I wasn't clear about what I meant. I'll accept your assertion that it's easy to get a work visa in Japan. It's certainly easy for Japanese expats to work in the USA for subsidiaries of Japanese companies. There are special visas for that.
What I meant by immigration is the whole totality of how an immigrant would become part of Japanese society. My understanding is that's more difficult in Japan than here in the USA.
E.g. this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_Japanese makes the perhaps unsubstantiated claim that "Probably because of the difficulty in gaining citizenship and because of cultural difference, foreign-born Japanese people account for a very small percentage of the population in Japan."
Contrast with USA where, as Butch in Pulp Fiction puts it: "I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit." And, by the time you get to children of immigrants, national origin "don't mean shit" either. Except, doubtlessly, to a small minority of WASPs who trace their ancestry to the Mayflower.
Hardly anyone will emigrate to homogenous Japan if it's really hard to be accepted by the natives. I was interested in whether homogenous Iceland was similar.
What I meant by immigration is the whole totality of how an immigrant would become part of Japanese society. My understanding is that's more difficult in Japan than here in the USA.
E.g. this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_Japanese makes the perhaps unsubstantiated claim that "Probably because of the difficulty in gaining citizenship and because of cultural difference, foreign-born Japanese people account for a very small percentage of the population in Japan."
Contrast with USA where, as Butch in Pulp Fiction puts it: "I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit." And, by the time you get to children of immigrants, national origin "don't mean shit" either. Except, doubtlessly, to a small minority of WASPs who trace their ancestry to the Mayflower.
Hardly anyone will emigrate to homogenous Japan if it's really hard to be accepted by the natives. I was interested in whether homogenous Iceland was similar.