Since the economic downturn, every country is facing high umemployment rate. Japanese government released one policy which gives money to guest workers, who stay in Japan to fill the three-k jobs(kitsui, kitanai, kiken — hard, dirty and dangerous) shortages. The workers who take the money from the Japanese government should never come back as a guest worker, unless they can get professional working visa or tourist visa. Many of the guest workers have worked in Japan for more than 10 years, they really don't know what they can do in their home country. Many people criticize the plan as a shortsighted policy, because once the economic upturn happans, then the Japan would need the foreign workers to fill the worker shortage in the Manufacturing Industry. Some experts even say: "don't forget that the economic boom that we had is largely contributed by those who works with a very low pay jobs foreigners.

This is an article from nytimes...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigrant.html?pagewanted=1

My personal perspective...

If this were a policy that happens in Taiwan, as a citizen of the country I would definately supported it!!! Since there are a lot of local people cannot find the jobs, then why do we have to give the opportunities to those from other countries? I believe not only the Japanese government would do so, other countreis would take the similar actions as well. Three-K jobs requires no skills (or I should say...very low skills), anyone can have the job if they wanted. Since now we all in the economic downturn, I believe those who are unemployed would definately want have a job, even it's a job is hard, dirty and dangerous. I know it's kind of inhuman, but that's reality...so why don't we just to improve our professional skills and then no one can ask us to go home or lay us off...

a related article from nytimes:

As jobs Die, Europe's Migrants Head for Home
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world/europe/25migrants.html?ref=world

if you guys have anything want to say, please don't hesitate to write your words down. You can write chinese or english :)