Establish an agency for foreigners, appoint a minister of foreigners' affairs and take steps in the next three years to create a society more receptive to foreign workers, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) said in a report released Wednesday.
Japan's population is slated to decrease from 2006, and sectors such as nursing and agriculture cannot be maintained without foreign help, the nation's most powerful business lobby said.
"Japan right now is in no way prepared to open its doors to a foreign workforce," largely due to infighting and sectionalism within the government, Nippon Keidanren's managing director, Hiroshi Tachibana, told reporters.
The report says a lack of comprehensive Japanese language training for foreign workers' children, inadequate health insurance coverage, and the absence of a "foreigners employment law" breeds crime and abuse.
The report is a followup to a preliminary proposal made in November. The federation, which forecasts a labor shortage of 6.1 million in 10 years, has been pushing the government to actively open its doors to foreign workers since the beginning of 2003.