I have been meaning to write a post about this for a long time, maybe in the Spring of 2009, or even earlier. But I had put off writing it, until it was totally off my mind.
But I read an article recently on the immigration policy on foreigners in Singapore.
The Singapore government wishes to hit the goal of 6.5 million population in the near future. And facing declining birth rate, they are looking at filling up the numbers with foreigners, giving them PR status or citizenship.
This creates an interesting problem and cycle. Both immigration policy and birth rate are, in my opinion, tightly related.
Let me illustrate the problem.
This is a highly competitive society. The basic requirement of most jobs seemed to require at least a degree certification. Which means that a core concern of most Singapore citizens would be to equip themselves with a decent degree. This is usually a 2~3 years effort. If we go by the typical university path that puts the male at around 26 years old and the female around 23 years old.
Next thing to look at would be the workplace. As mentioned, a highly competitive society. It is entirely normal and sometimes even felt reasonable to work long hours. Where does that leave time for dates? Or even family building?
And then we look at buying a house. Even government housing is expensive here. Based on a constant income (which many will say this is not accurate, but instead should be an incrementing amount), a couple should take an average of 10~20 yrs to pay for the house. If the both of them remain employed throughout those time that is.
Finally, the kids themselves. Cost of living is going higher and higher here, and education too. Parents have to take care of earning enough for themselves till retirement, and for the kids livelihood up to they get out to work.
And hence couples are both getting married later, giving birth later, and hestitant of having many kids, which results in of course, the declining birth rate.
So here we are, turning to foreigners to help in this declining birth rate. Let us add them to the equation.
Not all foreigners are here to do construction work or service industry. Many of them are highly qualified. Master degrees or perhaps even PhD. Perhaps we might not be looking at the jobs that require such level of qualification, but if they apply for the same job as us, likely we might lose out on an initial HR screening before an interview. And so its time to get a better certification. Maybe in the future, most job would require a minimal of master degree! That should add another 2~4 years to our age. Male 28~30, Female 25~27.
And sure, now we are competing against highly skilled foreigners. But then, to be fair, we should probably be skillful too. The working hours ought to remain the same long hours. Except sometimes, it get longer. Why? I would wager a guess that its precisely because of those foreigners. Most of them come over here to work alone. Their family is back in their homeland, and they might not have much friends here. They might be wanting to save up money too, so they would not mind working longer hours. Longer than us. And now, we feel pressured, so we had to work longer too.
They work here, and so they need a place to stay. That government housing we are eyeing would face even fiercer competition from the growing number of foreigners too. It would get more expensive, both private and public, especially public housing, since in Singapore, it is pegged to the market value, which due to demand is growing. And so both couples must work even harder, taking maybe even longer to complete the full payment. Did I mention that there is an initial down payment too? We probably would not want to buy a house until we are sure we can pay for even just that 10% initially.
And finally, to the kids. Now we need to save up more for the kids, as they would need a master, or maybe at their generation, a PhD. And of course, we need more money for ourselves too, to pay off the house, for retirement.
And the cycles continue.
Of course, this is just my thoughts. I am not even sure if these two issues are related. And I am definitely not saying that getting rid of foreigners would solve our problems. Remember, our ancestors were foreigners once too. If they had been rejected, we would not be here.
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