Nearly 150,000 students and more than 100,000 students and foreign workers waiting to enter the country.
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Do we isolate Japan from the rest of the world? “The concern emphasizes in about formulated Wednesday, January 12 on his LinkedIn account Hiroshi Mikitani, president of Japanese commerce giant Rakuten online. A disarray affecting part of the business community and university Japanese over the policy by the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, facing the Omicron variant Covid-19. Mr. Mikitani reacting to the announcement yesterday by Mr. Kishida, the extension to the end of February of the border closure, in place since 30 November 2021, a measure “similar to the isolation of the Edo period policy”, says the businessman in reference to the situation in Japan between 1603 and 1868.
Tokyo closed its borders from the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. With the exception of a brief opening between 8 and 30 November 2021 and relaxations for events like the Tokyo Olympics of summer 2021, this policy has not changed. Besides tourists, it prohibits entry into the archipelago to any student or foreign professional, even if it has an eligibility certificate from Tokyo.
Only the Japanese and foreigners with resident status can return from a trip outside Japan, provided they observe a strict quarantine. Even family reunification remain complicated. “From the perspective of public health, there is no reason to differentiate the treatment of individuals based on their nationality,” said Sawai yet Isami, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Anyway, the agency of immigration, nearly 150,000 students and more than 100 000 foreign students and workers waiting to come to Japan. The consequences are serious for whole sectors of the economy such as the medical sector or agriculture, highly dependent on foreign labor. It has been authorized since 1990, coming to meet the demographic decline is accelerating. Archipelago has reception frames of unskilled workers or specialists, notably China and Southeast Asia.
Fear of losing crops
“In Japan, the number of workers is sorely lacking,” laments Kazuhide Kumazawa, the Kaikoukai Healthcare Group, which runs hospitals and nursing homes in Aichi Prefecture (center) and waiting for months the arrival of Indonesian students.
The tip also anxiety in universities whose finances depend heavily on foreign students. The pandemic has never prevented the Japanese students to go abroad as part of international exchange programs. The converse is not true. The number of foreign students in Japan plunged in 7078 to the first half 2021, down 90% compared to before Covid-19.
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