Singapore hangs out jobs-vacant sign
By Megawati Wijaya
SINGAPORE - The government of this island state, seeking to keep the economy
globally competitive, is driving a shift in the country's population make-up.
This carries with it the political risk that locals will object to the influx
of white-collar foreign workers who in droves are taking up the island state's
highest-paying corporate jobs.
Now one out of every five residents in Singapore is a foreigner; six out of
every 10 new jobs created last year went to expatriates; and a record 14,000
people gave up their home passports to become Singaporeans in 2007. Those
figures are indicative of the official red carpet rolled out to lure highly
educated, ambitious and
preferably wealthy foreigners to work and take up permanent residence in
Singapore.
The government's bid to lure so-called "talent capital" is driven by its
new-economy ambitions, where innovation, cutting-edge research, niche marketing
and techno-capitalism are seen by officialdom as the key to long-term economic
and national success. Singapore has recently emerged near the top of the global
finance industry, with its sovereign wealth funds taking up strategic stakes in
some of the world's most prestigious, but recently financially unstable,
investment banks.
The country is also emerging as a regional hub for biotechnology, biomedical
and alternative-energy industries. Whether the nation of nearly 5 million
people will be able to sustain growth and profitability in those high-end
industries will come down to human resources. And the demographic trends are
not promising.
The local talent pool is constrained by a low fertility rate, which fell to as
low as 1.24 in 2004 before rising last year to 1.29 as the state urged couples
to have more children. That's well below the 2.1 replacement level and means
Singapore now faces a declining population growth rate in the absence of
immigration.
Minister of Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng has been charged since 2004 with
overseeing the national population committee, a state body tasked with both
formulating and implementing measures aimed at curbing the declining birth rate
and achieving a government-devised ideal population size and composition.
As those growth-promoting measures come up short, the government is now
redoubling its efforts to lure top-notch foreigners to fill the the corporate
corridors. The government first started to woo foreign talent in 1988, when it
initiated the offer of permanent residency to qualified Hong Kong candidates.
More than 60,000 were offered Singapore residency, but only about 5,000 took up
the offer as of the early 1990s.
However, foreign acceptance rates are now firmly on the upswing, judging by
recent immigration statistics. In 2006, new citizen acceptances were up to
13,200, nearly double the average annual figure of 7,000 over the previous four
years. A number of factors are believed to be driving the positive migratory
trend.
A survey by business consultants Mercer ranked Singapore this year as the city
with the best quality of life in Asia, higher than both high-earning Hong Kong
and Tokyo. The study considered factors that included the political and social
environment, medical and health systems, public services, transport and
housing.
Open-door history
Singapore was built on open immigration policies, said Gavin Jones, a scholar
at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Established as a British trading colony in 1819, the island territory's history
and fortunes have been closely intertwined with waves of migration.
A fast-expanding economy coupled with open-door immigration policies drew in
large numbers of immigrants, mostly laborers from China, India and the Malay
archipelago, in the 19th century. That meant the population quickly grew from a
few hundred in 1819 to half a million by a 1931 census.
After achieving independence from colonial rule, fertility rates hit 4.7 and in
response the government launched intensive campaigns to reduce the national
birthrate, including state-led family planning, induced abortions, voluntary
sterilization and other incentives and disincentives aimed at reducing
fertility.
Those sometimes heavy-handed measures were driven by government concerns about
how the tiny island state would survive after its separation from Malaysia in
1965 and with the loss of its traditional economic hinterland and natural
resources. Those slow-birth messages hit home, but by the 1980s the
trade-geared economy was rapidly expanding and the government changed tack by
encouraging Singaporeans to have more children to bolster the workforce.
Singaporeans today have a love-hate relationship with the new generation of
well-heeled immigrants. While many say they appreciate the vibrant,
cosmopolitan feel they bring to the local culture, at the same time they feel a
tinge of insecurity over their rice bowls.
A poll carried in a local newspaper last year revealed that nine out of 10
Singaporeans feared losing their jobs to overseas professionals and hence
opposed the government's efforts to attract more of them. Nearly 43% said in
the same poll that they believed the government was more concerned with the
welfare of foreigners than with that of its own people.
The National Trade Union Congress (NTUC), a labor movement, recently gave Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong feedback that local workers are increasingly worried
about new immigrants taking away their jobs, reducing their wages and generally
increasing workplace pressure on them. A hot debate also recently took place in
the local Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, where some advocated implementation of
pro-local policies.
The rapid foreign influx has been blamed for last year's soaring property
rental rates, which for private units rose 31.2% in the year to mid-2007. Local
property agents ERA and Propnex said that in the first quarter of 2007,
apartment prices for the island state's three most popular suburbs rose by more
than 10%.
Rents have recently stabilized, but average salaries haven't risen fast enough
for many to afford housing. One local renter said rising rentals means young
Singaporeans are now unable to afford their own places and live independent of
their families as a previous generation of upwardly mobile Singaporeans did.
"Those were the good old days," she said, referring to the not-too-distant
past.
Member of parliament Siew Kum Hong believes that Singaporeans still see
low-skilled immigrant workers as a greater threat than white-collar executives.
He argues that highly skilled foreigners are taking jobs that Singaporeans are
unable to fill, either because of inadequate skills or insufficient numbers.
On the other hand, low-skilled foreigners are willing to work for lower pay and
represent a more direct threat to a wider cross-section of Singaporeans. He
believes the greater resentment will build up against what he refers to as
"mid-level foreigners". "They will be seen as standing in the way of
lower-income Singaporeans who want to upgrade themselves and move up the salary
ladder," Siew said.
Immigration as politics
Opposition parties have used the immigration issue to attack the People's
Action Party-led government, which they strongly criticized at the general
election in 2006 for its inability to rein in the rising cost of living. The
PAP won those elections resoundingly, but the opposition continues to play up
the growing sense of vulnerability among the electorate.
Workers' Party chairperson Sylvia Lim has asked for "clarity and calmness" in
deciding immigration policies, while noting that Singapore's workers have been
hit by both the pressure of globalization and the government's liberal
immigration policies. She claimed that Singaporean employers often employ
foreigners in place of locals because they are simply cheaper to hire. "Lower
income Singaporeans cannot afford to have their wages depressed further," Lim
said.
The government rejects those opposition claims. Foreigners "are not here to
steal our jobs, but to help us enlarge the economic pie", Prime Minister Lee
said in a national day rally on Sunday, in celebration of the country's 43rd
year of independence. It marked a repeat of the same assurances he gave to
Singaporeans during a May Day rally this year.
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister's predecessor and father, said
last month that Singapore was previously an Asian society made up of ethnic
Chinese, Malays and Indians, but that now "we've got a real rainbow spread".
But some say the color analogy is blurred as high-end foreign talent moves in
and local labor looks to move abroad.
Official statistics estimate 150,000 Singaporeans, or 3.3% of the population,
now work or live abroad. In a 2006 survey, 53% of young Singaporeans said they
would consider emigration. Last month, Home Affairs Minister Wong confirmed
that an average of 1,000 Singaporeans had given up their citizenship to move
abroad every year over the last three years, with many of the departures coming
from the same high-end industries the government is bidding to attract foreign
talent.
How wide the government is willing to open the door to high-end immigration is
an open political question. Mentor Minister Lee recently said: "If we have more
immigrants than genuine Singaporeans, you become a different people. We must
have that core, at least 65% of people born and bred who understand this place,
who are part of this society and who know how we got here and why we must do
these things."
That issue came to light during the Beijing Olympics, where Singapore won its
first ever silver medal last Sunday. The moment of national pride was
compromised for some as the winning table tennis team of Li Jiawei, Wang Yuegu
and Feng Tianwei were are all China-born athletes recruited under Singapore's
Foreign Talent Sports Scheme.
In that nationalistic vein, opposition politician Lim questions the issue of
rootedness among new Singapore immigrants, many of whom she claims see the
country as merely a place to jumpstart their careers but not a final home
destination. Local resentment towards foreigners is also fueled by them not
having to take part in national service, said Jones at the Asia Research
Institute, referring to the compulsory two-year military and national defense
training that is otherwise compulsory for male Singaporeans and
second-generation permanent residents.
Despite those rising resentments, minister for national development Mah Bow Tan
projected last year that Singapore will need another 1.5 million people over
the next 50 years, boosting the population to 6.5 million, to attract the
investment needed to sustain and support current levels of economic growth.
Whether future waves of immigrants to Singapore will find its standard of
living as desirable as the new class of arrivals is debatable. Singapore
already ranks third in the world - after Macau and Monaco - in terms of
population density, with about 6,500 people per square kilometer. That ratio
will tighten if and when the Singapore squeezes an additional 1.5 million
people within the island's 707 square kilometers.
Says parliamentarian Siew: "To be honest, I am not sure if I would like to be
around to live in a Singapore that will be so crowded."
Megawati Wijaya is a Singapore-based journalist. She may be contacted at
megawati.wijaya@gmail.com
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