Send us your construction workers, your care givers, your store clerks — but for a limited time only.

That's the message from Japan, where the number of foreign workers, though still relatively small, has nearly doubled over the past eight years, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party is considering policies to speed up arrivals.

Just don't call it immigration. Japan will allow more unskilled workers to enter temporarily, as companies struggle to fill positions in a country with the lowest unemployment rate among the Group of Seven nations. Abe has made it clear that opening the nation to permanent immigration by unskilled labor isn't an option, reflecting a historic fear among the Japanese that foreign nationals would cause social unrest and erode national identity.