A Japanese Unemployment Strategy

Japan is offering $3000 plane tickets to unemployed foreign workers to return home. The offer only applies to several hundred thousand factory-working South Africans of Japanese descent in the country on special visas. The logic:

The government's motivation appears to be three-fold: help the workers get home, ease pressure on the domestic labour market and potentially get thousands of people off the unemployment roll, which stands at 4.4 per cent and has resulted in mass demonstrations, like the one pictured right.

Of course, this generosity comes with strings; those accepting the offer can never return to Japan with a special visa.