Put Singaporeans first

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/300239print.asp

So protectionism has been tabled in Singapore.

From the look of things, every country is going to go down this road, albeit to varying extents. I think most people know the consequences of protectionist policies, and i don’t think that’s a good road to go down personally.

However, when the crisis hits home, to Singapore, I began to rethink my position.

We depend heavily on foreign labour & foreign talent in Singapore. In a recession, when jobs are cut so drastically, it seems like the foreigners are the hardest hit (if the newspapers are to be believed, that is). It makes sense, because the State’s first responsibility is to its own citizens, whereas the responsibility to “care” for the foreigners falls primarily (not totally) on their own home countries. Given 2 people of identical calibre, if there is only 1 position left, my conscience tells me it should go to the local, because the foreigner can go home, to another country, and he was here for the money to begin with. For the local, this is his home, and mobility might be more complicated and difficult.

In a sense, we are using the foreign labour pool as sort of our buffer, to be shrunk in a recession, to be increased in a labour shortage situation. Is that protectionism? I think it is. Do i like it? Yes I do. Do I think it is fair? Yes I do. Do I think it is kind? Perhaps not. Do I think the global situation will improve if every country has the same practice? Of course not.

While calling for large countries like the USA to resist protectionist policies, I am very unwilling to do the same here.

The main difference between Singapore and the US, is that if we don’t practice protectionism, we hardly make a difference to the foreign labour’s home country, but hurts us trememdously. I somehow doubt the US electorate would see things that way though, I suspect they would feel like we do, and hence support protectionist policies.

 Honestly, I think it would be better if Obama were in his second term when re-election would not be on his mind, and he can do the right things. I think he is really smart, so he knows the global impact of American protectionism, but I wonder if he is willing to sacrifice votes, or even a 2nd term in office, by abandoning a protectionist stand. Although, of course, the counter argument would be that protectionism is a short term measure and would hurt America in the long term — but I’m sure that long term might be longer than the 4 years before re-lection time.

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Fargoal said, on February 3rd, 2009:

FYI, I did not realise that International Migration was such a big thing until I started doing my current job. There is a worldwide movement to develop consensus on how to manage migrant labour properly and with due respect for humanitarian concerns. Check out http://www.un.int/iom/index.htm. I’m no expert on this but I am quite sure we (Singaporeans in general) are no boy scouts when it comes to migrant labour issues.

The pragmatic Singaporean response in support of your position would be this (and I would generally go along with for lack of a better alternative). We are a small country with limited economic capacity, i.e. don’t compare us with the US – the land of plenty and economic motor of the world. Our first priority must be to our own citizens, and it would be politically untenable to argue otherwise. There is no point in keeping foreign workers if we can’t afford them or if there is no work for them. We need to recover from this crisis and start making the bucks again. Then we can recruit foreign workers all over again. In other words, we have to be unkind now to stay afloat, so that we can be in a position to re-create more jobs (and hire more foreign workers) in future when we start to prosper.

(Just count how many typically Singaporean and pragmatic arguments there are in the above paragraph!)

In some ways, we are maximising the benefits of having foreign workers, while minimizing the disadvantages. A possible case of trying to have your cake and eat it? Possibly so. Going forward, if an international consensus does emerge on the rights of migrant labour, then we may find it increasingly difficult to minimize the disadvantages.

It may be too early to say, but the new US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner got off the wrong footing by accusing China of “currency manipulation” during his Senate confirmation hearings. That doesn’t bode too well for US-China economic relations, and the Democrats may find it hard to resist protectionist sentiments. But let’s keep our fingers crossed.

 

(Since this has become a national concern, and that just yesterday, this has been discussed on my blog entry ‘Happy Chinese New Year’  (http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/cn/ ) , I thought I should at least spend 10 min doing a copy-and-paste adaptation to add in my 2-cents worth. The above are adptations of the exchange between Fargoal, a reader, and I. Thanks Fargoal! I hope it’s OK for me to increase the prominence of your view. It makes so much sense = )   )