A Tale of Two Cities: Comparing Hong Kong and Singapore’s Imported Labour Policies
On 13th June 2023, the Hong Kong Government announced its plans to import around 20,000 workers to alleviate the labour crunch in the construction, transport and aviation sectors, as part of the city’s latest move to ease manpower shortfalls. The authorities have proposed lifting an employment ban on non-local workers in 26 job categories, including waiters, hairstylists and salespeople. Another relevant policy for imported labour is the Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) introduced in October 2022, which aims to lure top global talents. While employers in Hong Kong are clamouring for migrant workers, labour groups have criticised the plan for bypassing the scrutiny of union leaders and ignoring the concerns of local workers. This article compares Hong Kong’s recent imported labour policy with its long-time rival Singapore, where migrant workers have been the backbone of the economy for decades.
The history and fortunes of Hong Kong and Singapore have been closely intertwined with migrants and migration. Despite the recent bold moves, the Pearl of the Orient still trails behind the Lion City in labour importation. The history of Singapore’s imported labour can be dated back to the government’s issuance of block permits to 40,000 Malaysian construction workers in 1971. Singapore’s astounding prosperity is attributed to the toil of foreign migrant workers, comprising almost 40% of the city’s total workforce and are embedded at all levels of the labour market. At the time of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, the two cities’ GDP per capita figures were comparable, but today, Singapore’s figure is 1.7 times higher than Hong Kong’s, and the Singaporean economy has outperformed that of Hong Kong by attaining growth of one-seventh since 2017. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s workforce has now been depleted by an accelerating exodus which saw the departures of about 200,000 expatriates from the financial hub over the past three years, along with even more Hong Kongers. The ongoing ‘brain drain’ has prompted the Hong Kong Government to be more imaginative and audacious in labour deregulation. In this background, the authorities have been eyeing Singapore for inspiration, as exemplified by the Labour Chief Chris Sun’s visit to Singapore in January this year (2023) and a Legislative Council’s policy research paper investigating the labour importation policies of Singapore, Japan and the US.
Trawling for Talents: Elite and High-skilled Labour
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee introduced the Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) in his maiden policy address in October 2022, in a bid to harvest high-earners and foreign graduates from top universities. Coincidentally, the Singaporean government also launched its new elite visa, the Overseas Networks & Expertise Visa (One Pass) in January 2023, to lure investment and global talents.
Below is a table indicating the key differences between the schemes:
While both visa schemes seek to burnish their appeal to the world’s best minds, there are nuanced differences between their targets. In spite of a higher salary threshold of TTPS Category A applicants than their Singaporean counterparts, Categories B and C applicants accounted for nearly 80% of total approved TTPS applications as of April 2023. These two streams purely assess candidates based on their educational background and do not have any income or professional competencies thresholds. Category C is subjected to a capped quota of 10,000 and makes up for over one-fifth of the granted applications, opening the door to elite graduates with little to no working experience. Its rationale is closely aligned with graduate visas like the UK’s High Potential Individual Visa. In contrast to ‘Talent-Hungry’ Hong Kong, the Singaporean government is more cautious in the vetting criteria of its new elite visa. The scope of ONE Pass is narrowly confined to high-income earners and distinguished professionals with an established portfolio to be assessed by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on a case-to-case basis.
The Hong Kong Immigration Office has been swift in processing applications, granting around 21,000 TTPS applications within a half-year period. Yet, there is no shortage of criticisms of its carelessness and perfunctory attitude in vetting the applications. A significant scandal involves the damned Chinese geneticist He Jiankui, who had been jailed for experimenting with genetically engineered babies. Despite He’s publicised criminal conviction, the Immigration Office granted him the TTPS visa in mid-February, one week after he submitted his application. Within a day after He’s announcement of his research plans in Hong Kong, the Immigration Office voided his visa on the ground of fraud and readjusted the scheme by making ‘clear criminal record’ a mandatory requirement in hindsight. This incident ignited controversy among the global scientific community and Hong Kong society and damaged the credibility of the TTPS scheme. Meanwhile, Singapore’s Manpower Minister Tan See Lang elaborated that back-end checks are in place to sieve out potential abuse and fraudulent applications during a ministerial statement to the Parliament. For example, applicants from companies with a limited track history would be subjected to close scrutiny. Pass holders are also compelled to update MOM on their professional activities and annual incomes annually during the five-year period.
While a direct comparison of the demographics of Hong Kong’s TTPS and Singapore’s ONE Pass is not feasible owing to deficient official statistics on ONE Pass and applicants’ demographics, the composition of successful TTPS recipients appears to lack heterogeneity, with an overwhelming 95% majority coming from mainland China. Entrants from Australia, Canada, Singapore and the US only account for 3% combined. In contrast, Singapore’s Employment Pass (EP), the mainstream visa scheme for highly skilled professionals (whose top 5% have a salary level comparable to and qualify for the One Pass) appears to have a more heterogeneous composition. As revealed by the Manpower Minister Tan See Leng’s parliamentary address in 2021, about one-quarter of EP holders were from India, while the top nationalities that comprise around two-thirds of EP population have been consistent since 2005, namely those from China, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Britain.
In terms of visa conditions, Hong Kong offers a 2-year term for TTPS holders and their families to live and work unrestrictedly in the city. Upon completion of the initial period, TTPS holders are eligible to apply for a 3-year extension for the general stream and 6 years for high earners through the top-tier stream. Singapore’s ONE Pass offers a relatively generous 5-year visa term, which reduces the hassle of renewal and allows applicants to be more conducive for long-term and future-oriented planning with greater stability.
Both visa schemes do not provide any guarantee or fast-tracked permanent residency (PR). However, Hong Kong does offer a more secure roadmap to permanent residency than Singapore. Except for foreign domestic helpers, Chinese and non-Chinese citizens are qualified for permanent residency after ordinarily residing in Hong Kong for a continuous period of seven years. Under normalcy, TTPS applicants and their families could be awarded PR status through the 2+3+3 or 2+6 pathways. Under the existing mechanism, TTPS holders can renew their visa twice after completion of the 2-year initial period, with each renewal granting a 3-year extension for them to fulfill the 7-year long residence qualifying for PR (“2+3+3” Pathway). Higher earning TPPS holders whose annual income exceeds HKD two million in the previous tax year are eligible for a 6-year extension straightaway after the initial period, which is essentially a direct track to permanent residence (“2+6” Pathway). Singaporean authorities are more ambiguous in their lexicon – Manpower Minister Tan explained that there is no destined pathway to PR for TTPS holders, but the Singaporean government welcomes them to anchor at the city and make it their home.
Plugging the Manpower Gap: Semi-skilled/Unskilled Labour
Singapore has a long history of reliance on low-wage migrant workers for low-skilled jobs. By 2022, there were over 1 million low-wage migrant workers on the Work Permit (WP). Among them, 268,000 were foreign domestic helpers and 415,000 worked in the construction, marine and process sectors. Yet, the Singpaorean government has been tightening its curbs on lower-skilled migrant workers to secure local employment in recent years. In the 2022 Budget Statement, the government announced that the employable proportion of Work Permit holders in the construction and process sectors, will be reduced from 87.5% to 83.3% by 2024. In March 2023, the Minister of Manpower stated that its internal studies on foreign workforce policies found that restricting lower-skilled foreign workers is more likely to have a positive income on local employment compared to restricting higher-skilled labour. While this is yet to be translated into actual policies, this nevertheless suggests the labour policies trajectories the Singaporean government may take in the future.
With the exception of about 400,000 foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong, the territory has little traced record of imported labour until it endured an acute labour shortage in recent years. According to Chief Executive John Lee, the city had lost about 200,000 people from its workplace in the past few years, with about half of it being low-skilled. To ease the staffing crunch, the government unveiled its plan on 13th June 2023 to import about 20,000 workers in the construction, transport and aviation sectors, along with a separate plan to suspend regulating over 26 low-skilled occupations, including hairstylists, waiters and cashiers for two years.
The Hong Kong Government’s ambitious labour importation schemes were criticised by both the pro-Beijing labour and political group the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), the territory’s largest labour union federation representing over 400,000 members, and the pro-democracy Democratic Party, the only remaining major political party which identifies itself as pro-democracy following the dissolution of the Civic Party in May and the Hong Kong electoral reform initiated by China’s National Congress in 2021. Affected professional groups like the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union (HKCIEGU) and the Public Light Buses Staff Union also voiced their opposition. According to the survey published by HKCIEGU, over 80% of local construction workers who participated in the survey disagreed with government moves to import foreign labour, whilst 76.8% thought that it would lead to local unemployment. The survey also found that nearly 40% of respondents believed that the policy would cause a surge in accidents, whilst over 70% feared a drop in salary. Public Light Buses Staff Union produced similar survey findings, with over 80% of its drivers against the move, and over 97% attributed the minibus drivers shortage to inadequate wages and benefits.
The Bottom Line
As two cities that have often been compared to each other by many and seen as competitors by some, both Hong Kong and Singapore have recently introduced new visa schemes to attract elite and high-skilled labour. Traditionally, Hong Kong has not welcomed imported labour other than foreign domestic helpers, whereaslow-wage migrant workers have long been a crucial part of the Singaporean economy. On 13th June 2023, the Hong Kong government bucked this long-standing trend, announcing policies to introduce unskilled and semi-skilled non-local workers in the territory. These schemes from the two cities may seem similar at first glance, but a closer inspection reveals differences in their background, the demographics they might attract, and the perceptions of locals. It remains to be seen how successful these policies will be and how they will affect the economies of the two cities.