Japan’s prime minister said on Tuesday that his nation needs to attend to its own demographic challenges posed by falling birth rates and an aging population before opening its doors to migrants.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced at the UN General Assembly that Japan would provide $1.5 billion in emergency aid for refugees and for stabilization of communities facing upheaval. But speaking to reporters later on Tuesday he quickly killed the idea of Japan opening its doors to foreigners.
He said Japan first needed to attend to domestic challenges which he proposes to tackle under a revamped economic policy that aims to boost GDP to a post-war record level, while bolstering the social security system to support families, Fox News reported.
“I would say that before accepting immigrants or refugees we need to have more activities by women, by elderly people and we must raise (the) birth rate. There are many things that we should do before accepting immigrants,” Abe said.
It appears that Japan would rather focus on its many current problems before introducing fresh ones.
Japan prides itself on being generous as one of the largest aid donors in the world. Last year Japan gave $181.6 million to the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, making it second only to the United States in migrant funding.
But it has offered no resettlement places for asylum seekers from the conflict in Syria. Ministry of Justice data shows that Japan accepted only 11 asylum seekers out of a record 5 000 applications last year, mostly from people from other Asian countries who had already been living in Japan.
The lack of social justice warriors denouncing Abe’s statement in outrage, has been striking, as leftists generally denounce similar statements as “racism” and “Islamophobia”.
