Political Context

Before we begin talking about the substance of this debate, it is probably instructive to ask a very fundamental question: why did the Prime Minister choose to highlight this immigration issue during this National Day Rally?

The first thought that came to the KTM was that it makes no sense. Why does the Garmen even need to tell Singaporeans that they are going to be granting PRs and citizenships more freely (or so the tone of the message seemed to imply). After all, Minister Wong already has the authority to grant PR and citizenship to foreign nationals without having to consult Parliament. Suppose the Garmen just went about dishing out PRs/citizenships more liberally than before, would the public have been the wiser? The KTM thinks not.

Perhaps in 5 years, the Opposition make decide to dig up figures on how the Garmen has been letting more and more foreigners in to compete with them and steal away their ricebowls in an attempt to work them up into a frenzy, the Garmen could probably exprain that away as a natural consequence of globalization, yada yada and somehow side-step the issue for an election (at least for the next election). Actually, if the Garmen is right that being more pro-immigration is the panacea to the economic challenges facing our nation, our economy should be humming along in 5 years and people are happy and the Garmen needs not exprain anything. Economic growth is the opiate that will keep people from complaining during the Elections. In the worst case, perhaps throw in a big angbao called dunno what Progress Package and people will be so busy trying to figure out what to buy at the next Great Singapore Sale to complain too much.

But I digress, the point here is that the "Foreign Talent" policy is a political liability and it doesn't help the ruling party win votes. Hence, this has to be a calculated move by the Garmen. The KTM is quite certain that after the Gomez and Mr Brown affairs, the Garmen has learnt that it doesn't pay to upset the electorate.

There is a serious gamble that the Garmen is taking. Suppose in 5 years, the economy tanks notwithstanding our pro-immigration policy, it is certain to take a beating at the next Election. Under such circumstances, the KTM is therefore quite convinced that the Garmen knows what it is doing --- or even if it doesn't really, it is convinced that the odds are in its favour.

Crux of the Issue: Jobs and Lack of Guarantees

For those who have been following the nonsense that the KTM has been spouting, it probably doesn't come as a surprise that the KTM is pro-free-market and anti-protectism, since the KTM is also anti-minimum-wage and anti-anti-labour-discrimination-laws. Basically, the KTM is a proponent of flexible labour markets free of Garmen intervention. :-)

If we distill the problem down to the crux of the issue, the problem is all about JOBS, and not just any job, it is about Singaporeans wanting an assurance that they will have jobs that pays them enough (what's "enough" is debatable and is left for another time). The other major bugbear is educational opportunities --- which if we dig deeper is also about jobs. Suppose the Garmen can guarantee Singaporeans jobs that will pay a million bucks a year without them having to go to college, I'm sure you will find a queue forming from Changi to Tuas.

Seriously, if the Garmen can guarantee every Singaporean a job that pays well, who will cares about what foreign talent or immigration? Singaporeans can then all afford to be really sweet to the aliens (that's the technical term for foreigners lah. These are not the little green men from Mars hor.) who comes to our shores. What does this tell us? Nothing much that we don't already know really -- that we're all human and selfish at heart.

So what's the problem? The problem is that under the current economic environment, the Garmen has found it increasingly difficult to create jobs for a sector of the population -- and we're talking about the middle-aged uncles and aunties who are ex-production operators (and some white-collared types who are past their prime). Of course it doesn't help that they are also the ones who have school-going children and many mouths to feed. This is the problem that economists call structural unemployment. It's not that there are no jobs, but that the people who have no jobs can't quite do the jobs that are available.

On Job Creation and Protectism

The problem with protectism is that IT DOES NOT CREATE jobs. If the KTM is wrong, perhaps someone can explain to the KTM how protectism creates jobs?? The need for job creation is strong 'cos we're bleeding jobs to China and India.

Actually, protectism already exists in Singapore. MOM supposedly imposes some local-to-foreign worker ratios for many industries and employers often have to pay an additional levy for foreign workers. Therefore, if a Singaporean competes with a foreign, the odds are stacked in favour of the Singaporean (sans reservist, which is a pet peeve that the KTM has no good answer). Mostly, Singaporeans lose out because the foreigners are willing to accept singnificantly lower pay than them (even after you work in the foreign levy). How far can the Garmen go without causing the companies to go out of business?

What else do the people expect the Garmen to do? To dictate that companies can only hire Singaporeans will only serve to further increase costs and hurt our competitiveness. If businesses fail, more jobs will be lost. Can people understand this simple logic? Even in the extreme case where you have a foreign company that comes here to set up shop that hires only foreigners, there are benefits to the country: the company must pay taxes to our Garmen and these foreign fellas have to spend money to keep themselves alive what -- they may have to eat at the hawker centres or take our buses. Whatever. The alternative is that this company sets up shop in Shenzhen and we get squat.

There's this rhetoric about training our own people -- but hor, it seems that what's going on is that we've reached some saturation limit. Our people really aren't getting smarter and increasing the enrolment isn't going to help. Someone please go talk to the lecturers about the falling quality of students can? Increasing the university enrolment will lead to falling standards and actually devalue the value of the local degrees. This is a sad reality. Also, the benefit of direct imports is that we can have the people we need in a hurry (without having to wait that 4 or 5 years to train them) and when these folks are no longer needed, the country doesn't have to be responsible for them (i.e. we can theoretically terminate their employment passes/work permits and send them home).

Being Proud of our Past Successes but Mindful of our Size (and Limitations)

One justification for relaxing immigration controls is that we are unable to keep our local talent. The KTM has done some reading and spoke to some people about this issue. He has come to a conclusion that this is a FACT, and it's nothing like what some of the small-minded blame-the-Garmen-anti-establishment types like to make it out to be. Many Singaporeans leave not because they are discontent with the Garmen, but simply because Singapore is too small and some people just prefer life whether they have more space, where perhaps they can find the kinds of jobs that they like to do.

Many Singaporeans have done us proud -- our people have won awards at International Competitions in Robo-World Cups, culinary competitions and our soldiers routinely top the military colleges and courses that they are sent for abroad. This is all very good and it reminds us about we are where we are for good reason. That said, it is good for us to remember how small we are and remain humble.

It is absolutely untrue that Singaporean companies are hopeless and needs the Garmen to help them succeed. Those that clamour for Garmen assistances are indeed the hopeless ones.

In addition to Creative Technologies, we do have other Singaporean companies that are expanding in the region and even globally. While in Raffles City, Shanghai, the KTM found Mei Zhen Xiang (Bak Kwa Company) and BreadTalk -- and it was quite a surprise to the KTM that prices aren't any lower than what we have here in Singapore! Well, it turns out that because China has a market of 1.2 billion people, even if each Chinese buys only one piece of bak kwa and one bun in their lifetimes, both companies will be hugely profitable. This is the reality of life.

Two other cool companies that the KTM has heard about are Hyflux and Osim. Hyflux is supposedly selling desalination technology all over the world and Osim recently acquired Brookstone, a really cool gadget shop in the US. Why are these companies expanding abroad? 'cos again, Singapore is too small. It is because of our successes that our people are venturing abroad, thereby creating a vacuum locally that needs filling.

Foreign Talent vs Local Talent

Some people have been complaining that the Garmen favours foreign talent over local talent. That's completely bogus in the KTM's opinion. First of all, non-citizens are precluded from the top jobs within the mainstream public service for national security reasons. As for the GLCs, most of the management are made up of Singaporeans. Occasionally we do have some ang mo CEOs for some semblance of meritocracy, but fellas who dun make it usually get axed in double quick time, so it's quite fair in the KTM's opinion. :-)

Then there are complaints that Singaporeans get passed over for promotion in some MNCs. To this, the KTM can only say "Alamak, what do you expect otherwise?" Is it that much of surprise that ang moh companies like to have ang mohs in charge and Japanese companies like to put Japanese in charge?

Suppose (this is wishful thinking and wishful thinking doesn't cost the KTM a cent :-)), the KTM also sets up a chain of KT stalls and expands all over the region and to the US, do you think that the KTM is more likely to hire a Singaporean to run his regional office in Shanghai or some ang moh expat? Of course he'd prefer to hire some Singaporean lah. Scully the ang moh cannot understand him and instead of "hiam", the kantang man thinks "hum" and doesn't put "hum" in the CKT, then how??

This is what the KTM thinks the reality of life and we better start getting used to it: the MNCs will always prefer to hire their own citizens to run the show. Wait until we got a lot of our Singaporean MNCs then perhaps more of the top jobs will go to Singaporeans.

There's also this very strange observation that the KTM makes from talking to some random people who work for MNCs. When asked about this foreign talent issue, many of the people that the KTM talks to always proclaim that they prefer ang moh bosses to local bosses. Why? Because Singaporean middle managers (and this is the PRIVATE sector hor) tend to be buay zai micro-managers. The KTM must say that this statement has no factual basis whatsoever. The KTM is simply regurgitating what he heard from the people he has spoken to. The KTM has never worked for an MNC and so is in no position to make such an observation (Anyone knows of an MNC that wants to hire a kway teow man?? :-)).

Conclusion

There are many (perhaps too many) facets in this issue of foreign talent and immigration. Closing up the country and clamping down on the labour laws is probably the worse possible approach to take under the present economic environment. The KTM actually applauds the Garmen for having the moral courage to stomach the political flak for this less-than-popular stance.

Nevertheless, the concerns and insecurities of the people are real and cannot (and should not) be ignored. It is the KTM's belief that the key is to focus on controlling costs and ensuring access to opportunities.

Yesterday, there was a report in the press where the son of a construction worker who hails from China was granted not only citizenship, but an SAF scholarship (!). What is interesting is not so much the new precedent that has been set, but what our new citizens tend to say when asked why they decided to take up citizenship. In general, they don't talk about dunno what promises of a better life or what Swiss-standard of living. They talk about opportunities. They will usually say that they have opportunities here that did not exist where they came from.

The KTM is tempted to believe them. What seems to be the problem with Singapore is that we are a victim of our own successes. The problem is that the existence of scholarships in Singapore has created an illusion that academic success is the only path to "success" in life -- not to mention the fact that in the years past, most graduates are able to find decent jobs and dun have to end up working as call centre operators. Things are a little different today since graduates are a dime a dozen (and we can get graduates on the cheap from China and India). Life is hard -- but that's the way it's meant to be. :-)

Coincidentally, the Forbes list of the rich dudes in Singapore was also published this last weekend. People who are very free, can go and count the number of scholars and people with college degrees on that list. :-)