Japan gives cash to jobless foreigners to go home

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — Japan began offering money Wednesday for unemployed foreigners of Japanese ancestry to go home, mostly to Brazil and Peru, to stave off what officials said posed a serious unemployment problem.

Thousands of foreigners of Japanese ancestry, who had been hired on temporary or referral contracts, have lost their jobs recently, mostly at manufacturers such as Toyota Motor Corp. and its affiliates, which are struggling to cope with a global downturn.

The number of foreigners seeking government help to find jobs has climbed in recent months to 11 times the previous year at more than 9,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

"The program is to respond to a growing social problem," said ministry official Hiroshi Yamashita.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3FkdB43olxcWAZRKpiUZFQr4QbgD979EPP84

[nc4bo]

1. In the early 90's my husband paid $600 to tenants to get the hell out of a rental house.

They were 2, going on 3 months behind on their payments so they lived right through their deposit. He considered himself lucky - sometimes it's hard and expensive to through the legal system.

It worked so much faster than getting the law involved and they were out of there in less than a week.

Not sure how this would work on such a large scale. These people may not have anywhere to go home to and might think it's better to try and scratch out an existence where they already are.

[Matt Shapiro]

10. tenant payoffs

A better solution than paying tenants to "get the hell out" might be to lower the rent to an affordable level. Keeping people in homes they can afford is a worthy societal goal, even if those people are lowly renters.

[WriteDown]

2. We could try this...

But we'd need a fairly secure border. Japan has the benefit of being an island.

[AlphaCentauri]

3. Disposable workers, ethnic cleansing, deprivation of rights to the poor

:puke:

[Exultant Democracy]

4. ethnic cleansing? Sorry I'm failing to see that, these are foreign born Japanese

same ethnicity as the rest of the relatively homogeneous Japanese.

[AlphaCentauri]

5. Japanese ancestry doesn't mean pure

they can be descendants of a japanese gran father and inca gran mother, also their their culture could be a mix of japanese and latino or only latino.
Most latinos have spanish ancestors but nobody considered them Spaniards.

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. Did it occur to you that the offer was made because they ostensibly had a place to go?

nt

[AlphaCentauri]

8. I'll will reply later but enjoy this music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJfcxajpZpk

[Irreverend IX]

9. Japanese don't really consider you "pure..."

Unless you were born, raised and lived your whole life in Japan with pure Japanese ancestry. Just living outside the country will often cause someone to pick up mannerisms that make native Japanese doubt their Japanese-ness. They certainly wouldn't consider these workers to be the equal of a "real" Japanese person.

[paulk]

6. I have a close friend who is a Japanese citizen

who has been follwing this for the last couple of months.

The problem is that housing was provided as part of the job - once the job disappered these people were out on the street. Mostly they are living in city parks, and that's what the "serious unemployment problem" really is.