Rising elderly population drive Immigration into Japan

As the elderly population continues to grow in the world's second biggest economy, Japan, it is looking to immigrants to take care of its aged.

Nurses from the Philippines, and Indonesia are flooding to Japan to fill a drastic requirement for caregivers in old age homes and hospitals. These nurses learn Japanese are a significant part of Japan's solution to the world's most rapidly growing aged population. This situation is also expected to cut down Japan's workforce, and cripple its economy.

An ex-immigration chief in Tokyo, Hidenori Sakanaka commented on the situation saying that Japan is one of the first developed nations to go through this process or crisis. According to projections, by 2015 more than 25% of all Japanese will be above 65 and this will bring about dire economic consequences i.e. a decrease in GDP due to a shortage of manual labor.

Government numbers approximate that the labour force will reduce by 8 million in about a decade. Japanese politicians view immigration as a panacea to this rapidly declining workforce. They are requesting the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Yasuo Fukudo to allow for a new proposal to go through - one that would enable 10% of the population to be immigrants, over a period of 50 years.

Should these laws be passed, the large-scale immigration into Japan would see an end to its weariness of foreigners that dominated for nearly 200 years, right through the 1800s.

Sakanaka continued to say in published reports that there seems no way out but to bring more immigrants in.