This is akin to grouping Mexico with other Latin American countries when discussing American immigration. The situation is fundamentally on a country by country basis, rather than geographical proximity.
What struck out to me is mentioning Thailand. There is literally 9x Vietnamese immigrants in Japan than Thai. Even Nepal is twice as many Thai. Then there’s Brazil. Meanwhile, Taiwan, despite having the proximity and cultural/social/political ties to Japan (I was at a Japanese island where I can literally see Taiwan’s mountain) is only the 10th. It’s not a matter of difference in socioeconomic development either. The top two immigrant countries to Japan is Korea and China.
Proximity is a weak correlation. The commonality here is that these are Asian countries.
> working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew
That's not immigration, those are guest workers.
Immigrants with a certain heritage (MENAPT) are on average unqualified and are a burden on the host social system their whole life[1]. It's certainly what I can witness in Germany as well, however we actively seek to suppress any studies that could show this. Up until 2017 we had at least criminal statistics that showed that it's also a broader problem regarding crime[2], but we axed these statistics of course.
[1]: The Economist: Why have Danes turned against immigration? (https://archive.ph/TSsQa)
[2]: German Police Crime Statistics 2017 (https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...)
In particular, in many countries refugees and asylum seeker can't do general work or have special conditions attached to it, so it's another whole can of worm.
[0] https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/refugees-and-migrants-fre...
This is certainly an important distinction, however refugees are a small minority of people coming here. Most come from countries that are classified safe* and most even pass several safe countries to come here, which makes them migrants by default.
*: However, they could be in danger because of their religion, sexuality, race. It happens, but it is rare.
Basically it's the classic have your cake and eat it too.
A nitpick:
> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce.
They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc.
> Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable
It usually doesn't happen: general property value drops down, but as the population decreases the cities are restructured, and some portions of the land are completely abandonned. As a result, the amount of actually valuable property that are near active businesses in easy to live areas doesn't change much (or even decreases, as there's fewer working people)