* If you graduated university and have a 'skilled' job in Japan, you are likely to get a visa. There is no cap on the number of these. There is no language requirement.
* If you live in Japan for over 5 years continuously you can apply for citizenship, though you must renounce any other citizenships.
* If you live in Japan for over 10 years you are eligible for permanent residency.
* If you are married to a Japanese national you can do any kind of work and get permanent residency in 3 years.
* If you have enough points on the highly skilled professional visa you can get permanent residency in 1 year. This is retroactive as long as you lived in Japan during that time, you don't even need to have had the highly skilled professional visa.
So, is it really an issue of policy? I think the causes may lie elsewhere.
Contrast that to countries like most of the West, where at least a solid proportion of people consider it socially unacceptable to discriminate socially based on someone's looks or origins...
Those things are also socially unacceptable in Japan. My experience is that the often discussed "micro-agressions" against foreigners happen about as often in Japan as they do in my own country (US, grew up in Texas).
Of course, the only complaints that foreigners in Japan can make is about trivia. The US is so fucked up that we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men, we're separating mothers from babies, and as of last week now tear gassing families at the border. So not sure if you are American, but many of the foreigners in Japan that complain of discrimination are, and I just want to say that I think it takes a lot of balls for an American in Japan to be like "hey, you guys can do a lot better with the discrimination thing."
As horrifying as someone being impressed with your ability to use chopsticks is, it's not quite so horrifying as being literally shot for walking on the street.
Many people in the US freeze up if a black person so much as walks by them on the street. And on the other side of the pacific? Ask a random stranger for directions; 9 times out of 10 they will stop whatever they are doing and walk with you to wherever you are going.
Twice as many white men are shot by police but I can't remember the last time I saw a national news story about one of them. Name one in recent years you heard covered in the national news. [0] I edited out "unarmed". That ratio slightly favors white males.
>we're separating mothers from babies, and as of last week now tear gassing families at the border.
Everyday, across this beautiful land, we seperate children from their parents for commiting crimes. We have a legal immigration system.
What does Japan do to people who enter illegally? How many refugees did they take in 2017? 20. Out of 20,000 applications. They could do a little more, right? [1]
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police...
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/japan-asylum-a...
I visited your link and could not see a matching statistic.
Filtering by "unarmed" and hovering over "Race" I got a count of 19 White, 15 Black, 4 Hispanic.
I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo", [0] (White) which states i.e. "Luengo attacked a woman first..." etc. etc.; I mean it goes on for quite a while. So seems like there's a big variation in the definition of "unarmed man" shooting that doesn't preclude other kinds of violent or aggressive activity/indications.
Looks to me like the statistics are not really telling the whole story there so maybe that's why you don't hear them "covered in the national news".
[0] https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-met...
I was wrong. Police kill twice as many whites but I shouldn't have included the unarmed qualifier.
> I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo"
He did attack but I think it still qualifies. I personally didn't hear of this one but a google search shows it was covered, even if not very extensively. It was picked up on national news.
Even still, the comment that law enforcement is wholesale killing young unarmed black males is just false.
I was trying to say that a) you were massively off about the relative quantities of unarmed shootings and that b) in any case; I would imagine people are more upset - i.e. it's in the national news - about e.g. [0] than; e.g. Brett Luengo, because there's a huge difference in the circumstances surrounding their deaths, something which cannot be interpreted from the statistics you cited.
Further, my admittedly limited & poor knowledge of the situation caused me to infer that the op was talking about this qualitative difference, although you are correct in saying that if you take the statement "we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men" absolutely, strictly, literally; without applying any context whatsoever, then talking about quantities is completely valid.
So - my apologies.
Black people are still more likely to be shot than white people.
I don't think that anyone reasonable ever claimed that the police were 'wholesale killing young unarmed black males,' just that it happens too often.
It is possible to have a legal immigration system and to be humane when dealing with people who for some reason wouldn't/couldn't go through it. Especially if it involves kids - as I'm pretty sure they are not to blame on any of this.
And let’s not forget tear gas being used for crowds of people throwing stones at border patrol. No lets focus on tear gas issue and less of the people doing their job being assulted.
Completely citation & evidence free assertions - smells like slander to me.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrant-children-being-used-as-co...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-e...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/adults-posing-as-chi...
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/2/illegal-immigr...
I Guess cos cnn didn’t talk about it, it must be slander and lies tho.
"On Thursday, officials revealed that in seven of 102 cases involving children under 5 separated from their guardians, the adult was determined not to actually be the parent."
So ok, you're only slandering ~95% of those 102. If you don't like the term "slander" how about "generalisation" or "prejudice".
Forgive me if these words have negative connotations, or "trigger feelings" - but what term would you use, to describe declaring 100% of a group to have attributes that only apply to - by your very own research - 5% of that group?
That sounds serious. How many?
https://www.businessinsider.com/border-patrol-also-used-tear...
> The use of tear gas at the border by CBP began in 2010.
> Since fiscal year 2012, CBP has employed tear gas a total of 126 times, but its use hit a 7-year high under Trump in fiscal year 2018.
No one above thread claimed any individual was responsible. The apologetics of inserting that statement is unnecessary. I do respect that you added citations.
Admittedly, I've never lived in any of the out-of-the way places where most of these properties are located.
Well, maybe because you're not Japanese?
A different question is: "Would you feel welcome"
I would consider it weirdly arrogant to go to Japan and then have them ever accept me as 'Japanese'. I would hope that thy are respectful to me, and treat me well, and maybe even 'as a Japanese' but not actually 'Japanese', because - I'm not!
There's a big difference I think between 'rights' and 'cultural attribution', we mix them up a lot in the West.
This video pokes some fun at it, taken to an extreme for comedic purpose of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt5qSm9U80
You're assuming that those White/Black people were Japanese because they were born and raised Japanese.
From a certain perspective, that would not be correct.
Many people (most of the world) view race as fundamentally intertwined with ethnicity, ergo, the white folks in the video may never really be considered 'fully Japanese', although surely they are mostly accommodated as such.
'American' really isn't an ethnicity so 'new world' people often have difficulty grasping how others might view ethnicity.
As longs as people are treated reasonably, frankly, I don't care.
That goes for a lot of countries, especially if your skin color is different as well as your accent, language and whatnot. Heck, even when you are born in a country where you are not the same skin color as the majority you can feel not welcome. So, it's kind of a generalization to say that only about Japan.
You can apply, but actually getting both permanent residency and citizenship isn’t nearly that trivial.
“Working in japan” and “becoming Japanese” are different things, and the latter is very much more difficult.
Japan is very happy to have foreign workers who will politely leave once they lose their jobs / get old, but the immigration figures, in absolute terms, are tiny.
My anecdote: without fitting into any of the qualifying categories, I was able to get a PR in Japan after residing in the country for 10 years. The rules have changed and with the right qualifications it's possible to apply for PR with only two years residency (work visa).
Further anecdote: My wife recently got her Japanese citizenship. This was difficult, it took over a year and an intrusive investigation. Like getting top secret clearance. The investigation brought up why I wasn't pursuing Japanese citizenship until they discovered my low level of Japanese skills, and it was no longer an issue.
My entire family here in the greater Tokyo area is doesn't quite fit in with the Japanese. We're a bit loud. We're consumerists. We get quizzical looks when filling in applications. We've broken software that expected only Japanese to use. It has it's negatives but the positives of being different in this mostly homogeneous society has it's advantages.
Yes, my situation is a small minority but with the policy changes, it's one less hurdle for people who want to live in Japan. We are what makes the "society".
Even with the work visas themselves, I know someone at a small R&D company in a small city desperate for people, earning kinda low. He got a 1 year visa, then after a decent raise, a 3 year visa. I make more money in a big city, and got 5 years right off the bat, with poor Japanese. PR eligibility once it expires. I still hear about English teachers bouncing between 1 year visas after 10+ years in the country and near fluency.
I think a lot of what you hear about Japan comes from the English teacher side of things. Those guys are a dime a dozen, and have to hustle a lot. But there is a sense that Japan is desperate for skilled workers, and is trying to attract more of them. I've mentioned working in software to old dudes in bars and been instantly treated like an anticipated special guest, and told how good my opportunities are, that I should find a local girl and stay etc. Even if they'd rather not have foreigners in general, they are kinda rolling out the red carpet for a selection of them. All over the place companies advertise in English, promote their foreign working styles, and offer overseas relocation. They'll never be seen as Japanese, but welcomed to stay as if the country depends on them, which it just might
All countries drool after certain professions nowadays and those people are doing pretty well pretty much anywhere. Head hunt for those people is a tiny dent in demographic trends.
People Americans treat (arguably) worse than foreignors:
- Those whose ancestors were in North America before it was colonized
- Those whose ancestors were forcibly brought to North America more than 150 years ago.
Yes, the US has done some horrible things in the past, yet:
1. we publicly admit them in the historical record
2. we teach these mistakes to our children in our schools as both reminders and ways to avoid them in the future.
You cannot say the same about Japan.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017
Other permanent resident status issuances take up to 15 years to achieve, meaning you won't see the effects of recent policy changes in that metric until the years to come.
A better metric is visa issuances, since those are the first step for many to becoming a legal permanent resident. Those have peaked in 2015 and have declined back to 2013 levels now: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...
PM Abe is actively trying to change the immigration policies as of Nov. 2018.
I know this is difficult for some to understand but brown, black and asian people are made via sex and birth (Shocker of shocks, I know).
What you're arguing for is for the birth rate of the undeveloped world to continuously grow at a never-ending rate in order to compensate for the utter laziness of the developed world.
I hate to break it to you but that'll simply lead to a flip in which countries are classified as developed.