Japan is offering $3,000 for a plane ticket home to some foreigners who have lost their jobs, a sign of just how bad the economic slump has gotten.
The program, which began yesterday, applies only to several hundred thousand South Americans of Japanese descent on special visas for factory work. The government's motivation appears to be three-fold: help the workers get home, ease pressure on the domestic labor market and potentially get thousands of people off the unemployment rolls.
"The program is to respond to a growing social problem,'' said Hiroshi Yamashita, an official at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, referring to joblessness, which has climbed to a three-year high of 4.4 per cent.
But there may not be too many takers for the 300,000 yen ($3,000) handout, plus 200,000 yen ($2,000) for each family member. The money comes with strings attached: The workers cannot return to Japan on the same kind of visa.
Given Japan's strict immigration laws, that means most won't be able to come back to work in Japan, where wages are higher than in Latin America.
"It is not necessarily a totally welcome deal,'' said Iwao Nishiyama, of the Association of Nikkei & Japanese Abroad, a government-backed organization that connects people of Japanese ancestry.
