16297
Reading a [Japan Times
column](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/06/04/issues/humanize-dry-
debate-immigration/), I see:

> But we still have no word for an immigrant as an individual person, such as
> iminsha, with its own honorific sha — in the same vein as ijūsha (migrant),
> rōdōsha (laborer), teijūsha (settler, usually a Nikkei South American),
> zairyūsha (temporary resident), eijūsha (permanent resident) and even (in a
> few government documents) kikasha (naturalized citizen).

Does the above reasoning make sense?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-06-04T23:36:11.763
16294
2014-06-06T14:32:07.477
5509
question
suffixes
Why no 移民者【いみんしゃ】?
The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Japanese (BCCWJ,
<http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon>) draws on published sources such as
literature, newspapers, etc., as recent as 2005. The numbers for the words in
question are

> 移民者{いみんしゃ} iminsha 8 results  
>  移住者{いじゅうしゃ} ijūsha 181 results  
>  労働者{ろうどうしゃ} rōdōsha 6982 results  
>  定住者{ていじゅうしゃ} teijūsha 19 results  
>  在留者{ざいりゅうしゃ} zairyūsha 25 results  
>  永住者{えいじゅうしゃ} eijūsha 91 results  
>  帰化者{きかしゃ} kikasha 1 result

The only result for 移民者 in online J-J dictionaries (accessible via
<http://www.kotobank.jp>) is the [title for the Swedish film "The
emigrants"](http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A7%BB%E6%B0%91%E8%80%85%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1?dic=daijisenplus&oid=00592660)
移民者たち.

That said, 移住者, 定住者, 在留者 and 帰化者 are not in any of the dictionaries either.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this. 移民者 is certainly very, very
uncommon, but not unthinkable. That said, 帰化者 seems to be even less frequently
used.

I see several problems with the argument here.

  * One problem might be that 移民 literally means the moving/migrating of a person, which makes 移民者 look like a little pleonasm, so that 移民者 might not exist because it sounds silly, not because the Japanese don't accept the concept of immigration.

  * Another problem is that all the other nouns (without 者) can used to form a verb with する, e.g. 移住する, 永住する, etc., which lends itself very well to form, say, 永住者 meaning "somebody who does 永住". Only 移民 doesn't have the corresponding 移民する.

  * Another thing I have to take issue with is describing the word/suffix 者 as "honorific". I don't think anything justifies this description, especially since "honorific" means something very specific when talking about Japanese, and that is suffices like さん, 様, 殿, etc., usually used for _addressing_ someone (maybe the equivalent being Mr., Ms., etc.), not for _describing_ someone.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-06-05T00:47:45.017
16297
2014-06-05T00:47:45.017
1628
16294
answer
I must be missing something obvious, but the article doesn't make sense to me

As far as I know, an immigrant as an individual person **is** _ijūsha_. The
Toronto Japanese Community Association refers to itself as 新移住者協会, for
instance (<http://torontonjca.com/>). The term _imin_ , to my understanding,
generally refers to migration or immigration itself, rather than the people.
Adding _-sha_ would be understood by most people though, I'd think, in the
same way that _immigrationer_ could probably be understood by English
speakers.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-06-06T14:32:07.477
16311
2014-06-06T14:32:07.477
5522
16294
answer