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There are nevertheless vast differences between demographic developments in different parts of the world. Many wealthy countries will see their population decli

There are nevertheless vast differences between demographic developments in different parts of the world. Many wealthy countries will see their population decline - unless they manage to compensate the same with drastically increased levels of immigration. It would take a complete reversal of policy to allow for this to happen in traditionally immigration-sceptic cultures like Japan or South Korea. Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost. But then there are also completely speculative developments that might happen as a society’s population retracts. Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable for average-income people. As a result, there may be an increase in single-earner families, where the spouse can devote her (or his) time to looking after the children. Which in turn may increase the average number of children that families can afford to have. Again, that’s entirely hypothetical, just one scenario that could result from all this.

sdsd 3y ago
The birthrate in most of the third world is also declining, fwiw, and most of these countries are becoming richer. Immigration is a good solution if you have a low-context, high-income country, that poor or chaotic neighbors want to live in, but that's not a given and won't work everywhere forever
f38zf5vdt 3y ago
If that were true birth rates in places like Japan, with chronically depressed real estate values, would be skyrocketing over time. But it doesn't seem to be the case: more educated people appear to be less apt to have children.
ok_computer 3y ago
I wonder if in-country population redistribution would counteract any alleviation of realestate prices. The US has many landlocked, east coast, and great lakes city outflows where you can buy property inexpensively. But people tend to not want to raise families or retire needing medical care in declining areas given the choice to leave. New York city Manhattan has 600k fewer people than 100 years ago and property price to average salary keeps climbing. I don’t know what the magic is that to expand property ownership. You see cities with thousands of blighted homes and new build suburbs developing 30-90 min away at prices that are a stretch for even well paid middle class jobs. I think affordable home building and financing could happen somehow but the trend is not going in that direction.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  "Stretch" is putting it mildly. You need to pony up early and start paying that shit down aggressively for it to make sense these days.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Do you mean Manhattan is a "declining area" because of century-long demographic changes? (If they've lost population, I'm guessing it's very poor, high-density housing. Millionaires and billionaires don't want to live 1 family per bedroom. Possibly I'm misinterpreting ....
  - ok_computer 3y ago
    That Manhattan remark was extraneous. I wanted to note that decreased population does not always lead to decline in property value. There is a shift from a more widely distributed desirable city middle class to concentrating wealth in coastal cities or new western development.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Yes, agreed on the first part, and I'm not surprised by the second.
wolverine876 3y ago
> Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost. As far as I know, that's false: The economic cost I'm pretty sure of: Research has shown (but I won't pretend I can cite it) that immigrants are net contributors. One (admittedly completely conjectured) explanation: Anyone motivated and healthy enough to travel to another country, where there's another language, with nothing but their shirt, is going to be very productive. Few people I know would do that. A good friend's ancestor escaped a prison camp (political prisoner), traveled across a continent, and found their way here. They did very well - they didn't find the obstacles people face in a free, wealthy country to be especially challenging! Finally, even highly skilled workforces are mostly not high-skilled. Most jobs are otherwise.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Obviously immigration does have negatives. Look at the violence in Sweden. Housing prices in Canada. And why is the mayor of New York City, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, saying they cant handle more immigrants? Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference to research that indicates its not a problem in a particular way.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Acute, short-term issues don't prove anything. You can have too much money too. Immigration has served NYC in particular extremely well, over centuries. Probably not a good example! > Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference The claim wasn't 'complications', but economic cost. And I already admitted I don't have the research in front of me. Obviously, my claim wasn't everything is perfect all the time - a claim that applies to nothing in the world.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    You'd have to prove the violence is single handledly due to immigration. And not just come up with correlation between place with high immigration and violence rate. To jest, Monaco is 2/3 immigrants, I haven't heard many people complaining about violence.
makeitdouble 3y ago
Japan's an interesting case, as they're absolutely open to immigration, especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.) to work in human intensive fields (e.g. assistance to elderly people) but don't want them to stay and build a life, so in these fields working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew, and near impossible to convert to generic visas. Basically it's the classic have your cake and eat it too. A nitpick: > Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc. > Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable It usually doesn't happen: general property value drops down, but as the population decreases the cities are restructured, and some portions of the land are completely abandonned. As a result, the amount of actually valuable property that are near active businesses in easy to live areas doesn't change much (or even decreases, as there's fewer working people)
- golemiprague 3y ago
  Why have your cake and eat it? It gives more people from poor countries to experience Japan and earn money there. Then they come back and have money to open businesses and more knowledge and exposure to first world practices. It also distribute the opportunity between more people rather than giving everything to few lucky ones while the rest don't get any opportunity to improve their lives. It also prevents all the obvious problems of integration and fractured society which affects second generation immigrants in many western countries. It's a win win situation for everybody.
- alephnan 3y ago
  > especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.) This is akin to grouping Mexico with other Latin American countries when discussing American immigration. The situation is fundamentally on a country by country basis, rather than geographical proximity. What struck out to me is mentioning Thailand. There is literally 9x Vietnamese immigrants in Japan than Thai. Even Nepal is twice as many Thai. Then there’s Brazil. Meanwhile, Taiwan, despite having the proximity and cultural/social/political ties to Japan (I was at a Japanese island where I can literally see Taiwan’s mountain) is only the 10th. It’s not a matter of difference in socioeconomic development either. The top two immigrant countries to Japan is Korea and China. Proximity is a weak correlation. The commonality here is that these are Asian countries.
wesapien 3y ago
Is the problem in the west due to westerners prefer to not have any children and enjoy their riches or is it because the society is very top heavy and that the a lot of financially challenged westerners opt not to have children? It's both in my opinion but with a heavier weight for financial struggle. I'm an immigrant and other immigrants from my generation are having less children than their parents and are not doing as well financially (includes housing, Canaduh). Immigration does not answer the question of why people are not having more children.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  My spouse and I struggled with whether it was ethical to have children. It was a financial burden of course but one we felt capable of meeting. I don't think it's really a question of "enjoy your riches," because no matter what your status, nobody can "afford" children, not even the ultra high net worth individuals. It's a burden regardless. But I think therein lies the answer. There was a time not all that long ago that not having children was a burden. Who was going to bring in the harvest, or at the very least supervise bringing in the harvest? Who could you really trust to take care of you properly when you got old? And of course, there's a biological compulsion as well, but that's much easier to sidestep only in the last couple generations.
  - neap24 3y ago
    Just what exactly about having kids is not ethical? If ethics is a human construct-and you are contributing to having no more humans around…I don’t know, it just seems like a strange way of framing it. As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      No child can consent to being born.
epolanski 3y ago
> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce I think this is overblown and repeated gospel. People in factories are trained to work the tools and machines they work. What's the barrier for an immigrant besides language? Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? I have an infinite list of jobs that do not require much education and even a longer one of jobs that require it, but only on the resume. Also, are you assuming immigrants at home don't study, nobody of them is a mechanic or electrician or plumber or carpenter? Let's be honest: immigrants aren't less educated for western societies. It's us who have went through 20 years of studies to center forms in a web page or work as secretaries or scrum masters or bank clerks.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? Math, low skilled immigrants often lacks basic education and can't properly read numbers. That makes them unfit even for most jobs we nowaday call "unskilled" like shop clerk etc. There are billions of such people in the world and when they immigrate there isn't much you can do to get them a job. There is a reason why most unskilled jobs today require high school, because without basic math you can't do much at all. Immigrants with high school equivalent education or higher can integrate just fine, immigrants with lower level than that are hard to deal with so most countries refuse to take them in but those are the majority of people in low income countries. In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids.
  - draugadrotten 3y ago
    > In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids. Some immigrants to Sweden have such different cultural traditions that they even find it difficult to interpret signs and (western) images. They have difficulties learning how to tell time on a clock. "- The students don't even have the tradition of reading signs. Don't look at symbols, image interpretation is very difficult, numbers and learning the clock is very complicated, says Johanna Karlman, SFI teacher in Borlänge." (Note: The immigration to Borlänge is mostly from Somalia.) Source: Sweden Public Service Radio P1, https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_t...
onetimeusename 3y ago
>drastically increased levels of immigration why though? Why not just figure out how to sustain your population? There may be a period of time where there aren't enough people but that could be a beneficial time where salaries increase, technology improves, etc.
katbyte 3y ago
People are not having kids in the west because we’ve made life/kids to expensive- immigration is just a way to keep enriching the rich and suppressing wages
eldritch_4ier 3y ago
The decline in birth rates seems like it has little to do with people being unable to afford children and more with the culture. Richer countries have fewer kids. Richer people have fewer kids.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
Immigration is a poor substitute for having families, and mass migration is a guaranteed headache. A host population can absorb a trickle, it cannot absorb a deluge, in which case, what's the point? You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers. "Before we go, here's how you operate the light switches..." And even then, that assumes that the replacement population won't absorb the same self-destructive features of the host culture that produced the demographic decline in the first place. Where consumerism is high, procreation is low, as children and parenthood are antithetical to the ethos of consumption. This ethos infects and corrupts every domain of the culture and conspires against families by creating a mutually enabling thicket of disincentives, consumerizing and commoditizing everything, including sexual intercourse and sexual relations, in general. Contraception and sterile "sex" are paradigmatic of consumerism. Perhaps it is not an accident that Dante places the practitioners of such a lifestyle in the same circle of Hell as usurers: the former take something fecund and renders it sterile, while the latter take something sterile and pretend to render it fecund.
- lkrubner 3y ago
  "in which case, what's the point?" I cannot imagine what system of ethics you are operating from that you would have to ask this question. The point, always, is to provide the best possible life to the greatest number of people, without regard to where those people come from. My goal in life is to maximize human happiness, I do not care what nation a person is from. Unless I'm misreading your words, or you chose your words clumsily, you seem to want a system that works for some set of people but not another set of people. But I'm curious, one what basis would you chose one set of people, and then why would you care about them at all, rather than care about some other group? If you're not going to care about the happiness of all people, then it seems to me you should be consistent and not care about anyone's happiness. But if you honestly care about one group, but not some other group, I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them? "You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers" I think you meant to write "One generation has apparently found it is possible to maximize their happiness without having children, and now gratefully receives help from new arrivals so as to take care of them during old age, as they have no children to care for them."
andrewjl 3y ago
> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. Not typical for Canada as an example. The bigger point is that immigration and it's effects are deeply shaped by policy.
presentation 3y ago
Japan's immigration policies are actually pretty welcoming to educated foreigners. They publish all the rules, if you meet the criteria (basically getting any white collar job here will do the trick) then you can get a work visa, and there is a well-documented and formulaic long-term path to getting permanent residence (which is very fast if you meet the highly skilled professional criteria, which actually aren't a very high bar; you can get most of the way there by having a college degree, reasonable pay and not being old). The problem is more that they speak a language that people do not want to spend time learning, do not have a particularly dynamic economy, and have issues with work culture, gender inequality, and so on that turns off many foreigners from making the jump.

sdsd 3y ago

The birthrate in most of the third world is also declining, fwiw, and most of these countries are becoming richer. Immigration is a good solution if you have a low-context, high-income country, that poor or chaotic neighbors want to live in, but that's not a given and won't work everywhere forever

f38zf5vdt 3y ago

If that were true birth rates in places like Japan, with chronically depressed real estate values, would be skyrocketing over time. But it doesn't seem to be the case: more educated people appear to be less apt to have children.

ok_computer 3y ago

I wonder if in-country population redistribution would counteract any alleviation of realestate prices. The US has many landlocked, east coast, and great lakes city outflows where you can buy property inexpensively. But people tend to not want to raise families or retire needing medical care in declining areas given the choice to leave. New York city Manhattan has 600k fewer people than 100 years ago and property price to average salary keeps climbing. I don’t know what the magic is that to expand property ownership. You see cities with thousands of blighted homes and new build suburbs developing 30-90 min away at prices that are a stretch for even well paid middle class jobs. I think affordable home building and financing could happen somehow but the trend is not going in that direction.

datavirtue 3y ago
"Stretch" is putting it mildly. You need to pony up early and start paying that shit down aggressively for it to make sense these days.
wolverine876 3y ago
Do you mean Manhattan is a "declining area" because of century-long demographic changes? (If they've lost population, I'm guessing it's very poor, high-density housing. Millionaires and billionaires don't want to live 1 family per bedroom. Possibly I'm misinterpreting ....
- ok_computer 3y ago
  That Manhattan remark was extraneous. I wanted to note that decreased population does not always lead to decline in property value. There is a shift from a more widely distributed desirable city middle class to concentrating wealth in coastal cities or new western development.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Yes, agreed on the first part, and I'm not surprised by the second.

wolverine876 3y ago

> Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost. As far as I know, that's false: The economic cost I'm pretty sure of: Research has shown (but I won't pretend I can cite it) that immigrants are net contributors. One (admittedly completely conjectured) explanation: Anyone motivated and healthy enough to travel to another country, where there's another language, with nothing but their shirt, is going to be very productive. Few people I know would do that. A good friend's ancestor escaped a prison camp (political prisoner), traveled across a continent, and found their way here. They did very well - they didn't find the obstacles people face in a free, wealthy country to be especially challenging! Finally, even highly skilled workforces are mostly not high-skilled. Most jobs are otherwise.

nonethewiser 3y ago
Obviously immigration does have negatives. Look at the violence in Sweden. Housing prices in Canada. And why is the mayor of New York City, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, saying they cant handle more immigrants? Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference to research that indicates its not a problem in a particular way.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Acute, short-term issues don't prove anything. You can have too much money too. Immigration has served NYC in particular extremely well, over centuries. Probably not a good example! > Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference The claim wasn't 'complications', but economic cost. And I already admitted I don't have the research in front of me. Obviously, my claim wasn't everything is perfect all the time - a claim that applies to nothing in the world.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  You'd have to prove the violence is single handledly due to immigration. And not just come up with correlation between place with high immigration and violence rate. To jest, Monaco is 2/3 immigrants, I haven't heard many people complaining about violence.

makeitdouble 3y ago

Japan's an interesting case, as they're absolutely open to immigration, especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.) to work in human intensive fields (e.g. assistance to elderly people) but don't want them to stay and build a life, so in these fields working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew, and near impossible to convert to generic visas. Basically it's the classic have your cake and eat it too. A nitpick: > Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc. > Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable It usually doesn't happen: general property value drops down, but as the population decreases the cities are restructured, and some portions of the land are completely abandonned. As a result, the amount of actually valuable property that are near active businesses in easy to live areas doesn't change much (or even decreases, as there's fewer working people)

golemiprague 3y ago
Why have your cake and eat it? It gives more people from poor countries to experience Japan and earn money there. Then they come back and have money to open businesses and more knowledge and exposure to first world practices. It also distribute the opportunity between more people rather than giving everything to few lucky ones while the rest don't get any opportunity to improve their lives. It also prevents all the obvious problems of integration and fractured society which affects second generation immigrants in many western countries. It's a win win situation for everybody.
alephnan 3y ago
> especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.) This is akin to grouping Mexico with other Latin American countries when discussing American immigration. The situation is fundamentally on a country by country basis, rather than geographical proximity. What struck out to me is mentioning Thailand. There is literally 9x Vietnamese immigrants in Japan than Thai. Even Nepal is twice as many Thai. Then there’s Brazil. Meanwhile, Taiwan, despite having the proximity and cultural/social/political ties to Japan (I was at a Japanese island where I can literally see Taiwan’s mountain) is only the 10th. It’s not a matter of difference in socioeconomic development either. The top two immigrant countries to Japan is Korea and China. Proximity is a weak correlation. The commonality here is that these are Asian countries.

wesapien 3y ago

Is the problem in the west due to westerners prefer to not have any children and enjoy their riches or is it because the society is very top heavy and that the a lot of financially challenged westerners opt not to have children? It's both in my opinion but with a heavier weight for financial struggle. I'm an immigrant and other immigrants from my generation are having less children than their parents and are not doing as well financially (includes housing, Canaduh). Immigration does not answer the question of why people are not having more children.

IggleSniggle 3y ago
My spouse and I struggled with whether it was ethical to have children. It was a financial burden of course but one we felt capable of meeting. I don't think it's really a question of "enjoy your riches," because no matter what your status, nobody can "afford" children, not even the ultra high net worth individuals. It's a burden regardless. But I think therein lies the answer. There was a time not all that long ago that not having children was a burden. Who was going to bring in the harvest, or at the very least supervise bringing in the harvest? Who could you really trust to take care of you properly when you got old? And of course, there's a biological compulsion as well, but that's much easier to sidestep only in the last couple generations.
- neap24 3y ago
  Just what exactly about having kids is not ethical? If ethics is a human construct-and you are contributing to having no more humans around…I don’t know, it just seems like a strange way of framing it. As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    No child can consent to being born.

epolanski 3y ago

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce I think this is overblown and repeated gospel. People in factories are trained to work the tools and machines they work. What's the barrier for an immigrant besides language? Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? I have an infinite list of jobs that do not require much education and even a longer one of jobs that require it, but only on the resume. Also, are you assuming immigrants at home don't study, nobody of them is a mechanic or electrician or plumber or carpenter? Let's be honest: immigrants aren't less educated for western societies. It's us who have went through 20 years of studies to center forms in a web page or work as secretaries or scrum masters or bank clerks.

Jensson 3y ago
> Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? Math, low skilled immigrants often lacks basic education and can't properly read numbers. That makes them unfit even for most jobs we nowaday call "unskilled" like shop clerk etc. There are billions of such people in the world and when they immigrate there isn't much you can do to get them a job. There is a reason why most unskilled jobs today require high school, because without basic math you can't do much at all. Immigrants with high school equivalent education or higher can integrate just fine, immigrants with lower level than that are hard to deal with so most countries refuse to take them in but those are the majority of people in low income countries. In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids.
- draugadrotten 3y ago
  > In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids. Some immigrants to Sweden have such different cultural traditions that they even find it difficult to interpret signs and (western) images. They have difficulties learning how to tell time on a clock. "- The students don't even have the tradition of reading signs. Don't look at symbols, image interpretation is very difficult, numbers and learning the clock is very complicated, says Johanna Karlman, SFI teacher in Borlänge." (Note: The immigration to Borlänge is mostly from Somalia.) Source: Sweden Public Service Radio P1, https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_t...

onetimeusename 3y ago

>drastically increased levels of immigration why though? Why not just figure out how to sustain your population? There may be a period of time where there aren't enough people but that could be a beneficial time where salaries increase, technology improves, etc.

katbyte 3y ago

People are not having kids in the west because we’ve made life/kids to expensive- immigration is just a way to keep enriching the rich and suppressing wages

eldritch_4ier 3y ago

The decline in birth rates seems like it has little to do with people being unable to afford children and more with the culture. Richer countries have fewer kids. Richer people have fewer kids.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

Immigration is a poor substitute for having families, and mass migration is a guaranteed headache. A host population can absorb a trickle, it cannot absorb a deluge, in which case, what's the point? You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers. "Before we go, here's how you operate the light switches..." And even then, that assumes that the replacement population won't absorb the same self-destructive features of the host culture that produced the demographic decline in the first place. Where consumerism is high, procreation is low, as children and parenthood are antithetical to the ethos of consumption. This ethos infects and corrupts every domain of the culture and conspires against families by creating a mutually enabling thicket of disincentives, consumerizing and commoditizing everything, including sexual intercourse and sexual relations, in general. Contraception and sterile "sex" are paradigmatic of consumerism. Perhaps it is not an accident that Dante places the practitioners of such a lifestyle in the same circle of Hell as usurers: the former take something fecund and renders it sterile, while the latter take something sterile and pretend to render it fecund.

lkrubner 3y ago
"in which case, what's the point?" I cannot imagine what system of ethics you are operating from that you would have to ask this question. The point, always, is to provide the best possible life to the greatest number of people, without regard to where those people come from. My goal in life is to maximize human happiness, I do not care what nation a person is from. Unless I'm misreading your words, or you chose your words clumsily, you seem to want a system that works for some set of people but not another set of people. But I'm curious, one what basis would you chose one set of people, and then why would you care about them at all, rather than care about some other group? If you're not going to care about the happiness of all people, then it seems to me you should be consistent and not care about anyone's happiness. But if you honestly care about one group, but not some other group, I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them? "You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers" I think you meant to write "One generation has apparently found it is possible to maximize their happiness without having children, and now gratefully receives help from new arrivals so as to take care of them during old age, as they have no children to care for them."

andrewjl 3y ago

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. Not typical for Canada as an example. The bigger point is that immigration and it's effects are deeply shaped by policy.

presentation 3y ago

Japan's immigration policies are actually pretty welcoming to educated foreigners. They publish all the rules, if you meet the criteria (basically getting any white collar job here will do the trick) then you can get a work visa, and there is a well-documented and formulaic long-term path to getting permanent residence (which is very fast if you meet the highly skilled professional criteria, which actually aren't a very high bar; you can get most of the way there by having a college degree, reasonable pay and not being old). The problem is more that they speak a language that people do not want to spend time learning, do not have a particularly dynamic economy, and have issues with work culture, gender inequality, and so on that turns off many foreigners from making the jump.