Japanese paying immigrant workers to go home and never come back

SHOOT: This may seem harmless, or even sensible, but chronic economic conditions will exacerbate a growing sense of tribalism (which you might want to refer to as racism, exclusivism or eliticism) all around the world. Us vs Them.

clipped from finance.yahoo.com Officials in Hamamatsu, an industrial town in central Japan, describe the plan to encourage Latin American guest workers, who are descendants of Japanese emigrants, to return home. “I tell my husband that we should take the money and go back,” she said, her eyes teary. “We can’t afford to stay here much longer.” Japan’s offer, extended to hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Latin American immigrants, is part of a new drive to encourage them to leave this recession-racked country. So far, at least 100 workers and their families have agreed to leave, Japanese officials said. “They put up with us as long as they needed the labor,” said Wellington Shibuya, who came six years ago and lost his job at a stove factory in October. “But now that the economy is bad, they throw us a bit of cash and say goodbye.” “We worked hard; we tried to fit in. Yet they’re so quick to kick us out,” he said. “I’m happy to leave a country like this.”