alt Hacker NewsThe requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class or better from a developed country (or a resource rich one like those in the Middle East) or from the ultra-wealthy of a developing/underdeveloped one, and you put in enough effort to learn the language. I doubt the ultra-wealthy will really be required to have language proficiency in practice. This is basically to gatekeep all but the wealthiest black, brown and "lesser" Asian peoples as expected of Japan, but the 30 years savings requirement will keep at bay quite a few white people who may have dreamed about immigrating there too. I don't wish the Japanese people ill, but I hope they'll find some solution for all those aging, near-destitute, and sometimes abandoned elderly folks instead of telling them to suck it up for the sake of cultural identity.
Side note, but it's always funny to me that whenever (and frequently) Japanese immigration policies are discussed on sites like HN and Reddit, there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism.
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> The requirements are essentially that you're either upper-middle class
Not true - a youtuber from Germany who lives in Japan since about 10 years, was denied citizenship recently. And he'd make more than enough money.
https://www.youtube.com/@NihonGoo
The thing is really true: Japan is against more immigration. You'll always be a gaijin there if you come from the outside.
> there seems to always be a large number of clearly white people from America and Europe coming in to display their Japanese nationalism
Other countries are also very much against mass immigration. Japan just does it in a very strange way.
Making this about "black" and "brown" is bullshit, given that this is clearly about economics, not skin color. The Japanese have a remarkable society that is clean and orderly. The only way anybody has figured out how to maintain orderliness despite immigration is to filter heavily by economic status, like Dubai. If the immigrants in Japan were behaving exactly the same as Japanese, just saving money on sunscreen, you wouldn’t be seeing these measures.
> but the wealthiest
News flash, poor people are not wanted in most countries of the world, everyone already has their own poor population to deal with.
I mean, to get the Japanese take on immigration, you could go to 5chan and check out the temperature over there. Japanese don't frequent this board, so what you will get is mostly North American and Western European (not even eastern European)
I don't care about japan but not every country must follow the US policies and convert to US culture.