Without immigration the US population would be shrinking. So, we need an endless supply of new immigrants to avoid a host of problems now facing Japan.
Second we directly befit from a mix of immigrants from all nations.
Immigration is definitely not the answer. What's the point of bringing in immigrants that will replace the previous population? Should Japan bring in millions of Europeans, which will change the culture and demographics, just to keep the arbitrary GDP number up? Why does it matter if the population decreases if we can keep the quality of life the same or higher?
We also have immigration into the US. I read somewhere that growth in the population vis-a-vis immigration (and the higher birth rate of recent immigrants) propped up US growth, and explains both why the US didn't suffer as badly as Europe post-recession, and also why our demographics will look better down the road (better ratio of workers to dependents).
Japan has very little immigration. Europe and America are obviously grappling with these issues politically, but it's pretty clear from the economic numbers that immigration is important for growth if you don't have stable population growth. (Japan and parts of Europe are in decline, as would the US be if not for immigration, I believe.)
The US is immune to demographic problems. There’s an infinite supply of young people willing to immigrate and an extremely heterogeneous society really to integrate them. Japan has never figured out how to integrate immigrants.
Without immigration US is in the same boat as Japan with a falling population. Long term I suspect cultures with positive population growth to beat the competition, but that may take a long time.
Immigration has MANY MANY issues. But it is the only realistic way to solve the issue of Japan's declining population. I do not think it is a silver bullet.
I do not want to make any pro or contra immigration statement, but I think your premise is wrong. We should all get used to shrinking. We had Growth for the last centuries, if not millennia, now it looks like that has come to an end, and that is not necessary a bad thing. Japan is in this regard already living in the future, a future that will come of Europe and North America soon, and to the rest of the world a little later.
There are enough people on earth, and the global population is increasing. You don't need to personally replace yourself; immigration can handle that task. It's only when you don't allow much immigration that you have to start getting worried (such as with Japan)
I don't agree that increased immigration/population growth is necessarily the key (for Japan or other developed nations). Technology should be able to go a long way to replace the workers who support the nation. Japan, of course, is doing its utmost to prove this wrong.
Immigration of skilled labor is always valuable. Japan, the US, France, Germany, etc should always welcome it, and should have policies that allow people with verified and needed skills to immigrate.
However, drowning your citizens in a sea of immigrants is cultural suicide. If your culture is such that it has allowed your ancestors to build a country that immigrants want to flee their own countries to live in, then your culture is worth preserving, rather than allowing it to be replaced by the culture of those who would happily flood into it.
That means, you can't solve your demographic problems by opening the floodgates. Instead, you need to fix the economic problems that are making people hesitant to have children in the first place.
Birth rates in the US have been below replacement levels for some time now. This means we will need more immigrants to sustain the never ending growth capitalism demands.
Why would they talk about this? The solution is obvious, and the US has practiced the solution for a very long time now: immigration at a sufficient rate to make up for the decline in population.
This is really mostly a problem for Japan and Korea where they don't play sufficiently well with immigrants.
Japan, by some measures, is over populated. But regardless. World population is stabilizing, at least in mature economies. The US would be in a pop decline, if not for immigrants. If we only count US born newborns, the US pop is in decline.
Japan facing this issue we will all face is good for them and for us as their solutions will pave the way for other countries which will follow (much of western Europe and east Asia).
It’s impossible to solve with immigration. Even with an immigrant population that was completely willing and able to assimilate (unlike those in question), that process takes generations and requires a lack of ethnic ghettos and a high proportion of native and nativized people relative to immigrants. No honest person would say that we could solve Japan’s falling birthrate by rapidly and continually pumping it full of Europeans and expect it to remain recognizably Japanese.
But anyway population fluctuates. These things tend to work themselves out normally when your main goal is the good of the nation and not just inflating the GDP as quickly and recklessly as possible.
What's the endgame for propping up population numbers with immigration? Surely the whole system falls apart once the net fertility rate falls below 2. What then?
There's good reasons to be immigration-friendly, but dealing with the endgame of the inevitably shrinking population like the Japanese are doing seems like a better long-term strategy than the temporary band-aid solution of solving the problem in the short-term with increased immigration.
You talk as if immigration is some kind of switch but Japan has been a mono culture and they don't speak anything but Japanese, so it'll be hard to have that many foreigners to support the population decline.
And then pensions and healthcare become problems.
Cheaper housing means real estate business is going to shrink with many open rooms.
The real crisis is the one that immigration partially solves: low birth rates in the developed world.
Without enough young workers to support social services to the elderly - who have paid into the system their whole lives, mind - our elder care safety net would collapse.
Without immigrants, what would you do? Nobody's gonna shoot grandma, and she needs to be cared for, which acts as a drag on productivity for the fewer younger workers. Not to mention mom and pop ain't getting any younger.
You could crank the birth rate up somehow, but that assumes you have 10-20 years to burn till Junior's ready for the workforce. Sadly, Japan is trying this option and having little success getting their youth - among which a startling proportion are virgins - to have more children, let alone any children at all.
Personally, I love immigrants, particularly Hispanics. Their ancestral history largely reflects my own: immigrants from (mostly) Europe who wanted a better life than they could get at home. They work hard and - contrary to a race-baiting conservative press and a blindly multicultural liberal press - genuinely do want to be American and adopt American customs. My Irish and Italian ancestors went through the very same thing, and all of them are as American as apple pie.
Without the 1965 immigration act U.S. population was on a course to permanently level out at a quite sustainable ~230 million level. Immigration levels of recent decades clearly play a roll in suppressing native fertility to below replacement levels. If the problem really was not enough population, it is actually not very difficult to pursue policies that increase native fertility.
Japan is way over-populated. There is a myth that they face some sort of crisis as they deliberately pursue policies that bring population to sustainable levels. This is actually mostly immigration lobbyists in the west shrieking. Japan is being sensible and will be fine. Certain elements hate the Japanese example.
Second we directly befit from a mix of immigrants from all nations.
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