Why engineers and tech professionals hate immigration and what can be done about this ?

I will do a little bit of social-political blogging today.

A hot topic of the next elections is likely going to be about CECA because I suspect that Tan Cheng Bock will leverage on this issue as Heng Swee Keat is very possibly the architect of this agreement that grants free access to Indian tech professionals into our economy in return for granting Singapore banks full access to the Indian economy.

From the perspective of local engineer like myself, CECA is a game changer that kept my salary low and increased the competition and stress we have in local workplaces.  As I watched the movie Three Idiots lately, I was very impressed by India's almost divine reverence for their engineering talent. I asked myself how can our local  engineering degree holders who can get Bs or Cs for Physics / Maths A levels compete against a demigod-engineer from IIT?  The truth is they can't.

The quickest solution to the problem is to simply not be a plain engineer in Singapore.

The solution is to become an engineer-landlord.

Once I started investing, I can start to see how we can benefit directly from the flow of professionals into Singapore. As Singapore becomes more competitive, companies want to set up here, and Indian professionals also want to rent our spare homes and buy our goods. I daresay that my investment and rental gains, net-net, exceed my losses under the CECA arrangement. I even spent two happy years in Singapore Mercantile Exchange which was set up by an Indian billionaire.

But this leaves a serious problem in our society today.

Not everyone can become an engineer-landlord. There will be folks who are left behind and would want to punish whoever drafted the CECA with India.

So how can we solve the problem of allowing the man on the street to benefit directly from immigration so that we will not have a populist revolt ?

Radical Markets by Eric Posner is the first time I felt that there is some hope that a solution can be found. Here is how to adapt his ideas to Singapore :

First we have to identify a discriminated class in Singapore. To me, non-degree males are a discriminated class in Singapore. The GINI coefficient for males is much higher than females and non-degree males have a lower representation in Singapore Parliament than women or ethnic minorities.

( Only MP Charles Chong lack a degree )

I think the first solution is to align the needs of non-degree males with potential immigrants.

Suppose Beck Hock is a non-degree male working hard to raise a family in Yishun, very likely he will struggle to make his ends meet if Singapore goes full throttle into globalization.

What if we let Beng Hock sponsor Rancho, a Indian Engineer, to work for Google in Singapore ?

Beng Hock will have to interview Rancho to decide whether he will fit into Singapore society, buy insurance in case Rancho turns out to be unable to work, rent a room to him and vouch for him for a year so that Rancho can get a three year work permit.

Rancho has to pay Beng Hock a fee to work in Singapore and be his guide to local culture. From some economic surveys, Rancho will be willing to pay big money to Beng Hock for that privilege, sometimes as high as $9,000 to work here.  The process of setting a price can be an auction mechanism like COE.

A non-degree male can credibly sponsor one new immigrant every year boosting his salary by a decent $300-$500 a month, this can limit the effects of xenophobia drastically in our society. Also the vetting by heartlanders will account for things like cultural fit that cannot be reduced to a set of criteria by any government bureaucracy.

For sure, there will be problems if we implement this system in Singapore. But that's what our scholars are for.

If the government does not want immigration to smack them in next elections, finding way to allow ordinary Singaporeans to directly benefit from immigration is key to their political survival.