Japan doesn’t need low-wage immigrants to keep up its rate of production. All it needs to do is continue to locate branch plants, wherever those low-wage workers already live. Japan will have no problems keeping productivity high.
Japan has been a “head-office economy” for decades now. That means a high-paid, highly skilled, and highly-educated workforce. A high-paid workforce can support several times more retirees than a low-wage workforce.
Low-wage immigrants need far more heavily-subsidized social services than a highly-paid, head-office workforce requires. Factor in the myriad social problems that come with a large, unassimilated population of immigrants; and Japan it’s obvious that Japan has nothing to gain from an open-borders policy.
When Japan’s population stabilizes, it will still have at least as many people it did during the height of their Empire. As a high-tech, high-wage economy, Japan can afford (and operate) a high-tech military. That’s a tremendous force multiplier. Just ask Israel.
Japan desperately needs young workers to pay for their aging population. That is one of the prime causes of its’ now two decade stagnation. They are an aging dying society. They have drifted along with little more than 1% GDP growth since the 90’s dipping in and out of recession. They just fell back into recession last quarter! They are hardly the economy or society to emulate.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-japan-economy-edit-20141120-story.html
It is not only through immigration that a society grows. That is the least desirable form of growths it carries so many cultural pitfalls and potential problems.
Organic population growth is not only better it is critical for the continuation of a society with a welfare system. Without a birth rate exceeding replacement and not by a little, it is all but impossible to maintain a welfare system. It puts too much strain on the economy.
Yes, look at Japan!
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/japans-demography
Israeli Jews are being out breed by their own Arab Muslim citizens and risk a significant problem in the next century due to the low Jewish birth rate in Israel.
The Jewish majority is losing seats in the Knessit to Muslim Arabs as we speak and the demographics show it not getting better any time soon. There are a little over 8,000,000 citizens in Israel. around 75% are Jewish and around 22% are Arab. The Arabs have an increasing population with a birth rate of almost 2.5% and the Jews have a declining birthrate of 1.7%. If not for the 5% birth rate among the Orthodox Heredi Jews It would be even worse.
For every 2 Jews born there are three new Arab Muslims. For every two Jewish deaths there are only 1.7 new Jews born.
Those figures don’t include the 8,000,000 plus Arab Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank.
It doesn’t take too many decades of that demography to change a nation. Within a few decades the young Arab Muslim citizens of Israel will simply open the gates in the fence and allow their millions of Palestinian cousins walk in and eject the remaining Jews from the land.
Don’t matter how many computer chips or high tech instruments and engineers you have, a swarm of locusts will decimate a crop in minutes. A swarm of Muslims can do the same to Jews as well. Even in the only Jewish state.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.647598