I can’t help but find the Japanese reaction in their recent election to the wave of immigration they’re experiencing grimly humorous. Japan’s immigrant population is about 3%. Ours is over 15%—I think somewhat higher. Mention that whenever someone refers to U. S. reaction to immigrants as “xenophobic”. The Japanese are real xenophobes.
Just for the record my view of immigration is that I think we need more skilled legal immigrants who speak, read, and write English and far fewer unskilled or low-skilled illegal immigrants who don’t.
Noah had a nice piece on this. The party opposing immigration is also anti-vax and focused on global elites, IOW it’s just transplanting the current right wing focus. Anyway, there are 3 things of note here. First, in the most recent polls more people favor foreign workers than when the policy was initiated. Second, a lot of this is actually focused on the surge of foreign tourists. Polls show consistently increasing animosity over foreign tourists, not immigrants. Third, Japan is not a country of immigrants so it is not surprising this was an area ripe for exploitation by a political party. That lack of history probably means there are some real concerns so they need to plan well.
Steve