Issue of Foreigners in Singapore

In the last decade, Singapore had liberalized immigration policies thus a large influx of foreigners. There are several reasons to this decision.

Firstly, is to keep the citizen population size stable due to declining total fertility rate, longer life expectancy and migration. According to AsiaOne news (a Singapore Press Holding portal) dated 24th April 2012, the paper stated that Singapore’s ageing population will outstrip births by 2025 if fertility rates remain low. Immigration can help mitigate the rate at which our citizen population ages and declines. A paper released by The National Population and Talent Division highlighted that an immigration inflow of between 20,000 and 25,000 new citizens a year is needed to keep the citizen population size stable. The next reason is Singaporeans are reluctant to take up low-skill jobs that pay low wages, so foreign-born workers often fill these positions, for example construction workers. With the booming economy in Singapore besides construction workers, factory workers even hawkers are much needed to fill in many vacant jobs. All industry sectors are given a quota on number of foreign workers that they can employ. Lastly, given Singapore’s aspirations to become a major player in the globalized world, the nation’s main economic strategy is based on being home to highly skilled workforce. In addition to investing heavily in information technology and human capital to meet global competition, the government has focused on developing Singapore into the “talent capital” of the global economy. To reach this goal, Singapore has launched several programs to facilitate inflow of talent to Singapore. With the influx of foreigners, it has created some pros and cons to Singapore social and economy situation. Living harmoniously together with foreigners of different culture and tradition has created Singapore into a culturally vibrant “Renaissance city”. This uniqueness of Singapore has attracted attention from people around the world and attracted a lot of tourist into this country. This has boosted Singapore’s tourism industry and generating a lot of income to the retailers. However, the government of Singapore was facing widespread public disapproval of its liberal immigration policies. This is partly due to social integration which far from smooth particularly ubiquitous Mainland Chinese as per mentioned by our Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong on his recent National Day rally speech. Mainland Chinese are commonly seen as uncouth and prone to objectionable behaviours like littering, eating on buses as well as on the MRT, spitting and talking loudly on the phone. Similarly, South Asian construction workers and Filipino domestic workers have been blamed for the deterioration of public safety in Singapore. Another unhappiness of the citizen is due to the belief that immigrants compete with Singaporeans for jobs. They suspected that many companies prefer foreign talent than locals as they are cheaper, harder-driving and harder-striving than Singaporeans. With rising cost of houses and packed public transport, it has created another bout of disgruntled citizens. Many have written to forums or onlinecitizen.com blaming the government as they believe the root cause of all these problems is due to inflow of foreigners.
There are several suggestions I propose to deal with this issue. First of all, the government should set stringent immigration criteria such as only taking in foreigners that have a certain skills set or industry experience in which Singapore is lacking of.Next, slow down the rate of influx of foreign workers taken in to Singapore every year, only taking in a certain number necessary to sustain the population of Singapore. Also, instead of increasing the immigration inflow to ensure that our population size is stable, introduce better programs and incentives to encourage and increase the birth rate of Singaporeans.
To guard against rising ageing population, the government should set an age limit of foreign workers as older-aged foreign workers will only add burden to our ageing problem.
Besides that, the government should ensure that these foreign workers are transient workforce where they are subject to repatriation during periods of economic downturn. As for employment, the government should set a system whereby all employers should give priority to Singaporean. They are only allowed to employ foreigners after trying to employ Singaporeans or PRs after 3 months, but still unable to find any suitable or interested candidates. In conclusion, I believe that as Singapore progresses further and better, the inflow of foreigners will bring in more benefit than harm. The government will need to work on improving its’ policies on immigration, housing, public transport, social integration and employment so as to receive public approval on the influx of foreigners.