Foreign Talent: Which of us arent?
"...few of us failed to realise that we are descendents of foreign talents..."
At Singapore recently, there was such news saying that 3 out of 4 jobs go to foreign talents. That created some sentimental commotion among the locals, especially the unemployed. It didnt take long for the government to rebute this saying and said that only one of 10 jobs goes to foreigners. Also, quite sometime ago, people are questioning about the need of foreign talents when our PM, Chok Tong, said that for every foreign talent here, some new jobs are created for the locals. If that is so, then why so many commotions about foreign talents?

Maybe we should first look into the locals... After some thinking, I managed to pull off some points about what causes Singaporeans to lose jobs to foreign talents:

1) Obviously, they are not choosy about their jobs. Take a programmer from India and a programmer from Singapore.... who would you take if you are the employer? Of course the Indian. Cheap in labour and skilled. No complaints about their works too. You get what I mean? Typical Singaporeans would complain about allowance, low salary, travelling distance, blah blah blah. For goodness sake, so what if you grew up in shark fins? You are out to make a living!

2) Too many people going into the engineering and science industry. Cant blame them, These are jobs which pay the people handsomely, especially if you are in the R&D sector... But again, will the real slim R&D babe (or yandao) please stand up? No one? Expected. I will explain in another point. But, you see, we are overflowed with engineers and scientists. If not, business people! What about the arts industry?

3) Parents? With close relationship to the previous point, most are under parental pressure to take up engineering or science or business. Do parents ever realise what their children want? They have thought too much about their children's future that they forget that their children are also human, with free thought! Look how many children are tied so tightly to parents, and you will understand! Hello, all mothers and fathers, not only the engineering industry makes money!

4) Singaporeans are not entrepreneur-minded enough. With prior to second point, we can see that not many people are in the R&D sector. Ok lah, 'credit' to our 'kisauism'... Fear of failure. But I believe that the R&D sector holds a good opportunity for Singaporean engineers. Even the government said, R&D sector is gonna be the next major element of growth after MNC. I can say, most foreigners here are ready to take risk to gain bigger return. So why cant Singaporeans do it? Over-reliance on the government? My words tomost people, in the R&D sector, 90% of the research often fail! So it's normal to fail!

Basically, these are the points which I think are the main causes why Singaporeans lose to foreigners over jobs. But wait, before you start saying: "Heck those foreigners! Drive them back to their damned mother land!!", let's not forget about one thing. There are also foreigners who are taking up jobs that practically no one who has undergone at least primary one education would take. Construction workers, road cleaners, just to name a few. Try driving them away, and the next day, you will see university grads sweeping the street and maybe SMU (Singapore Management University, not SM* University) or NUS would offer Degree in Road Cleaning?

Oh yah, also not forget that most of us Singaporeans are descendents of foreign talents! If not, how are we able to explain the large number of Chinese, Indians or even Eurasians here? (let's not mention the Malays who are native-defacto here)... Our ancestors came here as foreign talents to work as coolies and other dirty jobs. Some as admin jobs (if they were lucky). As time passes, we are born and granted citizenship. Of course, many take it for granted, eh? That's why the whole foreign talent thingy shoots up. Imagine the natives at 1820 - 1920 all oppose to the Chineses, Indians or even ang moh on coming here to work. We wun have the Singapore we have now! We wun even be here! If that is so, most likely I would be at China now shouting: Hail Comrade Mao! (issit still Comrade Mao? he's alive right?)

In fact, a lot of foreigners here, their ancestors are also foreign talents themselves. Uncle Sam is a very good example. Their native-defacto are the American Indians, the geez without written language.(no offence here) Look at the others! Europeans, Africans... They can co-exist together, though with racial conflicts at times.... and mind you, they are times larger than Singapore. Has our tolerance level on foreign talents really that low? That's up to us to wonder...