Singaporemind.blogspot.sg, 3 Aug 2012In the past the govt has put forth many other reasons for the foreign influx - businesses find it hard to get Singapore workers, there are jobs Singaporeans won't take, there are skills we cannot find among Singaporeans. It is problematic to use these reasons justify the large influx and does not explain why foreigners are imported for jobs that Singaporeans also do and no employer is required to show proof that he cannot get a Singaporean to do the job when reasonable wages are paid. Maybe this is why the govt has chosen to use the low fertility rate of Singaporeans as a justification for importing more people
The Singapore govt brought in 5-10 times the people needed to make up for our shortfall in fertility rate. These numbers do not include the non-PRs here on work permits and employment passes. Basically, when you look around and see a lot of foreigners and new citizens, they are here not because our fertility rate is low,
The main reason for the large influx is to generate economic growth by expanding the workforce and to meet the demands of employers who do not want to pay higher wages to hire Singaporeans. This large influx has several effects one of them is wealth transfer from lower paid wage earners to employers/corporations i.e. rising income gap. It also caused the population density to surge up and housing prices + cost of living to surge up and these may have caused the TFR to drop to the lowest in the world .Macau and Hong Kong are right there with us and these are also the most densely populated regions in the world. The low fertility rate is made worse by the foreign influx is now used to justify more immigration!
Through this huge influx, the PAP govt created a bigger ageing population in 2050 when this large group of new citizens + PRs retire and age at the same time. Full time
