Comment by ggm
7 days ago
Like Dubai, many of the migrant workers are ineligible for post retirement life in Singapore and so despite any mandatory savings will not represent any kind of burden on the state compared to delivery of health and housing and care costs.
So they are functionally productive and net positive to any scheme about post work funding for the community.
You don't pay CPF unless you have Permanent Residence/Citizenship so there isn't any mandatory saving for migrant workers (both low income unskilled and high income skilled labour) AFAIK?
Yep. As someone who worked on an EP, the difference was that I paid a low rate of tax that didn't contribute towards Singaporeans' retirement income, whereas a Singaporean living in Europe would pay a higher rate of tax that contributed towards Europeans' retirement income
This is being entirely disingenuous and is completely different to what goes on in Dubai.
I have lived there and can rattle off plenty of criticisms about the country but complaining about migrant workers who clamour to work in SG is not one of them.
The vast majority of Singapore migrant workforce are Malaysian citizens who live over the border in JB, you can rent a 2 bed apartment there for $300 a month and eat out in a restaurant for $2 while commuting each day to a developed country and earn those level of wages.
To pretend these people have a rough deal compared to back home is absurd and I'd challenge anyone to actually talk to them first before getting on your high horse. Ask them if they would prefer to work in their home country.
I said nothing of the kind you imply. I know skilled workers who were based in Dubai but who expected to leave immediately their work (court transcription) ended and the same with expat Australians and Britons working in Singapore.
The point is not if they get a rough deal or not compared to their home income. The point is that the welfare state costs on the tax base won't be spent to their material benefit, so they are not a cost on the state after working lifetime. Forced saving schemes be they state pension, annuity or superannuation are savings which act as investment capital and i am sure sematek and other bodies leverage this, and then in income phase return to the holder but they are not equal to the lifetime cost of care for the elderly, or provision of housing.
Dubai has much more extreme exploitation of low wage migrant labour, not that none of the workforce in Singapore is remittance labour, filipina nannies and the like but I'm not actually talking about construction site labour or the Dubai passport hijack thing.
Dubai has a 90 day visa grace period for job loss. Plenty of foreign labour self sponsor their own visas and there is the golden visa and retirement visa for people aging out.
> while commuting each day to a developed country
Must be a fully automated border or something? That kind of commute would be unthinkable between e.g. Canada and the USA for most folks
Woodlands is the busiest immigration checkpoint on the planet and it's only 1 of 2 crossings. It's fairly seamless for regulars apart from Friday afternoons when it gets clogged up by escaping Singaporeans keen for the weekend and the quality/value offered by their poorer neighbour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlands_Checkpoint
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They’ve introduced facial recognition at this border, starting with motorcyclists. You just scan a QR code to get in. If that’s not an option, the gates are automated – you scan your passport and you can walk straight through.
Singapore has the smoothest border controls I’ve ever experienced; it takes me less than half an hour between stepping off a plane at Changi to stepping into my apartment.
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Where are you located? Lots of such crossings used to happen, anyway, many years ago via Nexus or similar. Get the pass, just drive right on through over the bridge at Windsor/Detroit. Also similar things in Vancouver, I believe.
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There's people who live in Tijuana, Mexico and work in San Diego, California and that's way worse than Canada/USA in terms of time and hassle. Not something I'd want to do, but then I wouldn't want to live in Connecticut and work in NYC, which many people do either.
> Must be a fully automated border or something?
Oddly enough, not until very very recently (~2024). Traffic jams of several hours are still quite normal for vehicular traffic, and it is the busiest crossing on the entire planet, with up to half a million crossings a day.
US borders are awful. I guess you get away with it because the USA is so large that most people rarely leave, so rarely have to experience it.
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I had an unplanned short stop in Singapore in December after missing a connecting flight. I just filled in an arrival form online (no Visa), went through the electronic gates, an officer glanced at me and let me through without a word. Whole process took about ten minutes, and it would have been quicker if I’d filed the paperwork beforehand.
There are actually a fair number of folks that commute from Canada to the US for work. They will generally have TN Visas, it is certainly not "unthinkable" - it really does happen, although I will confess that the only folks I have ever met that did it were not recommending it to anyone else!
I don't know about the USA, but such an arrangement is extremely common in Europe thanks to the Schengen area.
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Borders in some places look more like a gate to enter metro, if you earned (or born with) trust bit
Plenty of people commute from Windsor (Ontario) to the Detroit Metro Area daily.