Government’s Scheme to Increase International Students
With the steady decrease in population in Japan, Japanese government has increased the admission quota of students and labors from other countries.
A few years ago, Japanese government established a scheme to accept 300,000 students from oversea by 2020.
The scheme progresses faster than predicted with 337,000 international students by December 2018.
Switching from Student Visa to Employment Visa
However, only a small part of the population is able to stay for employment due to the strict requirements both government and enterprises set.
Japanese government realized that it is necessary to create a more welcoming environment for foreign workers in order to solve the problem of labor shortage.
As a solution, a new employment visa category with more reachable requirements is created. This new employment visa opens up to 14 industries including the nursing and the construction industry.
The goal is to accept 345,000 people in the upcoming five years.
International Residents from the World
According to the data from Ministry of Justice, there is a total of 2 million international residents living in Japan as of December 2018.
Below is the top 5 countries in which its population is highest in Japan:
- China (764,720)
- Korea (449,634)
- Vietnam (330,835)
- The Philippines (271,289)
- Brazil (201,865)
Besides the above five countries, population from Nepal also shown a remarkable increase in the past years.
Population from Southeast Asia is expected to accelerate in the following years. Especially with Tokyo Olympics 2020 coming up, Japan is expected to become more diverse than it is currently.
Above data obtained from the Ministry of Justice Japan.
