Aging Japan gets serious about immigration

By Isabel Reynolds

TOKYO (Reuters) - Jakarta nurse Yanti Kartina left her family in Indonesia and joined 200 other nurses moving to Japan where a rapidly growing elderly population has created a desperate need for carers in old age homes and hospitals.

The nurses, who are expected to learn Japanese and requalify as they work, are seen as an important test case as Japan struggles with the world's fastest growing elderly population and a workforce that is forecast to shrink, potentially devastating the economy.

"Japan is the first developed country to face this kind of population crisis," said Hidenori Sakanaka, a former immigration bureau chief in the capital of Tokyo who now heads a think tank.

With more than a quarter of Japanese expected to be aged over 65 by 2015, the country faces serious economic consequences, including labor shortages that could weigh on

GDP.

A group of ruling party politicians see immigration as a possible solution and have presented Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda with a radical new proposal that seeks to have immigrants make up 10 percent of the population in 50 years' time. Government figures show the workforce is on course to shrink by eight million in the next 10 years.

If the necessary laws are passed, mass immigration could transform a country once so wary of foreigners that it excluded them almost entirely for more than 200 years until the 19th century.

"I don't think there is any way forward but to accept immigrants," Sakanaka said.

Even now, the idea of allowing in more foreigners is often described as a risk to Japan's relatively crime-free and homogeneous society.

Many landlords refuse to rent apartments to foreigners and few Japanese employers offer immigrant workers the same rights as their Japanese colleagues. Less than two percent of Japan's almost 128 million population are currently foreign-born.

Tetsufumi Yamakawa, chief economist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, believes immigration, combined with efforts to draw more women and elderly people into the labor market, could lift growth above the annual one percent or less forecast by many analysts.

"I think this is very good timing to start thinking about this," he said. "The decline is already in sight."

The Indonesian nurses, who have been recruited to work in short-staffed hospitals and old peoples' homes, are the latest wave of controlled immigration. Government officials hope they will face fewer problems than their predecessors.

FAILURE TO FIT IN

More than 300,000 immigrant Brazilians of Japanese descent, have been a boon for Japan's automotive and electronics factories, where many of them work. They have also boosted the Brazilian economy, remitting $2.2 billion dollars home in 2005 alone, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.