Why the need to send Singaporeans overseas?

The NTUC has set up an institution called Employment and Employability Institute e2i, to train Singaporeans to compete and work overseas. This seems to be a big preoccupation of the NTUC and is like a cure all for the ills of Singaporeans, especially the PMEs who are finding it difficult to get jobs at home. The main reason is that since they cannot find jobs in Singapore, the NTUC is going to train them to find jobs overseas. 

Can anyone see the silliness of this logic? Our own talents, well educated and experienced, cannot find jobs here when we can provide more than half a million good jobs to foreigners who are likely to be less educated and less experienced, and may even be using fake degrees or degrees from degree mills, and we have to send our talents overseas to make a living. And with the strength of our dollars, and the low salaries that other countries are paying, (don’t ever think they could get better paying jobs in well paying western countries if they cannot make it here), is this a better alternative? Yes, better than being jobless at home.

I am not going to discuss why our PMEs are being replaced by foreigners. I know all the silly reasons that are craps at best. The answers are too obvious. Nothing to do with their talents and skills for sure.

There are times, and with good reasons when we want to send our talents overseas. The organisation is expanding and we need our people to go overseas to take charge of our investment. No need for e2i for such postings. Does this ring a bell, taking charge of our investment overseas by our own people? Does it make any sense to have foreigners coming here to take charge of our investments?

When we send out people overseas, it is a kind of promotion, and they are going to see an improvement in their income and value. We don’t send our people overseas to earn less, in more junior positions. Even when our PMEs went abroad, they are being head hunted or they found better positions that are paying them better and worth the sacrifice. Others may be venturing out on their own, not as low paying employees.

The govt of the past encouraged our people to go out to seek their fortune, not to beg for a bowl of rice. In those days jobs were not so plenty at home, and we need new fields for our talents to explore. And the exchange rates were in our favour. It made a lot of sense to do that for the able and talented.

Today, we have so many good jobs at home. Why the need to send our people overseas, and then fill these good jobs by funny foreigners with funny backgrounds and qualifications? Is there anything funny or wrong with this thinking and policy? We are not short of good jobs for our own people. Foreigners are flying in by the plane loads to seek their fortune here, a better quality of life in one of the finest city in the world, for good jobs and good incomes. We are telling our people to vacate this city to rough it out in the 3^rd World cities to earn less, to live less comfortably without the convenience of home and to leave their expensive castles and families here!

On the other hand the foreigners are bringing their families here to enjoy everything we built, a safe, clean and orderly place, to bring up children. What the hell is going on? Lee Kuan Yew said, ‘nobody can just walk in and take over what we created’. What do you think the govt is doing? Inviting everyone here to take over what we have created, take over good jobs, our women, our homes, and celebrating it as a good thing. And then tell our people, please go out to make a living, this city state has no good jobs for them. We only want foreigners to live here and work here.

What is going on? Crazy, or something more serious is happening?