this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
109 points (100.0% liked)
World News
1148 readers
567 users here now
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The double standard is funny. If the US or UK did something like this, we’d (rightly) consider it xenophobic and condemn it. But with Japan, we’re like “Yes! You must secure the existence of your people and a future for Japanese children!”
https://www.gov.uk/english-language
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-e-chapter-2
They already do it, there is no double standard here.
In the US, there is no language test for a green card. There is for naturalization though.
The US didn't have an official language for a reason. Which is exactly why Trump said it's English in a 2025 executive order.
We are a nation of immigrants, something that Republicans want everyone to forget
It is about learning the language of the country if you'd like to stay with no restrictions. There's plenty of other crap in Japan you can call Xenophobic, but being at a minimum proficiency with the local language of a country you'd like to live in for an indeterminate amount of time is not it.
While this is generally a pretty reasonable ask in most situations, it seems like now is the worst possible time for them to make immigration more difficult. The coming demographic collapse is not a question of "if," but "how bad," at this point. Even if their birth rate proportionally climbs to the highest in the world magically over night, they are still looking at severe issues, and now many of those new births will still be dependants when it happens. They should really be incentivising immigration as hard as they can to take the edge off of what is coming at this point.
Sure, you are probably right about that. But I never argued against that, I just disagree that this a prime example of Japanese xenophobia.
Japan's in general is quite xenophobic, and I'm actually surprised it wasn't a requirement already.
The US doesn't have an official language, so it would be weird to enforce English (for example). US is also full of immigrant/colonizers, so xenophobia is a bit weird there -- it's pulling up the ladder.
I agree the double standard is funny, these were just some related thoughts.
I thought the same, but apparently Trump made it English this year with an executive order.
Because of course he fucking did.
The US doesn't have an official language, it also doesn't have an official national casserole.
English proficiency is required by law in a lot of places for various things; you'll find it in just about every subpart of FAR parts 61 and 65, for example.
Who is "we"?
OP for one
the US doesn't have an official language, so it'd technically be hard to enforce. It never had one because they knew there was always a chance that the language used could change at a given point.