Singapore to slow down migrant intake

SINGAPORE: Singapore plans to slow its intake of foreigners to ease discontent at home but needs sustained immigration in the long term, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in remarks published Wednesday.

“We know we cannot take in unlimited numbers of foreign workers,” Lee said at a dialogue with university students on Tuesday, according to The Straits Times newspaper.

“We already have almost a million foreigners working here. I cannot imagine simply expanding year after year, and having two million workers here one day.”

Singapore is undergoing its worst recession since independence in 1965 and more than a million foreign workers and their family members now live in the city-state out of a total population of 4.8 million in 2008.

It does not produce enough babies to replenish the local population and lacks skilled manpower particularly in the services sector, forcing firms to recruit overseas staff, many of whom end up staying permanently.

In letters to newspapers and online chat forums, some Singapo­reans have openly questioned the massive influx in recent years and expressed fears of losing out to newcomers in the workplace, schools and social services.

“I understand and empathise with these concerns. Worries have grown because of large inflows in the last few years,” said Lee.

But he said Singapore’s long-term economic prosperity and vibrancy as a business hub was dependent on its ability to draw talented foreign migrants.

“Singapore will need new immigrants for the indefinite future,” he said.Modern Singapore’s founding father and first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had said previously the country needs foreigners to survive in the long-term.

“Without new citizens and permanent residents, we are going to be ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. We will disappear,” Lee Kuan Yew told an audience at a local university earlier this year. — AFP