You Have An Ageing And Shrinking Population: What Do You Do?

If your the Japanese government not a damn thing. That's what one does with an ageing demographic and negative population growth. Experts point out that easing restrictions on immigration would over time correct the problem. Instead you (the government) make it nearly impossible for that to occur. So, as the ship sinks and the politicians wring their hands in despair Japan continues on its economic downward spiral.

Maria Fransiska, a young, hard-working nurse from Indonesia, is just the kind of worker Japan would seem to need to replenish its aging work force.
But Ms. Fransiska, 26, is having to fight to stay. To extend her three-year stint at a hospital outside Tokyo, she must pass a standardized nursing exam administered in Japanese, a test so difficult that only 3 of the 600 nurses brought here from Indonesia and the Philippines since 2007 have passed.

But there’s still resistance,” said Yukiyoshi Shintani, chairman of the Aoikai Group, the medical services company that is sponsoring Ms. Fransiska and three other nurses to work at a hospital outside Tokyo. “The exam,” he said, “is to make sure the foreigners will fail.”

Despite facing an imminent labor shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. In fact, as Ms. Fransiska and many others have discovered, the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups — in the case of Ms. Fransiska, a local nursing association afraid that an influx of foreign nurses would lower industry salaries.

What country needs an educated skilled work force to replace the large number of Baby Boomer's about to retire? Obviously not Japan.