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> If you posted social media saying you wanted to overthrow the Japanese government, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

You're cherry picking and assuming they only look for obvious criminal offences like "government overthrow" and not dissenting views, criticism of the people in power, views against the economic order, etc. For some of those I can imagine the answer being "no" in Japan and "Yes" in the US.

Look at the guy's profile, they might actually be on a marketing team for Trump. Literally everything is talking points and tailor-made to shift perception.

I voted for Harris, she was a far more competent candidate. Not everybody that thinks crime should be illegal and that you shouldn't be able to just walk randomly across country borders to live in another country without their knowledge is a Trump voter. It's actually a pretty normal stance that most people take in most countries, including most left leaning people in the US.

Isn't Japan somewhat famously hard to immigrate too? This kinda smuggles in the premise that their state of affairs is desirable and normal.

Sure, replace Japan with New Zealand then

Or Switzerland.

>Isn't Japan somewhat famously hard to immigrate too?

Isn't Japan famously safe and clean?

Yes and it will just need a light dusting in a few decades and then a new people will be able to move in.

Is living in fear of crime from unrestricted illegal immigration a better fate? Like sure, your daughter was raped by some illegal third worlder and your city and public places are now unsafe and dirty, your society has low trust and no more social cohesion, but at least your ruling business elite have access to unlimited cheap labor in indentured servitude to keep the line going up. Heaven.

Man, Japan is really missing out here. They should listen to the wealthy western champagne liberals on HN who are outspokenly pro mass migration and yet spend most of their income to live in homes as far as possible from cities impacted by mass immigration, usually in majority-white suburbs with good safe schools and manicured lawns.

Edit: answering here to your comment below. Which statistics are you referring to? And why is resorting to the Hitler card on people who disagree with you your only argument? Let's address your vile accusations with facts from experts:

  "Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings."[1]

[1] https://archive.is/IrbAC#selection-445.127-445.686

> Is living in fear of crime from unrestricted illegal immigration a better fate?

It's certainly a purely theoretical fate. I have zero reason to believe undocumented people are more dangerous than citizens. I mean, intuitively, they risk so much more - namely deportation and torture. If I followed a Republican philosophy of tough on crime, I would then say they must be committing less crime.

Do we have any reason to believe they're more dangerous? And I mean real reasons, like statistics. No Patrick, "they're vaguely brown" is not a real reason. No Patrick, "homogeneous population" isn't a real reason either.

Immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than naturalized Americans, and are far more likely to start companies and be entrepreneurs. Legal immigration is great and we should allow more people to come to the county, via expanded programs like H1-B visas.

That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out. Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

>That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out. Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

Bingo. So why are some western countries supposed to tolerate this?

> That's a really different thing than one million people illegally entering the country and expecting that to just work out.

Sure, but this isn't my point. Nobody has given me any reason to believe it won't work out, included our undocumented immigrants. I live in Texas, I should be seeing the worst of it. But uh... no... everything is pretty chill here. Not really seeing any of these doomerist complaints about those darn illegals.

> Can you imagine the response Japan would have if a million Americans crossed into Japan illegally and expected to live and work there?

I sure can, it would probably be piss-poor. Because Japan has a strong ethnic identity and community-oriented culture. We don't.

We're not Japan, nor do we really want to be Japan.

>I live in Texas, I should be seeing the worst of it. But uh... no... everything is pretty chill here.

Nation wide policies and society don't work on how your own chill vibe feels where you live, but on research, statistics and most importantly on the opinions of the democratic majority.

Sure, none of which have been shared and as such I will continue to treat as theoretical.

These are clearly the only possible outcomes in life, assuming of course that we put aside all the statistically likely things and ask what Hitler would think of it..

There have been cases of speed-tickets turned into deportation notices for international students. Would Japan do that too for a speed limit violation?

Great question: Going over 30KM/h over the speed limit in a non-highway zone (red ticket) in Japan is a criminal offense: it goes to court, there is a criminal record filed, they can suspend or revoke your driver’s license, and it can absolutely cause a VISA to be revoked or not renewed.

And unlike in the US they actually do enforce the laws there.

Those are the wrong questions.

The US was built on immigration; Japan never was -- it has always been anti-immigration. There's no Statue of Liberty with "give me your huddled masses" inscription.

These harsh actions go against the principles on which the US was founded and built. Similar actions in Japan do not go against the principles on which Japan was founded.

A separate conversation, but immigration -- legal or illegal -- greatly benefits the US economically. While conversely, Japan's immigration policies are greatly hurting its economy as its population declines.

I'm not pro- illegal immigration. I'm for making legal immigration much more accessible so that you don't end up with millions of illegal immigrants.

Why would I desire a regression to the mean as a citizen? Freedom of expression is critical, and there is no guidance at ALL about what constitutes offending speech vs. what does not. Arbitrary denial of entry is not something that should be celebrated.

Wow this shows some really nice propagandist accumen, I wonder if it's literally a paid employee or something, judging by the comment history. You first rope in drunk drivers and illegal immigrants with the point being discussed (legal students) and then you exaggerate, saying people might be threatening domestic terrorism on social media. How cool!

You fail to address, though, that 1- the US is requiring social media accounts to be set to public, forcing people's hand into being labled as aggitators. 2- stuff that might be of academic interest is notoriously targeted by this admin, like any research being done on Israel/Palestine, any research being done on ESG, not to mention the more overt leftist themes (pro-LGBT, abortion, etc academics). This change is an easy way for the admin to target this type of research

This is the second time in this thread you have accused me of being a paid Trump employee for having a different opinion than you.

Why? The United States is not Japan. The United States has built its national identity on exceptionalism; regression-to-the-mean reasoning is flawed in that context.

When the United States was founded, the average nation was some flavor of monarchy.

Sounds like we're regressing-to-the-mean, then.

There are certainly quite a few people trying to make that happen. They are opposed by, well, Americans.

None of these things apply to the average exchange student coming to the country legally to study at our universities.

I would bet you anything you want that posting that you don't like the Israeli government's genocide in Gaza (a major topic for this type of scrutiny) will get you neither deported nor even turned back at the border in Japan.

It probably won't in America either though. You're making up a strawman.

Yes it will, they are already trying it like with Rumeysa Ozturk.

Yet still didn't.

> If you posted social media saying you wanted to overthrow the Japanese government, would Japan be okay with it or would they put you in jail and/or deport you?

This administration already considers protesting genocide a “threat to national security”. It has a well documented history of retaliating against protected speech. This latest policy is authoritarian retaliation against of free speech, plain and simple. Comparing the policy of a liberal democracy like Japan to contemporary US authoritarianism is truly disingenuous.