Singapore is a country open to foreigners as it is historically, an immigrant country. Many immigrants see Singapore as a country to immigrate to as it has a strategic geographical position, high reputation of transparency and efficiency as a business hub, allowing them more opportunities for a better job than that available in their home country. Singapore also maintains strict law and order, making safety a reason for immigrants to migrate to Singapore.To add on, Singapore is a multi- racial society. This means that that locals are generally tolerant to those of a different race, which means immigrants will less likely be subjected to harassment due to their race or religion. Lastly, Singapore has an excellent bilingual education system and has attractive scholarship to bring in foreign talents. This shows that Singapore is effective in incentivizing foreign talents and workers to settle down and integrate themselves into local society.
Immigrants are a huge source of economic growth or Singapore. Singapore has always relied on qualified immigrants to fill up roles in professions that Singaporeans do not forte in. Singaporean Businesses see integration of immigrants as a benefit for them, as it is more convenient for them to employ foreigners workers and talents who are competent for the job instead of taking time and money to train local citizens. This shows that businesses are open to foreigners which might give foreign workers and incentive to settle down in Singapore.
The Singapore Government is trying to integrate immigrants into a Singapore as immigrants not only to prevent Singaproe from experiencing social vulnerability and geopolitical irrelevance (E.Tan,2017) , but to also boost the economy, especially in new high-tech industries that the government was trying to build, as well as help to maintain Singapore's population growth. The population of permanent residents ( PRs ) have nearly doubled from 287,500 to 541,000 from 2000 – 2010. In contrast, the local population grew a modest amount (8%) from 2,985,900 to 3,230,700 from 2000 – 2010(E. Tan, 2018). The integration of immigrants counter the low fertility rate and ageing population that Singapore is currently experiencing, as well as replenish Singapore citizens that migrated to other countries.
This allows Singapore to maintain an ideal proportion of citizens by population augmentation,
with more working adults supporting both the younger and senior citizens. By doing so, the working population will be less stressed as there are more working adults that can support the increasing elderly population. This is why the government is actively trying to integrate immigrants into Singapore.
A case study had shown that About 7 out of 10 of the total population are residents, out of the 7, 6 are citizens and 1 is a PR. Among Singapore’s population of 5.61 million, there is an estimate of 0.52m PRs in Singapore (Population.sg, 2016). This shows that Many foreigners have migrated to Singapore, showing how effective Singapore is in integrating migrants into the local society.
Singapore has celebrated 50 years of successful immigration. However recently, many locals have a negative attitude towards the rising number of immigrants entering Singapore. This is because believe immigrants generate more competition for housing,schools and jobs, especially for professionals, managers, executives and Technicians (PMETs), and that immigrants are the cause for property prices to increase drastically and public spaces to overcrowd (E. Tan,2017).
Singaporean citizens do not harbour negative mindsets towards foreign workers and talents solely because of the increase in housing and the competition in schools and at work. Instead they have emotional and cultural reasons to why they are not open to the integration of immigrants. Singapore has been having the issue of an ageing population in the past decade.The proportions of residents aged 65 years and over increased from 8.5% in 2007 to 13.0% in 2017 ( Khalik.S, 2017). It did not help that Singapore Was already experiencing a decline in fertility rate.Singapore’s total fertility rate is 1.3, while the ideal rate of 2.1 for the population to replace itself (Straits Time, 2017).Because of this, there will be a decline in the Singaporean workforce as more senior citizens will retire and not enough young workers can replace them, causing Singapore's workforces’ productivity to decrease and subsequently causing Singapore's economic growth to stagnate. Also, with the steady increase of elderly people in Singapore, the government has to invest more money on social and healthcare services, reducing the amount of savings available for capital investment.
Even though the government has worked to support young families through marriage and parenthood policies, there is still a limit of how much the fertility rate can be pushed up, thus the government decided to invite more immigrants to settle down in Singapore (NUS, Straughan). Thus, the government released the Population White Paper (PWP) in January 2013 that projected Singapore's population as 6.9 million by 2030 via new PRs and Naturalized citizens. As stated in document C, locals were unsure if the huge influx of foreigners migrating to Singapore and thus reacted to the PWP with shock and anger. Many Singaporeans felt that the Singapore citizenship would become cheaper and the Singaporean identity would become diluted.(E. Tan,2017). This may be a hindrance that prevents Singapore from being effective in because integrating new citizens.
To prevent unhappiness from locals as well as continuing to integrate immigrants into the Singaporean Society, the People's Action Party (PAP) has tightened its conditions for hiring of foreigners and reduced the number of PRs and Nee citizenship statuses granted. The government has also stated that future immigration policies are to be tightly coupled with infrastructure development to maintain social harmony and proactive management of migrant integration (Global-is-Asian, 2017).
Singapore is quite tolerance towards immigrants and is quite effective in integrating immigrants. However, if Singapore is to be more effective in integration of foreign workers and talents, the people must bring about change in their mindset towards PRs and naturalizing citizens. Instead of “tolerance”, locals must learn to accept new citizens regardless of their race, language or religion. With more measures available to help integrate foreigners into Singapore as well as the change in mindsets of locals about immigrants, Singapore can be even more effective in integrating immigrants into our country and make them a part of the local society.
Reference List:
Eugene K B Tan. (29 September, 2017). Quality immigration will remain Singapore’s lifeblood. Singapore: TodayOnline
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/quality-immigration-will-remain-singapores-lifeblood
Eugene K B Tan.( 4 November, 2017). The evolution of Singapore citizenship. Singapore: TodayOnline
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/evolution-singapore-citizenship
Global-is-Asian. (23 June, 2017) Singapore’s lesson: Managing immigration to create a win-win situation
https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/singapore-s-lesson-managing-immigration-to-create-a-win-win-situation
Population.sg Team. (15 August, 2016). Singapore: A Super-Aged Country? Singapore: PopulationSg
https://www.population.sg/articles/singapore-a-superaged-country
Population.sg Team. (25 August, 2016). Who is in our population?
https://www.population.sg/articles/who-is-in-our-population
Salma Khalik.(6 December, 2017). Govt spending on healthcare to rise sharply in next 3-5 years: Heng Swee Keat. Singapore: StraitsTimes
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/govt-spending-on-healthcare-to-rise-sharply-in-next-3-5-years-heng-swee-keat
The Straits Times.(28 May, 2017). Singapore must manage inflow of new immigrants carefully: PM Lee Hsien Loong. Singapore: gov.sg
https://www.gov.sg/news/content/the-straits-times—singapore-must-manage-inflow-of-new-immigrants-carefully-pm-lee-hsien-loong