Foreign Workers - A Balancing Act

Immigrants have been a topic of discussion among my friends I late. Well, more precisely, immigrant workers. There are quite a good number of them now in Singapore. They're frontline staff at shops, clean up after us at food courts, call us to sell us a credit card or insurance plan, drive our cabs and buses. I'm sure there are many other jobs they are hired to do but these professions I've listed now suddenly put them in front of us. And that's a big change.

They used to be in the background - workers at a construction site or road sweepers. We took notice but were able to quickly ignore them or rather, their impact on our day-to-day was minimal for most. We smiled and said hello when appropriate but largely, our lives were quite separate. But a tight labour market, an educated workforce and locals' preference for less menial jobs have pushed employers to look far and away for willing hands to fill any job that locals deem beneath them. Someone's gotta do the dirty, boring work, right? And costs gotta stay down right? Viva l'economy!

So this little country is awash with new migrant workers who are cheap for businesses to hire and look after. And inevitably there are many issues that have surfaced.

An odd xenophobia that has come to the fore.

It's strange because we are a nation of migrants ourselves and a young nation at that.

Strange because we seem to be biased against personal habits and unfamiliar accents rather than colour of skin.

Strange because we do not think they are trying hard enough to adapt to our way of living.

Strange because it is Singaporeans as a collective that are speaking against the perceived excess of foreign workers, not just a single race voicing concern (is this now our unifying trait? A bunch of complainers).

Strange that we feel disadvantaged in our own country by those who have less, who have come here like our forefathers did before to make life anew.

Other the other hand, there are Singaporeans who have stood up for fair treatment, better conditions and pay for these workers.

The Japanese are infamous for frowning upon importing foreign workers. They've run their factories on their own for centuries, extensions of the single machine-body-culture that is this island nation. Now the population is rapidly greying and no one knows what to do. There's already a shortage of caregivers and medical staff to look after the elderly. Young people, highly educated and pumped full of Western ideals, do not want to live their parents' lives. There is a clash of ambition and expectations and tradition it seems. Somehow it seems that the road to progress and happiness will damn a mighty country because minds are closed.

This should bother us. There are many parallels we can draw amid the stark differences. We can learn lessons from Japan's closed doors. Yet admittedly we shouldn't feel like strangers in our own backyard. It's a funny balance to get at, because any moves at stemming this flow of workers will increase labour costs and ultimately the price you and I will pay for goods and services. A connected problem, one the average thinker on the street needs to understand and accept. We'll always have immigrant workers passing through our shores. They way we feel about them is perhaps a mark of our maturity, or how much we still need to grow.