Associated Press poll on immigration attitudes

An article in International Herald Tribune Online: Japanese evenly divided on immigrants reports about the poll conducted on the influence of immigrats in Japan;

"Forty-four percent of respondents said immigrants were a good influence on their country, but the same percentage called immigrants a bad influence,.....Seventy-four percent of respondents said they believed foreigners take the jobs that Japanese nationals do not want. Fifty-eight percent said it was better for the country to have a variety of people with different religions, while 37 percent said a population that shared the same customs and traditions was better."

"Authorities and media reports suggest that illegal aliens are behind a recent crime surge, but statistics show that foreigners commit crimes at about the same rate as Japanese."

Same kind of polls on immigration attitudes were conducted in the other world's leading industrial countries and they found that the citizens tend to have negative views of the influence of immigrant. --Immigrants worry leading nations(Columbia Daily Tribune)