asylum-seekers, people on state or corporate training programs, and even exchange students.

The proposal also said a foreigner who has lived in Japan for 10 years or longer should be given nationality if the person wishes to become a Japanese citizen. The group also says citizenship should be given to all permanent residents.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080613a2.html

Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito said Wednesday it was important for Japanese and foreigners to live with mutual respect as the nation gradually takes in more outsiders.

The prince spoke ahead of a visit to Brazil to mark 100 years since the first settlement there by Japanese. Tables have now turned with more than 300 000 Brazilians of Japanese descent living in the Asian economic powerhouse.

“I think it is important to create an environment in which foreigners living in Japan and Japanese live together by paying respect to one another,” Naruhito said.

Naruhito said that foreign residents trying to adapt to Japan may be “struggling due to differences in culture and language.”

“I heard that not a small number of children are unable to catch up with class in school or to get education,” he said.

The number of foreign residents in Japan rose to an all-time high as of last year as the nation seeks more workers to help cope with a rapidly ageing population.

The 48-year-old heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne will make the 12-day trip alone although the Brazilian government invited his wife Crown Princess Masako to come along with him.

Masako, 44, has been suffering from stress for years as she adjusts to life as part of the world’s oldest monarchy. She is not going as the trip is long and includes numerous events.

“I would like to seek people’s understanding although we feel sorry for Brazilian and Japanese-Brazilian people who wanted both of us to come,” Naruhito said.

The prince did not give a clear-cut answer when asked what foreign trips Masako would be able to make.

The princess, a former diplomat educated at Harvard and Oxford, may be able to go abroad if it would “help her recover,” he said.

Nearly 800 Japanese set sail on the “Kasato Maru” ship from Kobe in search of better lives and arrived at Brazil’s Santos Port in June 1908 only to find a gruelling life working on farmland.

Brazil is now home to more than 1,2-million people of Japanese descent, or “Nikkeis,” making it the foreign country with the largest community of Japanese-origin people.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=126&art_id=nw20080611112415141C213689

Japan should open its doors to more skilled workers from abroad in order to boost economic growth, the government’s top advisory panel said on Tuesday.

The council called on the government to come up with programmes by the end of this fiscal year to create a business and living environment that would attract highly skilled workers from around the globe.

“It is impossible to achieve economic growth in the future if we do not press forward with the ‘open country’ policy,” the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy said in its annual growth plan, which was released on Tuesday.

The panel, which is chaired by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, did not set a specific target for the number of foreign workers. There were 158,000 foreigners in Japan with visas categorised as skilled workers in 2006.

The strategy also includes a plan to nearly triple the number of foreign students to 300,000 by 2020 as well as increase foreign visitors to 10 million in 2010 from 8.35 million in 2007.

The proposals, many of which have already been partly announced by government ministries and panels, will be incorporated into the government’s annual policy guidelines to be released by the end of June.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKT28006320080610

Last Wednesday, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced that Japan’s total fertility rate (TFR) ? the average number of babies born to women during their reproductive years ? rose slightly to 1.34 for 2007, even though about 3,000 fewer children were born last year than in 2006. Two years ago the TFR was at 1.26, a postwar low, and last year this country experienced a natural population decline for the first time since 1899, when data-gathering in this area began. If fertility remains constant at these levels ? and projections for the next 50 years have it doing just that ? the population of each successive generation will fall at a rate of approximately 40 percent.

To address this concern, administrations have implemented a number of programs over the past two decades. In fact, the cost per month incurred by the government to fund day-care services in Tokyo for one infant currently exceeds the average monthly wage of a male worker in the capital.

But have you ever wondered how the fertility rate ended up dropping so low in the first place? Well, follow along with me to gain a better understanding of not only that, but also why one of the actions government has since taken appears to be biased against non-Japanese ? the very people who may be needed to reverse this trend and provide support for Japan’s rapidly aging society.

About half of employed married women work part-time, and about three-quarters of part-time workers are women. A large number of non-Japanese are also employed on fixed terms. Japan’s English-teaching industry, in effect, has been built on the backs of such labor. In fact, Louis Carlet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu, estimates that 90 percent of non-Japanese in this country are employed as nonregular employees.

Fortunately, a revision to the Child-Care and Family-Care Leave Law was put in effect from April 2005, and this revision guarantees nonregular employees utilization of child-care leave under two conditions: First, the person must have been employed by his or her employer for a continuous period of at least one year; and second, the person must be “likely to be kept employed after the day on which his or her dependent child reaches one year of age,” according to the translation provided by the Cabinet Secretariat.

“Likely to be kept employed?” For those who may have trouble reading between the lines, this provision affords the employee absolutely no protection at all. Basically, this “law” is telling the employer: If you really want to allow your nonregular employee to take child-care leave, sure, go ahead; but hey, if you really don’t, no worries ? this “law” is not going to prohibit you from terminating his or her employment. For a country that needs a significant increase in its TFR, government would be wise to close this loophole.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080610zg.html