Do Foreign Residents Feel Wanted in Japan?

To add to the hot topic of immigration changes...

I just read this Asahi article on foreign resident sentiment.

I hadn't thought about my feeling of value as a foreign resident changing before reading this. When I first came to Japan and worked in a junior high school, what I had heard was true, you feel like what you'd imagine a famous person feels like. I was the only foreign employee at the school and everyone knew my name. Not everyone was excited to see me, but most students were, hah.

I had been struggling to find a job after the financial crisis and felt wanted as an English teacher here even though I have no special skills.

These days I live in a city with a good number of both long term foreign residents and students. I feel extremely thankful that there is a non profit started by the city to help foreign residents integrate with the locals. Because of that it seems like local people are very welcoming despite all the changes at a national level.

The account of being unable to speak Japanese and struggling during the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake also made me thankful to be part of a group that was created to support disaster preparedness for foreign residents. I was happy to read an article about a group of Vietnamese people who helped their neighbor escape a collapsed house in the recent Kumamoto earthquake. There is a little good news about foreigners in Japan from time to time.

The linked article brings up a good question. Are foreign residents in Japan just seen as a liability when they aren't helping by cutting expenses for Japanese businesses?

In my country there are foreign workers who are just seen as cheap labor too. But I don't want Japan to become as blatantly rasist as my country.

This change doesn't seem sustainable for an already struggling economy. I'm guessing a lot of the foreign residents will choose to leave or be forced to by financial circumstances.