Quora Answer: How Does Singapore Handle Immigration?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How does Singapore handle immigration?”

I am assuming that you mean migrating to Singapore to become a Singapore citizen.  The official policy is that Singapore encourages migration to Singapore.  We need to keep the economy growing by taking in the best and brightest from all over the world.  We have a low fertility rate, and we need more younger people to support the greying population.  However, it has to be managed because there is strong local sentiment against large scale migration.  This is normal anywhere, because even a country of migrants needs to give time for new migrants to adapt to the country.

The Singapore government made the mistake of opening the floodgates to an influx of migrants from China and India, without consideration that the infrastructure was not yet able to absorb these new numbers.  This lead to a period of crowding on public transport, rising prices of apartments, and culture clashes, particularly with the Chinese.  The language of business and everyday communication here is English.  Many of the Chinese immigrants were more comfortable with Mandarin, and this created tensions.  After a rebuke at the elections in 2015, the government put paid to that policy, and worked at addressing the infrastructure issue.  The government has adjusted their immigration policy, but the numbers have been reduced to manageable levels.

One of the things the government does is incentivise foreigners already here, and somewhat integrated, into settling and integrating into the local society.  Then there is a secondary social stratification policy to distinguish between transient workers, mostly working in blue collar jobs, and knowledge-based talent.  This is a more gradual approach, rather than blatantly recruiting talent from overseas who need a greater adjustment period.

Generally, the country is hungry for upwardly mobile, those below 45 years of age, with good qualifications and experience to contribute to the country.  There is a preference for families with children.  We are not a retirement destination because they contribute to the healthcare cost without the commensurate upside of contributing income tax in the years before.  We also do not take in persons deemed undesirable, such as those with extensive criminal past, links to extremists groups, and hold positions that may upset our multicultural society.