The interplay of the Foreign Talent Policy (FTP) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) via the waiver of labour market testing and the general goodwill between two countries have led to a “loose arrangement” for foreign professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) to look for a job in Singapore, said Progress Singapore Party’s (PSP) Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leong Mun Wai on Thursday (19 August).
As such, it is Singaporeans’ “sovereign right” to look into this matter and reverse the “anomalous trend” that has been negatively affecting Singaporeans for years, said Mr Leong in a Facebook post.
As a background knowledge, Mr Leong explained that the FTP was first introduced in the Republic in the late 1990s after the Asian Currency Crisis.
At that time, Singaporeans did not reject the policy as they are “industrious and pragmatic and ascribe to learning from others”, he said.
He added that Singaporeans were open to the policy knowing that global talent will be able to help them advance in a knowledge-based economy.
“Singaporeans accepted the foreign talent policy without much concern although there was no clear framework to it. The policy was never defined nor debated in Parliament until much later when the Population White Paper was released in 2013, almost as an afterthought,” said the NCMP.
Unfortunately, the FTP ended up being a channel for “quick immigration and a source of cheap labour”, said Mr Leong.
He noted that foreign PMETs were hired on a low qualifying salaries for both the Employment Pass (EP) and S-Pass (SP) holders.
“The SP was introduced in 2004 at a qualifying salary of $1,800, raised to $2,200 in 2013 and stayed at that level until 2019. It is currently set at $2,500. The qualifying salary for EP was only slightly higher than for SP by about $1,000 for most of the years until the more sizeable increase in Sep 2020 to $4,500 ($5,000 for the finance sector), a gap of $2,000 from the SP,” he explained.
In fact, by the time the Population White Paper was published in 2013, Singapore’s population had grown by 40 percent since the late 1990s, he said.
As an example, he cited that during the peak of immigration in the country, 80,000 PRs were granted in 2018 before reducing to the current 30,000 a year.
In an attempt to curb the spike of foreign PMETs, the Government introduced the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) in 2014 as a mean of labour market testing. “In labour market nomenclature, giving hiring priority to Singaporeans before a job can be given to a foreigner is called labour market testing,” he noted.
However, Singaporeans have voiced that the FCF is not effective, and one of the main reasons for it is that it is not legislated by law, he said.
The alternative Party MP also questioned on why FCF was only introduced more than 15 years after foreign PMETs have swarmed into Singapore.
He added that providing job preference to Singaporeans was not a priority to the Government before 2014, adding that labour marketing testing has also waived for some FTAs.
“For example, Article 9.3(3) of CECA states that: “Neither Party shall require labour market testing, economic needs testing or other procedures of similar effects as a condition for temporary entry in respect of natural persons upon whom the benefits of this Chapter are conferred.” As a result, the intra-corporate transferees of CECA are exempted from the FCF requirement,” he stated.
Mr Leong also went on to point out that the Government was proactively looking for FTAs the same FTP started.
He said that Singaporeans completely supported FTAs when it should only involve trade and investment.
“The problem arises when the new FTAs contain onerous provisions for the ‘movement of natural persons’. Some of these provisions provide for longer term stay for intra-corporate transferees and their dependents. This could serve as a means for easy access into our job market although according to the Government, the number of intra-corporate transferees is not large,” he said.
As such, he reiterated that the interplay of the FTP and FTAs have allowed foreign PMETs to enter Singapore’s job market, emphasising that this matter has to be addressed.
