Immigration and the Japanese economy

I believe immigrants play an important role for the Japanese economy. They are indispensable for Japanese companies as workforce. Many people criticize immigration from abroad and have negative perspectives such as cultural conflict and the increasing crime rate. But it brings huge benefits that more than compensate for the negative aspects. Now I’d like to focus on the solution of work shortage in Japan. Here are two advantages for accepting immigration for the Japanese economy.

Firstly, factory workers/plant workers. When I visited the subsidiary company in Minokamo city of Gifu prefecture on business trip, I was so surprised by the huge number of Brazilian. They serve for the company as factory workers. They are assigned to handle assembly process of VCR, Video Camera and so on. They play an important role to generate the company’s profit. Way back when, the subsidiary company was at a loss for finding younger Japanese as workforce. In 1990, Immigration Control Law was deregulated and the number of immigrants significantly increased. Since then, the profit of the company has been improved about 20%.

Secondly, industries in Japan rely on immigrants as intellectual contribution. For example, engineering field heavily rely on Indian to compensate for Japanese weak area. That is software and programming. I bet you’ve heard game product – Sony PlayStation. Operating system in PlayStation is programmed by a lot of Indian. Indian play an important role from implementing source code to project management. Sony can not produce PlayStation without Indian’s contribution. It is said that a lot of Japanese have hard time to tackle with Indian English like gun fire of barrage though. Anyway, we can create and offer better quality to customers than their rival companies. Their contributions strengthen Japan's competitiveness in international market.

In conclusion, immigration has significant advantages for the Japanese economy as workforce. They are inevitable for our society.