The government has adopted a set of plans to operate the new system of accepting blue-collar foreign workers under the amended immigration control law enacted in the last Diet session, and to provide various support for the workers coming from overseas, such as language assistance. The system, to be introduced in April, marks a major turnaround in the nation's immigration policy that had supposedly accepted foreign workers only in jobs requiring highly professional skills (though large numbers of "technical training interns" have in fact helped fill the manpower shortage in simple labor). The anticipated number of blue-collar workers coming to Japan — up to 345,000 in the first five years, according to the government's estimate — will require various responses to smoothly accept them in society. The measures spelled out in the plans need to be steadily and effectively implemented.

The measures range from help in daily life and employment issues, to social security and Japanese-language education. The plans call on prefectures, designated major cities as well as other municipalities that have large non-Japanese population to establish consultation centers that will provide administrative information, respond to inquiries and offer advice in multiple languages. Disaster-related information and response to emergency calls to police should be made multilingual, according to the plans, which also call for beefing up Japanese-language education for the workers. Such services are indeed essential if the workers from abroad are to be accepted as "members of society." How local governments will promptly implement the measures by securing the manpower and budget, however, remains an open question, although the national government plans to subsidize such efforts by the roughly 100 prefectures and municipalities being called upon to act.

Past experience raises a question mark on how fast they can act. Multilingual administrative information and Japanese-language education support were also featured in the plan to promote "multicultural coexistence" compiled by the national government in 2006, which required prefectural and municipal governments to devise their own plans and guidelines. While most prefectural and major city governments had compiled their plans as of last April, only about 70 percent of smaller cities had done so, while among towns and villages the rate was a meager 10 to 20 percent.