Desperately seeking an antidote to a rapidly aging population, Japanese policymakers are exploring ways to bring in more foreign workers without calling it an "immigration policy," Reuters reports.
Immigration is a touchy subject in a land where conservatives prize cultural homogeneity and politicians fear losing votes from workers worried about losing jobs.
But a tight labor market and ever-shrinking work force are making Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy team and lawmakers consider the politically controversial option.
Signaling the shift, leading members of a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) panel on Tuesday proposed expanding the types of jobs open to foreign workers, and double their numbers from current levels of close to 1 million.
"Domestically, there is a big allergy. As a politician, one must be aware of that," Takeshi Noda, an adviser to the LDP panel, told Reuters in an interview.
While Japan is not caught up in the mass migration crisis afflicting Europe, the controversies in other regions do color the way Japanese think about immigration.
LDP lawmakers floated immigration proposals almost a decade ago, but those came to naught. Since then, however, labor shortages have worsened and demographic forecasts have become more dire.
