高い技術力を持つ外国人の才能、それを魅了するものは何なのか 気ままなリライト６６
With fear of being left behind without a sharp competitive edge in international technological competition, the Japanese government is giving an imploring look to high-salaried international brainworkers, begging for their intelligence or expertise as a clue to conjuring creative ideas any great Japanese brain had never come up with before. With the permission of limitless stay in Japan as favored guests, the government is expecting more and more brilliant, promising and rich immigrants to come to the country and turn into valuable assets to the national interests.
According to the open-armed policy with exclusive privileges shaped by the government on Friday, the enviable immigrants the government is hungering for come in two categories. The first category includes experts in doing an engineering or researching job worth an annual salary of more than 20 million yen after earning a master’s degree or building a ten-year career without the degree and business owners with an annual salary of more than 40 million yen. The second is educated elites with promising future ahead of them within five years after graduating from the colleges ranked better than 100 th in the two of three magazines of world college ranking published by the UK and China. As the preferential treatment for those who belong to the first category, only one-year stay in Japan as researchers or engineers or business owners entitles them to permanent resident status. For those who belong to the second category, the footprints as the graduates of the best and brightest colleges serve as empowerment to extend the legal period of stay from 90 days to two years for job hunting in Japan.
For international brain workers or intelligent job-seekers with the privilege of being welcomed as favored guests in other countries, the shortcut for permanent residency and the extension of the visa’s length seem less appealing. Whether they could realize a sense of well-being that comes with working in a Japanese company makes a big difference in the appeal of working in Japan. To make Japan a more attractive destination for highly-skilled immigrants and close to other countries like Singapore or the UK offering more lucrative preferential treatment, the Japanese corporate culture needs to be modified to bridge the gap between the working environment where immigrants are happy to invest their expertise and enthusiasm into what they want to do and the environment where they have to conform to the company's expectations. That will make Japan a more likely contender, especially among immigrants who prioritize mentally rewarding work. For immigrants who prioritize financial rewards or seek both mental and financial rewards, Japan may not be their preferred choice. That is because the market value of highly-skilled workers in Japan is often underestimated, with skilled workers in digital information technologies earning an annual average salary of only $40,000, which is only 50% of what their counterparts in the US earn and 70% of what they earn in Germany.
Even though the promise of opportunities for upward mobility is offered by the countries hungering for “God-given talents”, the final decision on where to go involves a lot of things to be weighed, such as soul-searching and the quality of life in the country each intellectual talented immigrant would choose to settle down. Before the deal is done, their brain circuitry would work on to make predictions about what would happen to them. How compatible is what they had learned before with what they would interact with? How would the educational environment shape their young family members’ brains and mold them in climbing up the academic ladder while adjusting their brains to a different language? How could their spouses clear the cultural barrier to land a job in the workplace where there is a different corporate culture with different work ethics? How could they mix with local residents good at mind-reading if they choose to settle down in Japan? Are all of these worth challenging not to miss out on a chance to be aware of why their talents are gifted and what their talents should be used for? The searching may go further to the inner space in the human cranium. Who exactly does the credit for what comes from their brains belong to when innovative ideas pop up by tapping into the unconscious mind, not from conscious awareness? Does it belong to someone they don't know in thier brains with the inner cosmos ?