Oh no! There Goes Tokyo! Go, go, immigration...

The Asahi Shimbun reports: "Japan expects 820,000 skilled foreign workers over next 5 years." An excerpt:

    Japan expects to take in 820,000 skilled workers from overseas over the coming five years, sharply expanding previous projections to address growing labor shortages, sources said.

    The figure is more than twice that for the five-year period through 2024 set in 2019 when the “specified skilled worker” visa was introduced.

    The government plan, presented March 18 to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for endorsement, adds four new sectors to the list of industry fields where visa holders can work.

    The Kishida Cabinet is expected to approve the plan before the start of the new fiscal year on April 1, the sources said.

    The visa was introduced in 2019 under a program to accept foreign workers in selected industries where efforts to improve productivity and secure a domestic work force do not alleviate labor shortages.

    At the time, the government estimated that a maximum of 345,150 foreign workers would arrive in Japan over five years through 2024 with the new status of residence.

    The latest projection for five years through 2029 represents a 2.4-fold increase from the previous plan.

Amazing how governments wanting to sell some distasteful program to the public always severely under estimate the impact. This will be followed by an increase in crime. Even when I was there in the late 1980s and foreign labor was mostly limited to construction and prostitution, those foreign workers were responsible for most of the violent crime.