globalmigrations- Singapore

Category: Immigration

Currently Singapore’s population is about 4.5 million. These ethnic groups included in this number are Malaysian, Chinese, Indian descent as well as thousands of foreign works throughout South Asia. As a result of this there are four official languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. A little back round info on Singapore, it became a independent state in 1965, it has limited space and natural resources. Put it still became a first world country in the 1980s because of the transformation from to a service driven economy. Because of this Singapore is in need of foreign workers at different levels of the economy. Singapore witnessed a century’s worth of free immigration that ended because of the 1928 Immigration Restriction Act. At one time Singapore had restrictive quotas for Chinese men because there was an overwhelming amount that there was a monthly quota for 500 women. Immigration stopped in 1941-1945 because of Japanese occupation but picked up after. An ordinance came into affect in 1953 to admit only those that contributed to social and economic development. Latter it would band duel citizenship and modify it by allowing naturalization and the automatic conferment of citizenship. Much like the US Singaporeans are reluctant to fill low skilled jobs so they turn to foreign works, but because the government thinks that this low-skilled migrants disrupts to society its policy for this kind of immigration since 1970 is that these workers remain a transient workforce, subject to repatriation of economic downturn. Lately Singapore has liberalized immigration policies, which makes it easier for skilled immigrants to gain permanent residence, and it even started programs aimed at attracting talent. Migration issues have been raised to promote immigration to maintain long-term growth and prosperity. Also fertility rates are very low 1.25 children for every woman in 2005 and this continues to decline. The government has done everything possible but it has shown no results. The government has been more concerned with the Malay population which has seen the population drop because of the birth rates not being high enough to replace the dead ones.
The attitude toward the immigrants is very welcomed but the population believes that the country depends too much on foreigners, and competition for jobs, space and limited resources will intensify towards to citizens. Also the idea of loyalty was raised.
Migration and migrants have a big impact on the policies regarding population growth and its demographic future.