Send us your construction workers, your care givers, your store clerks ¡ª but for a limited time only.
That¡¯s the message from Japan, where the number of foreign workers, though still relatively small, has nearly doubled over the past eight years, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe¡¯s ruling party is considering policies to speed up arrivals.
Just don¡¯t call it immigration. Japan will allow more unskilled workers to enter temporarily, as companies struggle to fill positions in a country with the lowest unemployment rate among the Group of Seven nations. Abe has made it clear that opening the nation to permanent immigration by unskilled labor isn¡¯t an option, reflecting a historic fear among the Japanese that foreign nationals would cause social unrest and erode national identity.
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