In a huge turn for a country that has long been hostile to immigration, Japan is considering allowing foreigners in some blue-collar jobs to stay indefinitely beginning in the fiscal year 2022, according to a justice ministry official.
Workers in 14 industries, including farming, nursing care, and sanitation, were granted visas under a rule that went into force in 2019, but their stays were limited to five years and they were not allowed to bring family members with them in all save the construction and shipbuilding sectors.
Companies had identified those constraints as one of the reasons they were cautious to engage such staff, and the government had been working to ease them in various ways.
Such workers, many of whom are from Vietnam and China, would be able to renew their visas indefinitely and bring their families with them if the modification takes effect.
Hirokazu Matsuno, a top government spokesperson, cautioned that any such move would not imply automatic permanent residency, which would necessitate a separate application process.
Immigration has long been frowned upon in Japan since many people value ethnic purity, but demand is mounting to open the country’s borders due to a severe labor crisis caused by the country’s shrinking and aging population.
Toshihiro Menju, managing director of think tank Japan Center for International Exchange, told reporters that “as the shrinking population becomes a more serious problem if Japan wants to be seen as a good option for overseas workers, it needs to communicate that it has the proper structure in place to welcome them.”
According to official data, the 2019 law was supposed to draw 345,000 “designated skilled workers” over five years, but the intake has hovered around 3,000 per month since the COVID-19 virus closed the borders.
Japan had 1.72 million foreign workers in late 2020, out of a total population of 125.8 million, accounting for only 2.5 percent of the working population.
