Foreign News
Singapore tightens rules for expat workers with an eye on local discontent
Singapore – One of the world’s most open economies is attempting a delicate balancing act.
On the one hand, the Southeast Asian city-state wants to lure the world’s best and brightest to bolster its workforce, one of Asia’s most diverse. On the other hand, it has to assure locals competing with foreigners for jobs that the system works for them, too, nipping potential resentment or xenophobia in the bud.
From next year, the government will tweak that calculus in favour of locals by raising the salary threshold for foreigners seeking approval to work in the city-state.
Last month, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower announced that new applicants for the Employment Pass (EP) system will have to earn at least 5,600 Singapore dollars ($4,140) per month, up from 5,000 Singapore dollars ($3,700).
Applicants working in the financial services sector will have to earn at least 6,200 Singapore dollars ($4,600), compared with 5,500 Singapore dollars ($4,100) at present.
“By regularly updating the qualifying salaries based on the set wage benchmarks, we ensure a level-playing field for locals,” Manpower Minister Tan See Leng told parliament during a budget debate.
Analysts said the changes were not surprising for a government that has regularly tweaked the rules for expat workers, most recently in September 2022, when it raised the salary threshold by 500 Singapore dollars ($370).
Walter Theseira, an associate professor and labour economist at the Singapore University for Social Sciences (SUSS), said the move had been “telegraphed for a number of years”.
Theseira said that while the EP system was originally intended to import highly-skilled workers to fill gaps in the workforce, “the criteria seemed to have expanded and EP holders became more prevalent in the middle of the market as well”.
“This was perceived by local workers to be unwelcome competition for jobs that many skilled locals could do, so the government responded by re-calibrating the EP again upwards, so that based on salaries, it now targets more clearly the high-end,” he said.
Singapore has built its reputation on attracting foreign talent (Aljazeera)
For decades, Singapore, an island with no natural resources that is about the size of New York City, has built its reputation on an openness to foreign talent.
The number of EP holders has grown substantially over the years, fuelled in part by anxiety over the country’s rock-bottom birthrate and greying population.
As of December last year, there were about 205,400 EP holders in the city, up from 161,700 during the same month in 2021.
As far back as 2021, Tan acknowledged that Singaporeans, though recognising the need to attract foreign talent, had concerns that the influx came at the “expense” of local businesses.
A labour market report released by the Manpower Ministry last month showed that employment growth in 2023, comprising 88,400 positions in Singapore – excluding migrant domestic workers – was largely made up of foreigners.
The revision of the EP qualification criteria can be seen as “a strategic move” to appease age-old tensions over hiring foreign talent amid a crowded job market, said Joshua Yim, the CEO of Achieve Group, a talent acquisition consultancy.
The changes also come as the Southeast Asian country is gearing up for one of the most politically significant transitions in its history.
Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party is set to fight the next general election, due by 2025, under new leadership as incumbent Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong prepares to step down after some two decades in office.
The issue of foreign workers became salient in the 2011 general election, when public discontent simmered over rising competition for jobs and increasing pressure on public infrastructure.
While most Singaporeans and permanent residents agree that immigration is generally good for the economy, slightly more than half also believe that immigrants take jobs away from locals, according to a 2021 survey by the Institute of Policy Studies.
In another survey conducted by the research firm Milieu Insight, Singaporeans were almost evenly divided on whether the nation struck the right balance between bringing in foreign workers and protecting local jobs.
Sid Suhas, the senior vice president and head of EMEA & APAC at the talent acquisition firm Cielo, said the visa changes are likely to prompt large employers to “focus more on attracting, developing and nurturing the local talent pool, particularly for junior professional and mid-level lower-skilled roles.”
With the higher salary threshold, companies are likely to adopt “a skills-first approach” when employing foreigners, Suhas said, focusing on talent in areas such as AI, technology, engineering and healthcare.
“The trend of limiting foreign talent deployment to specific skills and industries is inevitable. In the past, foreign talent had the opportunity to develop their careers in Singapore across various roles but now, the focus will likely be on senior and niche positions,” Suhas told Al Jazeera.
Suhas said he has already seen companies exploring alternative locations in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, as a means of relocating key talent while still maintaining proximity to Singapore.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is due to step down before the 2025 general elections (Aljazeera)
“Most SMEs [small to medium-sized enterprises] do not rely much on EP workforce as their core talent pool,” Yuit told Al Jazeera.
“Selected businesses may have EP hiring in the stated 5,000 or 5,500 [Singapore dollars] range for specialised roles but usually, that is for time-limited, project engagement or if they are in specialised sectors that rely on a foreign talent pool because of a lack of matching local workforce.”
But the increased labour costs could affect the profitability of SMEs with tighter budget constraints, said Achieve Group’s Yim.
“Local SMEs may not be so well-oiled in terms of their processes and operations, as compared to the MNCs,” Yim said.
“They will feel the heat because they have to go up against the big players with the financial muscles who can offer higher EP salaries and attract better-quality talent. They might feel that talent is being stolen away and thus, this group is at the shorter end of the stick.”
Xu Le, a lecturer from the department of strategy and policy at the National University of Singapore’s Business School, said the policy change could “spur local companies to think out of the box and explore alternative methods to enhance overall operational efficiency and labour productivity”, in turn benefitting the economy.
Beatrice Liu-Cheng, the CEO of Oriental Remedies Group, said that while the higher-qualification threshold could pose challenges for her chain of Chinese medicine clinics, it would also be an “opportunity to further enhance the diversity and expertise” within its workforce.
Liu-Cheng said the changes would encourage her to seek out and nurture Singaporean talent through training programmes, mentorship initiatives and partnerships with educational institutions.
Singapore is known for its business-friendly environment (Aljazeera)
While the migration changes are set to raise the cost of doing business, Singapore’s advantages, including a business-friendly environment, its strategic location and world-class infrastructure, will continue to attract international companies, analysts said.
Singapore is expected to remain “the preferred choice” for firms’ regional headquarters, said Cielo’s Suhas, even if deploying smaller teams becomes more common due to the higher costs.
Suhas said the changes would also accelerate the various government initiatives aimed at creating high-quality jobs for locals, including early talent programmes and re-skilling programmes for mid-to-late career professionals.
“As a result, we anticipate that global companies setting up in Singapore will increasingly prioritise hiring Singaporeans,” he said.
Singapore ranks second in the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index, behind Switzerland.
Nicholas Sim, an associate professor at SUSS’s business school, said that businesses seeking to establish a foothold in Asia are still likely to prioritise Singapore due to its “high-quality infrastructure, efficient and stable government and access to a high-calibre talent pool”.
Besides the EP scheme, there are other avenues for foreign talent to come to Singapore.
In 2023, the Manpower Ministry launched the Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass for “top talent” in business, arts and culture, sports, academia and research.
As of January, the ministry had approved nearly 4,200 applications for the pass.
“Going forward, it’s a clear sign that the Singapore government wants to bring high-calibre individuals into the Singapore workforce – and firms will need to deliberate more carefully about hiring top-tier foreign candidates who are skilled and can add to Singapore’s long-term competitiveness,” Yim said.
”All the more, MNCs will see Singapore as a place for the cream of the crop.”
(Aljazeera)
South Korea’s president has apologised for a string of controversies surrounding his wife that included allegedly accepting a luxury Dior handbag and stock manipulation.
Addressing the nation on television, Yoon Suk Yeol said his wife, Kim Keon Hee, should have conducted herself better, but her portrayal had been excessively “demonised”, adding that some of the claims against her were “exaggerated”.
The president said he would set up an office to oversee the first lady’s official duties, but rejected a call for an investigation into her activities.
Yoon’s apology came as he tries to reverse a dip in his popularity among the South Korean public, linked to the controversies surrounding his wife.
Late in 2023, left-wing YouTube channel Voice of Seoul published a video that purportedly showed Kim accepting a 3m won ($2,200; £1,800) Dior bag from a pastor, who filmed the exchange in September 2022 using a camera concealed in his watch.
In February, Yoon said that the footage was leaked as a political maneuver and did not apologise.
South Korea’s Democratic Party, the opposition to Yoon’s conservative People Power Party, at the time labelled the president’s “shameless attitude” as “hopeless”.
The scandal also caused rifts within Yoon’s party, with one leader comparing Ms Kim with Marie Antoinette, the queen of France notorious for her extravagant lifestyle.
The opposition party has also long accused the first lady of being involved in stock price manipulation. Earlier in the year, Yoon vetoed a bill calling for his wife to be investigated over those allegations.
[BBC]
When Usha Vance took to the stage at the Republican National Convention, she introduced the crowd to the “most determined person I know” – her husband JD Vance, the newly selected vice-presidential candidate.
“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country,” she told the crowd over the summer.
Mrs Vance humanised the Ohio senator and soon-to-be vice-president to Donald Trump by calling him a man who longed for a “tight-knit family”.
She also said her husband was a “meat and potatoes kind of guy” – but one who had adapted to her vegetarian diet and even learned how to cook Indian food for her mother.
While she does not seek out the political spotlight, Mrs Vance, 38, wields considerable influence over her husband’s career, Vance has said before.
Mrs Vance – née Chilukuri, the child of Indian immigrants – was born and raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California.
The two met as students at Yale Law School in 2013, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”, according to the New York Times.
The content influenced Mr Vance’s best selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class Rust Belt, which became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.
Whilst her husband regularly rails about “woke” ideas he says are pushed by Democrats, Mrs Vance was formerly a registered Democrat and is now a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm which proudly touts its reputation for being “radically progressive”.
Mrs Vance previously graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She once clerked for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, on the District of Columbia court of appeals. Then she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men are part of the highest court’s conservative majority.
And it is this stellar CV that leaves Vance feeling “humbled” he has said.
“Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit,” Vance told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “And if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am.”
“People don’t realise just how brilliant she is,” he added, saying she is able to digest a 1,000-page book in only a few hours.
She is the “powerful female voice on his left shoulder”, giving him guidance, he said.
The couple wed in 2014 and have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
As Vance took the stage at the Republican convention, he echoed previous praise of his wife being an “incredible lawyer and a better mom”.
In an interview on Fox News over the summer, she said: “I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life.”
“Neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this position,” she said at the RNC.
And since then she has firmly defended her husband, particularly against recent attacks for controversial remarks he made in 2021 about Kamala Harris and other Democrats being “childless cat ladies”.
Vance argued that those without children should not lead the country and that women who do not have kids are “miserable”.
His wife called the remarks a “quip” and said people were not looking at the large context of the comments.
[BBC]
This is surely the most dramatic comeback in US political history.
Four years after leaving the White House, Donald Trump is set to move back in, after millions of Americans voted to give him a second chance.
The election campaign was one for the history books: he survived two assassination attempts and his original opponent President Joe Biden dropped out just months before election day.
Although final votes are still being counted, the majority of Americans in key battleground states chose to vote for him, with many citing the economy and immigration as a chief concern.
His triumph comes after a spectacular fall. He refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, and his role in trying to overturn the election results to stay in office is still being scrutinised today.
He faces charges for allegedly inciting the violent attack on the US Capitol on the 6 January 2021. And he will also make history as the first sitting president to have been convicted of a felony, after being found guilty of falsifying business records.
It’s not hard to see why he is a deeply polarising figure.
Throughout the campaign, Trump used incendiary rhetoric – making crass jokes and threatening vengeance against his political enemies.
His message on the economy touched a chord
Few people have a middle ground when it comes to Trump. Most of the voters I spoke to during the course of this campaign said they wished he would “shut his potty mouth” – but they were able to look past it.
Instead, they focused on the question he asked at every rally. “Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”
So many people who voted for Donald Trump told me again and again that they felt the economy was much better when he was in office and they were sick of trying to make ends meet. Although much of the cause of inflation was due to outside forces such as the Covid-19 pandemic, they blamed the outgoing administration.
Voters were also deeply concerned about illegal immigration which had reached record levels under Biden. They usually didn’t express racist views or believe that migrants were eating people’s pets, as Trump and his supporters had claimed. They just wanted much stronger border enforcement.
‘America first’ for a second Trump term
“America first” was another one of Trump’s slogans that really seemed to strike a chord with voters. All over the country I heard people – on the left and right – complaining about billions of dollars being spent on supporting Ukraine when they thought that money would be much better spent at home.
In the end, they just couldn’t vote for Harris, who served as Biden’s vice-president for four years. They believed it would be more of the same, and they wanted change.
It is perhaps one of the ironies of this election that the candidate who most represented change was himself in power just four years ago. But there are several differences between then and now.
When he first came into power in 2016, he was a political outsider, and, at least for a while, he surrounded himself with veteran political advisers and staff who showed him the ropes and constrained his actions. Now he doesn’t seem that interested in playing by the rules of the game.
Many of these same advisers and staff have spoken out – calling him a “liar”, a “fascist” and “unfit”. They have cautioned that if he surrounds himself with loyalists, which he is expected to do, that there will be no one to restrain him from his more extreme ideas.
When he left office, he faced a litany of criminal charges related to his role in the Capitol riots, how he handled documents pertaining to national security, and hush money payments to a porn star.
But since the Supreme Court ruled that the president has total immunity from prosecution for official acts in office, it will be an uphill battle for any prosecutor to charge him during the next administration.
And as president, he could instruct his justice department to drop the federal charges against him relating to the 6 January riots so he doesn’t have to worry about a jail sentence. At the same time, he could pardon hundreds of people sentenced to prison for their part in the Capitol Riots.
In the end, voters were presented with two versions of America.
Donald Trump told them that their country was a failing nation that only he could Make Great Again.
Meanwhile, Harris cautioned that if Trump was elected, American democracy itself would face an existential threat. That remains to be seen. But what Trump said himself during the campaign has not exactly assuaged people’s fears.
He has heaped praise on authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whom he said were “at the top of their game, whether you like it or not”.
He has talked about trying to silence critics in the press. Just days before the election, he also made comments that implied he wouldn’t mind if members of the media were killed.
And he has continued to amplify conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of election fraud – even though the election ultimately led to his victory.
Now, voters will find how much of what he said during the campaign was just loose talk – “Trump being Trump”. And remember: it’s not just Americans who have to confront the reality of a second Trump term.
The rest of the world will now discover what “America First” really means. From the global economic consequences of 20% tariffs that he has proposed on US imports to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that he has vowed to end – regardless of which side wins.
Donald Trump did not manage to implement all of his plans in his first term. Now with a second mandate and significantly less encumbered, America, and the world, will see what he can really do.
[BBC]
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