Sobering

(Photo by Franck Robichon for The New York Times. From slideshow here.)

The government will pay thousands of dollars to fly Mrs. Yamaoka; her husband, who is a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent; and their family back to Brazil. But in exchange, Mrs. Yamaoka and her husband must agree never to seek to work in Japan again.

... 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.

This is the scariest bit:

“We should stop letting unskilled laborers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese,” [said Jiro Kawasaki, a former health minister and senior lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party]. “I do not think that Japan should ever become a multiethnic society.”

Full story from NYT here.