POPULATION-SINGAPORE: It is Either Babies or Immigrants

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE, Aug 24 2006 (IPS) - Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has warned that Singaporeans will either have to produce more babies or they would have to welcome more migrants to sustain economic growth and living standards.

Giving his National Day speech, Sunday, Lee pointed out that at current birth rates Singapore will need an extra 14,000 babies each year to ensure that there are enough people to sustain the economy.

A slew of policies introduced two years ago to boost birth rates, such as longer maternity leave and infant care subsidies, have had no visible effects, with this affluent city state’s fertility rate recording an all-time low, last year, of 1.24 per female.

The alternative, according to Lee, is for Singapore to open its door to immigrants who will put down their roots here. Already the government’s own figures, from last year’s General Household Survey, are showing that permanent residents have risen by 8.7 percent to 30,000 a year between 2000 and 2005. During the same period, the number of citizens (births) has gone up by 0.9 percent or 28,000 a year.

“If we want our economy to grow, if we want to be strong internationally, then we need a growing population,” argued Lee.

In recent years there have been an increasing number of professional Asians, especially from China, India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Hong Kong coming here to work and live. While many immigrants have taken up permanent residency (PR), few go on to become citizens.

Regional human resource consultant for a multinational company Kwan Chee Wei argues that many come to Singapore looking to advance their careers or for the lifestyle, and they are not interested in changing citizenship.

But many migrants IPS spoke with said Singapore’s refusal to allow dual citizenship is one of the major reasons for it, especially among PRs from developed countries.

However, increasing numbers of Indian and Chinese nationals have been taking up Singapore citizenship – to the point that it has created resentment among the local Chinese and Indian populations, who see immigrants as competition.

Lee tried to allay such fears pointing out that successful Asian migrants have created jobs for Singaporeans because of their entrepreneurship. “If you get the right foreigner here, he creates thousands of jobs for Singaporeans,” he claimed.

He pointed out that developed countries like the United States, Canada and Australia were headhunting Singapore talent, offering them scholarships and jobs to lure them. Many are taking up the option and Singapore needed to compete with those countries to retain talent here or attract it.

“Countries know, people know Singapore. They no longer think Singapore is somewhere in China. But, they don’t know Singapore is out there looking for talent,” said Lee. “We have to promote our immigration programme overseas.”

Singaporeans are well known for their reticent attitude and political apathy, but since Lee’s speech, letters to the editor pages of newspapers here have been flooded with comments -or more precisely complaints – about this new policy shift. As letter writer Lim Boon Hee said: “à be open to foreign talent, but do not forsake our own”. He asked whether “one more clever foreign talent means one place less for our local born sons in institutions of higher learning?”

Another writer Jimmy Ho Kwok suspects that employers will welcome foreign degree holders so they can pay them less than the threshold salaries offered to local graduates and diploma holders because they will be comparing the salaries with those in their developing countries. Unionist G. Muthukumar points to IT professionals from India and sales assistants from the Philippines and Burma as examples, while manpower minister Ng Eng Hen gave the example of how foreign technicians came here and helped set up the aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul industry while it took Singapore six years to set up the training courses to develop the next generation of technicians for this industry.

By midweek, the debate turned its focus to the economics of raising a family. “Welcoming migrants to our shores is not the solution to our declining birth rates,” argues Zeena Amir, a single sales executive in her late 20s. “What would be more beneficial to Singaporeans and also make more sense in the long-term is to work on controlling the increasing cost of living.”

Singapore has become a victim of its own success. Over the past two decades the island nation has been able to produce a large reservoir of highly educated young women who are now enjoying their careers and find child rearing not only an economic burden but also a liability in their career development.

“Children are no longer an asset but a liability,” argues young lawyer Shirley Tan. “Childcare and education are so expensive and I can’t afford to stay at home to look after them.”

As this tiny, ambitious nation of four million people attempts to build further on its economic success, the debate on whether Singaporeans should have more babies or more migrants is set to continue for sometime.

“Some view foreigners as competition to their livelihoods,” noted ruling party parliamentarian Alvin Chan. “We will have to explain to them that this is not really the case.”