Today’s Yahoo online has mentioned that Singaporean is not producing enough babies that justifies the main cause of the lack of manpower of the republic. Singaporean has around 5 millions including 1 million foreign workers.
For many years the manpower supply has been outsourced from north Johor, Malaysia which most of them were employed in an industrial sectors. In addition, most of raw materials were brought and supplied from Malaysia and the currency exchange, which Singapore is relatively better and the international seaport, are the republic’s concrete factors as a magnet that attracts foreign workers.
Yahoo online said that “Ministers and community leaders said allaying the fears of Singaporeans about foreign talent and bringing in new citizens is not something that can happen overnight. It is a long—term initiative and work-in-progress. In the final analysis, they said what is important is to assure Singaporeans that the immigration policy is for the benefit of the people, with Singaporeans always coming first.”
In contrast, Dr. Michael D. Barr who is an Australian historian specialising in the modern political history of Singapore and Malaysia quotes that “Lee Kuan Yew used his 1989 National Day Rally address to defend the Government's programme of encouraging Chinese immigration from Hong Kong on the basis that the birth rate of Singapore's Chinese is lower than that of the Indians and Malays. Lee also took the opportunity to assure Malays that they need not fear Hong Kong immigrants taking their jobs because the immigrants will all be high income earners.
The question is, what is the basis of Singaporean’s fear? fear of foreign talent or fear of racial imbalance?. But if Singaporean always comes first, why import Hong Kong immigrants?
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