Major League Baseball International and Japanese players

What is the process by which Japanese players get to the US as compared to the Latin American players?

Latin players are generally scouted and signed from amateur leagues, or enrolled in a baseball academy sponsored by a Major League team. After some rudimentary English and baseball lessons, promising players are signed to a minor league contract.

Because of the presence of a strong league structure in Japan, it's not so easy for Major League teams to sign Japanese players.

Players not under contract (high school, college, and amateur players) may be approached by Major League teams and go over to play. This also includes professional players given a "free contract"; in other words, players given their outright release.

Players who have signed with professional Japanese teams have two options. They can sign with a Major League team after attaining free agency, or they can request to be put through the posting system.

There is also the possibility of an outright trade between a Japanese team and a Major League team, but players on both sides have the right to veto international trades.

What is Japan going to do, since their attendance has dropped?

Well, as Westbay-san has mentioned in this thread, Japanese baseball is not quite in the decline that many would like to believe. Japan is in a recession, and this is impacting many sports; sumo, for example. Japanese baseball has shown the ability to act before, so if this sense of crisis continues for too long, I imagine they'll do something to level the playing field between the Giants and the other teams.

Many of their top baseball players have left and come to the US?

A few have. Many have also remained. Some want to cross over. Others want to remain. For every Ishii that wants to come over, there's a Kuroki who'd rather stay in Japan.

Why are they immediate free agents where as US players are not?

I'm not sure I understand this question. Japanese players don't get free agency in Japan until they have played 9 years (10 years for amateur players who name their team at the draft). Major League Baseball recognizes the Japanese teams right to reserve their players, and thus must recognize Japanese players' free agency.

If you are asking why Japanese players in the MLB don't have to put in the same service time as most MLB players, the answer to that lies in the contract. Players drafted by MLB sign a standard contract that gives them arbitration after three years, and free agency after six. A Japanese player who just waited 9 years to get free agency is not going to put himself back into harness. So they (and their agents) work out different contracts with their teams. These contracts are for a set amount of money for a set number of years service, at the end of which the player is once again a free agent.

In Japan, foriegn labor does not go into the draft but instead there is the posting system? Why?

The posting system was created so that teams with players who planned on signing with an American team upon attaining free agency could be recompensated. As in America, a Japanese team that loses a player to another team via free agency is recompensated, either with money equal to the amount of the lost player's salary and and a player to be named later, or money equal to 150% of the lost player's salary. But if a player goes to an American team, the former team gets nothing. To avoid this, and to avoid messy cross-overs like Nomo and Irabu's, the posting system was formed. Now a team can choose to post a player willing to go over, and thus receive some sort of compensation.

How is that related to international labor laws?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. In general, athletes who come to the U.S. do so using the P-1 (and occasionally, the O-1) visa. It is a non-immigrant visa enabling them to come to the U.S. for the purpose of training and/or participation in sporting events. Some athletes later apply for permament residence (Shigetoshi Hasegawa and Kazuhiro Sasaki, for example).

It is news to me that some Japanese players in MLB might be pursuing green cards (US residency). What would happen if they were injured and couldn't play? How would they support themselves? Shouldn't these guys (as opposed to the temporary residents on P-1 visas) be learning strong English skills and otherwise burrowing into US culture? They would be obvious candidates for scouts, but not coaches or minor/major league managers without English fluency.

Where did you find this information governing what constitutes Japanese free agency and their treatment afterwards? I really need this stuff.

It's all here on this site. Read around. Try a Google search limited to "site:japanesebaseball.com" (without the quotes).