I honestly think more countries should be encouraged to go this route. Do we really need more people on this planet? Shoudn't being more sustainable involve having fewer children, less consumption and having more productive work and more people in the automation industry?
The only way such a move would have the desired effect is if those countries also took up Japan's extremely restrictive migration policies. That is unlikely to happen in most lower-nativity (i.e. 'western' or 'westernised') countries.
> That is unlikely to happen in most lower-nativity (i.e. 'western' or 'westernised') countries.
That is already happening in most western nations.
Sweden shut down its immigration flood as one prominent example. It was a policy mistake that will not benefit their nation at all and they aggressively reversed course. Denmark has mostly followed Sweden in restricting its briefly loose immigration policies, because the results have been very poor.
Australia has implemented an extremely strict immigration system that locks almost everyone out unless you meet their merit requirements.
Canada has had a strict merit system in place for a long time. They have no plans to change that, because they know the damage it would do to their very nice welfare state.
Norway and Finland never relaxed their immigration policies in the first place.
Merkel's immigration flood exploded in her face with massive backlash politically. Germany was forced to turn back against that approach as it was politically untenable.
France has seen zero economic benefit from its loose immigration policies over the last two decades. When I say zero, I mean their immigrants have high unemployment and low education levels, the economy has not expanded at all, productivity is not expanding, GDP per capita has not expanded, and median wages have not expanded. They thought it would bolster their economy, it did the exact opposite, it's now a massive drag on each person in France that has to support the high immigrant unemployment rate.
Next will be the US, which will entirely turn against allowing mass low skill immigration. The US has dramatically expanded its welfare state over the last 30 and 50 years. The US now spends as much on its welfare state per capita as Canada. You can't combine increasingly shifting to a very expensive welfare state system with unfettered low skill immigration that can't pay its own way (and in fact does the opposite, it drowns the system). Bernie Sanders, to use one prominent example, understands how this combination has to work economically. It's why Finland only has 5 million people and isn't in a big hurry to get to 10 million (they could open the gates tomorrow and allow in millions of people; it's clear why they don't do it). You can have sustainable immigration in an expensive welfare state only if it pays for itself. All the best nations - highest standards of living - on earth follow this model for obvious reasons.
> Sweden shut down its immigration flood as one prominent example
Sweden had the third-highest migration count ever in 2018, with ~137.000 people migrating to the country. The second-highest was 2017 (~144.000), the highest 2016 (~163.000). Source: SCB (Statistiska Centralbyrån -> 'Central Bureau for Statistics') report [1]. No borders were closed, not for real. In 2018 Migrationsverket ('Migration authority', responsible for handling migration) expected over half a million people (~5% of the current population) to come to Sweden in the coming 5 years.
Half of the women giving birth in Sweden are now wholly or partly of foreign descent, 35% partly or wholly of non-western descent, this also according to a recent SCB report.
Do note that I was talking about 'migration', not about 'asylum seekers'. Also, when discussing migration (of any sort) to Sweden it is best to keep to verified sources - SCB being a prime example of such - as the discussion around this subject is so polarised that anything less than pristine data is suspect. Random spreadsheets don't count as verified data.
Australia's migration policies has "locked almost everyone out" for years (at least since the 1990s).
Net immigration numbers jump around year by year, but have been between 170K and 250K/year for over 10 years (with the exception of 2008/9 when they increased to 300K for one year)[1]
There's been no change in policy affecting these numbers.
There have been changes in the rules affecting asylum seekers arriving by boat. In terms of numbers these aren't really significant (during the most extreme years it was around 10,000).
Separately, Australia takes in ~13,000 refugees per year who do not arrive by boat.[2]
