Tag: demography

Japan Shows Why U.S. Needs More Immigrants   

This blog consistently has argued for the U.S. needing more immigrants.[1] This argument is strengthened by looking at the problems being experienced by Japan with practically no immigration, as recounted by Francisco Toro, a Venezuelan political commentator with Japanese relatives. [2]

“Japan’s population is shrinking, with far-reaching consequences that seep into every corner of life here. . . . As the country ages and older people die with no one to replace them, neighborhoods across Japan are also slowly dying.”

Just one sign of this is the existence of “abandoned houses like the one blighting my in-laws’ street. . . .Such houses have “fallen badly into disrepair. None of the heirs seems interested in [them]: The taxes are too high, and there isn’t really a market for this kind of house anyway.]”

“As many as 8 million houses in Japan are vacant, and the trend is only deepening. Rural villages are disappearing, and more and more Japanese towns and suburbs have become ‘dying communities’ where children are a rare sight; authorities barely manage to find the care workers needed to look after legions of retirees.”

“A solid [Japanese] political consensus has rejected mass immigration here for as long as anyone can remember, leaving this one of the most homogeneous countries on earth. You can think of Japan as a kind of Trumpian paradise: an ethnically defined national community with few foreigners. And no future.” (Emphasis added.)

Japan has a “demographic collapse that has left the country a pale shadow of the economic powerhouse that made Americans paranoid a generation ago. A chronic dearth of new workers has left economic growth lagging for a generation, turning “japanification” into economic shorthand for decline. All that — plus the ossified 1950s gender roles that simply never went away here — has turned Japan into one of the least attractive places for women to have children. Low birth rates only compound the demographic death spiral.”

“The [Japanese] government has begun making more work permits available to foreign workers, but makes little effort to help them integrate. Visa rules force most foreign workers to apply for extensions frequently and prevent them from bringing their families. By all accounts, discrimination in housing is rife, as well as perfectly legal. The foreign workers who do come can’t fail to hear the message: Come, work, but don’t think you’re welcome to stay.”

In short, “economic imperatives and cultural consensus are at war in Japan . . . . It’s no longer possible for the country to continue to pretend it can get by without migrants. But it’s politically impossible to truly welcome them, either. The result is that more and more jobs simply stay vacant, not just in industry and agriculture but also in the kinds of elder-care jobs this aging country most desperately needs to fill.”

For the U.S., Japan is “a bright red warning sign of demographic meltdown, and an indictment of a society that has chosen homogeneity over progress. . . . [H]omogeneity leads to decline, while diversity offers at least a chance of ongoing vitality and prosperity.”

Japan also may have a positive message for the U.S.  After reviewing the many problems in U.S. “assisted-living” facilities, the author says, “Perhaps the United States can learn from Japan, which is a few decades ahead of us in grappling with how to care for its rapidly aging population. Japan created a national long-term-care insurance system that is mandatory. It is partly funded by the government but also by payroll taxes and additional insurance premiums charged to people age 40 and older. It is a family-based, community-based system, where the most popular services are heavily subsidized home help and adult day care. Japanese families still use nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but the emphasis is on supporting the elder population at home.” [3]

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[1] See, for example, these 2019 posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Report About U.S. Need for More Immigrants (Aug. 25, 2019); More Warnings of the Problems Facing U.S. Aging, Declining Population (Aug. 14, 2019); Additional Support for U.S. Needing More Immigrants (May 18, 2019); Trump Erroneously Says U.S. Is “Full,” (April 9, 2019); U.S. Construction Industry Needs More Immigrants (April 3, 2019); Businesses Need More Immigrants (Mar. 24, 2019);“America’s Farms Need Immigrants” (Mar. 22, 2019).

[2]  Toro, Japan is a Trumpian paradise of low immigration rates. It’s also a dying country, Wash. Post (Aug. 29, 2019).

[3]  Anand, How Not to Grow Old in America, N.Y. Times (Aug. 29, 2019).

 

Impact of Declining, Aging, Rural Populations

 “The shift from global population growth toward population decline is emerging as one of the least appreciated forces that is, along with urbanization and digital disruption, upending the political and economic status quo.” A major factor in such decline is “all of East Asia, all of Europe, and all of North America are experiencing birthrates that are below replacement level — which means, simply, were it not for immigration and longer life spans, all of these regions would be experiencing year-to-year population decline.” (Emphases in original.) So say Philip Auerswald, associate professor at George Mason University, and Joan Yun, the president of Palo Alto Investors.[1]

“In the world’s largest cities, where populations are densely concentrated and growing, economies are generally thriving and cosmopolitanism is embraced. Where populations are sparse or shrinking, usually in rural places and small cities, economies are often stagnant, and populism sells.”

The appeal of populism, they say, is caused by “Nativist, nationalist rhetoric — “Make America (or Whatever Other Country) Great Again” — [which] appeals because it promises to restore the rightful economic and cultural stature of ‘common people’ in relation to a decadent urban intelligentsia.” This especially is true in “rural, remote places [that] have been disproportionately losing not just jobs and opportunities, but people, elementary schools and confidence in the future.”

The Russian Federation is “in the vanguard of both demographic decline and the political exploitation of the frustrations it engenders,. . . , it is a country whose population began to shrink 15 years before Japan’s; a country whose leader declared in a 2006 address to the nation that the demographic crisis was “the most acute problem” facing his land; a country in which the battle between the rural “narod” (the common people) and the urban intelligentsia was a defining feature of political life for most of a violent century.”

Other blog posts have discussed various aspects of this problem in the U.S. and the resulting need, in this blogger’s opinion, for increasing , not decreasing, immigration.[2]

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[1]  Auerswald & Yun, As Population Growth Slows, Populism Surges, N.Y. Times (May 22, 2018)

[2]  See The World Faces Demographic Challenges (April 3, 2018); U.S. Needs More Immigrants (April 14, 2018); Other Factors Favoring U.S. Immigration (May 17, 2018); Wall Street Journal: U.S. Immigration Debate Disconnected from Economic Realities (May 21, 2018).