A collaboration about Immigration Policies
Despite the short time span, we looked at the population growth across different residential types in tandem with Singapore’s total population growth from 1991 to 2018. There are three residential types in Singapore: Singapore Citizens, Permanent Residents, and Non-Residents. Interestingly, the change in Non-Residents growth has the highest fluctuations in comparison to Permanent Residents and Singapore Citizens. Therefore, it seems like the extreme changes in Non-Residents growth, as represented by the peaks and troughs of the growth rate, could point towards certain key events or policies that may have triggered and contributed to these extreme points. This leads us to conduct a search on the international and national events.
For the Singapore Citizens, there is a steady trend hovering at 1% yearly. However, if we were to observe the Non-Residents and Permanent Residents, we can see peaks and troughs. This is mainly attributed to the changes in Singapore’s immigration and external factors which we will be covering.
For the first dip, we can see that it was during the period starting from 1996 to 1999. For Singapore, what happened during that time was the Asian Financial Crisis. Initially starting in Thailand with the financial collapse of the Thai Baht, the neighbouring countries around South East Asia were soon affected. As for Singapore, we can see the effects on the percentage growth of non-residents in 1997–1998.
As for 2003, SARS was a major hit all around the world. Both the permanent residents and non-resident growth were negative during that period as it affected immigration into Singapore.
However, things went well from the period of 2004 to 2008 due to Immigration policies implemented by the Singapore government. Many foreign talents and labours were hired to sustain Singapore’s rapid expansion during this period. Moreover, with the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement between Singapore and India, it allowed for Indian foreign talents to migrate to Singapore.
However, the next dip in 2008–2009 can be attributed to the Lehman Brothers Financial Crisis which hit global migration. Next, throughout 2013 onwards, there is a constant decrease in migration due to the tightening of Singapore’s migration policy due to the backlash from the population discussions.
In conclusion, we discover that the population growth rate, particularly for the Non-Residents growth rate, is highly sensitive to key events regarding influx and control across borders. Events such as a major lethal disease outbreak and financial crisis could lead to people becoming more incline to staying in their home country and they would be reluctant to travel abroad, due to health and monetary reasons. Having such insights would help businesses to better plan and anticipate demand surge from non-residents and provide more supply to meet areas such as accomodation in private homes and hotels.