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The president made the remark while arguing that Japan, along with Russia and China, would perform better economically if the countries embraced immigration more.
Oh, well that's true enough. Japan is crazy anti immigration despite that being a solution to their low birth rate.
Yeah but then they'd have ethnically mixed nationally Japanese people, and they don't want that (especially considering they've intentionally done it to other countries they've occupied and colonized as a form of Japanization, like Korea).
I can't speak to Russia or China, but Japan has a history of xenophobia going back CENTURIES. It's not exactly a newsflash.
True, also: from what I understand, Korea has been historically worse.
Even still, it's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
That pot better be careful around police...
What are the effective rates of immigration for the involved countries ?
Immigration absolutely helps the US economy, because it parasitically siphons all the skilled workers out of other countries that it underdevelops and hoards their labor for itself.
People think remittances help underdeveloped countries, but labor is the superior of capital, losing that skilled labor is never worth the paltry sums that get sent back home. It's just another shape that imperialism takes.
In Canada we heavily base immigration on education. So we're siphoning off the best educated of other countries. I mean this is just fucking those countries.
That's truly one of the worst things about brain drain / educated people moving to the imperial core countries for the high salaries. Global south countries really need educated young people helping to solve their own problems, and Canada and the US rip out their heart and soul.
At least in tech / programming, a good chunk of us are devoting most of our labor time to not just wasteful things, but actively harmful things, like trying to get people to click on ads, or increasing viral engagement.
I mean tbf (at least in my case as an Egyptian) it's not just the high salaries. Maybe Egypt is an extreme case but this country just has no future. The regime isn't just dictatorial; it's also dumb. There's almost no money going to scientific research, the system as a whole was outdated 50 years ago, the military is monopolizing everything and undercutting the market because they can use ~~slave~~ conscript labor and don't pay taxes, etc etc. I'm firmly of the opinion that this is at least partially caused by Britain's unwillingness to fully decolonize in the 1920s and their godawful decolonization in the 1950s, but the fact remains that these countries have a duty to their people that they're not fulfilling, and that's why brain drain happens.
As a living example of said brain drain, salaries were near the bottom of my priority list when I made the decision. I was more concerned about living somewhere where I don't need to worry about being arrested because I said my opinion on the internet (or even just complained about prices) or because I do my prayers at the mosque (I was actually told by my mother to not go to the mosque all the time because I might get arrested. It's that bad). Below that were things like a sane administration that actually cares about things being even just barely functional, a decent education system and academia and the ability to have confidence that the country will actually exist in 20 years. Living in a wildly different country (especially as a Muslim in Japan as is my case (halal food is a pain to get here)) is such a pain you couldn't pay me to do it, but it's hard to turn down actually getting to have a future.
What I wanna say is that it's not just the Global South being undercut by the West; many Global South countries are failing at fulfilling their responsibility towards their constituents, and that's why they're leaving. Now how much the West was involved in creating this situation is another story, but you can't reduce it to just high salaries. Global South governments, as a rule, aren't interesting in solving their own problems. That's why the problem solvers go solve Western rich people's problems.
Egypt is also a useful case study, because the US props up its shitty government. That's also part of how the Global South is underdeveloped, it's a multifaceted machine that sucks out everyone who can help make the country better and gives support and resources to the people making it worse. It's not just legacy from the 20's and 50's, this is an ongoing problem that is created by imperialism.
Also when a Global South government tries to solve its problems, such as through nationalizing resources or land reform, the US buries them under sanctions and attempts to make a regime change. This, too, is part of how imperialism underdevelops the Global South.
I mean that's the whole point of the US higher education system, excepting the Republicans (with the help of Democrats) broke the parts of our immigration system that is supposed to take advantage of educating the world.
Did you just say people moving to the US for a better life are a part of imperialism?
Don't misunderstand, the people moving to the US are blameless. Imperialism works by siphoning up all of the skilled labor around the world for itself in order to make life better for people within the imperial core, and this is part of how the imperial nations underdevelop other countries. People get educations in their home countries (often at the government's expense) and then they take that education out of the country to put it to use in the US (or France or Canada etc). They're just going where the jobs are, though, that's not their fault at all.
Except where there's little opportunity to utilize the highly skilled labor. They are going abroad anyway to find job opportunities befitting of their skill set and the highest bidder. Doesn't matter if the US or EU took them, they're leaving because the local opportunity doesn't exist.
Yes, and the people who could develop that local opportunity aren't there. They all leave as soon as they can.
That's why I said they're underdeveloped countries. They're not "developing" in truth, but are being kept from becoming developed. How do you think that happens? In part it happens because of the IMF giving predatory loans and then imposing austerity on the people when the government can't pay their loans back, but it also happens because labor is the superior of capital and these countries are losing skilled labor.
I am not blaming them for leaving their countries. I am blaming underdevelopment, which is a product of imperialism.
Why am I seeing multiple news reports today about Joe Biden where they remove context to polarize his comments further? This feels, to me, like a new media trend
Propaganda?
It doesn’t need to be propaganda, just maximizing clicks will do that for you organically.
He's not wrong but also I believe there's a saying in English about stones and glass houses.
Even the most bigoted parts of the US are nowhere near as xenophobic as Japan. Housing discrimination based on race is still perfectly acceptable over there, many people will refuse to rent to foreigners.
perfectly acceptable
At least some governments in Japan appear to disagree:
Japan signed the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)” in 1996
Tokyo Metropolitan Government educates real estate agents on the illegality of nationality-based rental refusals, considering them discriminatory
And the article itself seems to contradict with those statements...
Xeno Biden doesn't care.
I mean he's not wrong, but where does he expect China to get immigrants from? They're 20% of the world.
He's also cherry picking data. It's a weird flex.
The proportion of immigrants in the US isn't exactly high compared to somewhere like Canada.
I mean the US is 15% immigrants, or about 50 million people. I know we like to shit on the US but that's a ridiculously big number.
As neat as Japan sounds and as much as I’d like to be there, I mean, he’s not wrong
I watch YouTubers who moved to and live there talk about how they’re just indefinitely treated like a tourist
Pretty much every country in the world where citizenship, nationality, and ethnicity are the same thing you find xenophobia.
I think "extremely ethnocentric" is a more fair description/criticism of Japan. Close to 98% of their population is ethnically homogeneous, so it kinda makes sense.
You'd be wrong
Lmfao
Partly true about inviting foreigners. Japan has a trainee visa system that is abusive, as they always are, and is designed so that those employees (victims) never get citizenship. And it's a single citizenship country, because of course it is. But hey, employers are very willing to bring in those laborers, since it's cheaper than paying what the law requires.
And you can't fix demographics with people who only stay for a year or two.