4 ms·
The sad truth is that COVID accelerated xenophobia and isolationism throughout the world, and Japan is no exception.
by euske 6y ago
The sad truth is that COVID accelerated xenophobia and isolationism throughout the world, and Japan is no exception.
- Clewza313 6y agoWhy the downvotes? Japan's COVID policy has been quite openly xenophobic: for a long time, Japanese citizens could return with minimal checks, but even permanent residents had an absolute bar on re-entry.
- silverpepsi 6y agoI hope you don't mind me adding a concrete example because some people don't process this fully I have a friend who is a Westerner with a Japanese family, 2 young kids, has been there decades... she couldn't risk leaving the country to visit her own parents in an emergency because she would be prohibited from reentering Japan and seeing her husband and young children again for an undefined period of time. Ultimately that period ended up being something like 6~8 months before they finally changed the freaking law. The policy was unprecedented and illogical, I don't think any other extreme covid prevention countries went that far. Slightly mistiming a trip pre-covid and she would have been kept from her children for that many months, completely crazy
- chrischen 6y agoYea the r/movingtojapan thread is full of people complaining about how the policies seem to give Japanese citizens a free pass while blaming the importation of new virus strains on misbehaving foreigners (whether or not that's true). They've fully blocked immigration (not tourists—legal immigrants) despite fairly strict quarantine and testing policies.
- tonfa 6y agoIs that unique to Japan though? (Had the impression that US hasn't been much better, and I'd guess Schengen as well at least to some level)
- Ichthypresbyter 6y agoUS embassies stopped processing most nonimmigrant visas, but they still processed student and immigrant visas, and permanent residents who had left the US were allowed to return. There is no single Schengen visa system- while holders of a visa for one Schengen country can travel freely within the area, the individual countries still have the choice to issue them. As far as I know most Schengen countries kept issuing long-term visas.
- Pyramus 6y agoHow is this controversial? Humans have an innate bias to trust members of their own social group more than strangers and it takes effort to correct this bias. When under (perceived) threat this in/out thinking is exacerbated.