Japan's Greying Population

The SMH reports on the push back from right wing groups on proposals to provide municipal voting rights to the almost 500,000 special permanent foreign residents, mostly ethnic Koreans and Chinese, born and raised in Japan after their relatives were brought over by force or the war economy.

In addition to the 1 million permanent-resident foreigners, another 1 million foreigners are registered to live and work in the country. Together they make up just 1.6 per cent of the population. Australia's foreign-born population, by contrast, accounts for more than 20 per cent.

Present trends show that Japan will lose 70 per cent of its workforce within 40 years, by which time more than 40 per cent of the population will be made up of retirees.

Some politicians have called for a drastic increase in the intake of skilled immigrants to rescue the workforce from collapse. But wariness of foreigners retains a powerful grip on the national consciousness.

However, despite the reality being that expansive immigration policies or an increase in birth rates being the only answers to Japan's population problems; an aggressive policy of deportation has cut the number of illegal immigrants by more than half since 1995, from 300,000 to 130,000.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/japan-grapples-with-greying-needs-20100205-nir8.html