Japan will replace its technical intern program with a new residence status in April 2027, opening a route that runs from unskilled entry to family settlement and permanent residency, the online magazine President Online reported.
The government presents the change as a response to labor shortages. The design of the new system, and the way it was built, point somewhere else.
International bodies, government agencies, expert panels and private groups linking industry to politicians each pushed their own interests. Those forces converged on a single direction: remaking Japan as a multiethnic state, the journalist Yamaoka Tetsuhide wrote.
No skills needed at the door
The 育成就労 (ikusei shuro) system, which translates as "employment for development," asks for no specialist skill on entry. Japanese ability is met by passing a beginner-level test, equivalent to A1, or by taking a training course before work begins.
After three years in principle, a worker who passes an exam moves to Specified Skilled Worker No. 1, which allows five years in principle. A further exam opens No. 2.
That second status removes the limit on renewing residence and lets holders bring a spouse and children. Workers who meet the requirements can also apply for permanent residency.
The system takes in foreigners with no skills, trains them and leads them toward long-term settlement with their families. Whatever the government calls it, it is an immigration system.
Europe's guest worker programs began on the pretense of being temporary. Japan's version is more far-reaching, because the staircase to settlement is built in from the start.
A skills test decides settlement
The move to No. 2 is decided by a vocational skills exam. Becoming skilled on a factory floor is a different matter from supporting a family in Japan, educating children and fitting into a local community.
Labor market demand alone should not decide a country's population policy, Yamaoka wrote. A category that opens the way to settlement should require rare, advanced skills that cannot be found domestically, not simple proficiency.
He opened with a line the Swiss writer Max Frisch set down in 1965: "We called for labor, but what came were people."
West Germany and Switzerland took in foreigners as guest workers on a temporary basis. They stayed, sent for their families, and second and third generations were born.
West Germany stopped recruiting in 1973, but its foreign population kept growing through family reunification. The door, once opened, did not close when labor demand faded.
Half a century on, slow integration and social division still unsettle European politics.