It's confirmed: Singapore's latest population figures show that a quarter of just over four million people are foreign. Has Singapore cornered the market on foreign talent? By ROSEMARY CHNG.

Everyone knows that Silicon Valley actually comprises more than two-thirds Indians, Chinese and other foreigners including Singaporeans. Perhaps that is why developed countries are waking to the need for a new wave of economic migrants. Germany is looking for foreign talent. It recently relaxed immigration rules to make it more attractive for Indian IT professionals to work in Germany. The British are hunting for talent - in Singapore. Recently, it was reported to have sent a team of recruiters to look for 150 teachers. It has also been trying to recruit nurses and even policemen here.

The use of foreign talent is not new to Singapore. Singapore's economic miracle owes something to Dutch economist Dr Albert Winsemius who first came in 1959 as leader of a United Nations Technical Assistance Board team to Singapore. He was to become a consultant to the Singapore government until his retirement in 1983. Foreign investments and foreign multi-nationals were what drove Singapore's economic development in the 1970s and 1980s.

Without foreigners, there would be no Singapore. Modern Singapore began as a society of economic migrants who were drawn to the free port set up by the British in 1819. The port prospered because these newcomers brought with them enterprise, ideas and the willingness to work hard and the British supplied the stability and law and order that made prosperity possible. A few generations down the road, some of these descendants of economic migrants now question the current government drive to attract more economic migrants to Singapore.

During the economic downturn in late 1997, the spectre of retrenchments and job losses raised fears. Letters to the press voiced concern about jobs that some locals perceive to be taken over by foreigners. There have been rumblings, too, among union members about job losses. So much so, it led to Ayer Rajah MP Tan Cheng Bock raising the issue in Parliament in March last year. He pointed out that the government's repeated statements on the need to draw in foreign talent were not well received by Singaporeans during the tough economic times. He also wanted the government to think "Singaporeans first" at a time when many were being retrenched.

This quickly drew rebuttals from Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew in defence of government policies and statements on their repeated calls for greater sympathy and understanding of Singapore's need for foreign talents. Headlines in newspapers screamed "Singaporeans come first but…"

The reasons for the aggressive policy on recruiting foreign talent were and are still given regularly. PM Goh reiterated that foreign talent was needed to boost the economy, create jobs and strengthen the country's competitiveness. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew kept saying that foreign talent was the 'key to Singapore's future', that Singapore with its small population could not produce enough talent and foreigners were needed.

During the recent National Day Rally, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong recounted a joke doing the rounds in Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), the national shipping company that had taken on a Danish CEO, Flemming Jacobs, for the first time in history. The joke was that NOL now stood for "No Orientals Left". Then very soberly, PM Goh pointed out that if Singaporeans were not more welcoming of global talent, the joke would be that NOL could come to mean "No One Left".

Now the latest figures issued by the Singapore Department of Statistics which is currently tabulating the latest population census show that more than one in four people in Singapore is a foreigner with "foreigners" defined as permanent residents and non-residents such as students, foreign workers, expatriates and others without permanent residence. It excludes transients and tourists.

The jump in the population to 4.02 million from 3.05 million 10 years ago comes mostly from the influx of foreigners. Citizens now make up 74 per cent of the population, down from 86.1 per cent in 1990, the last time that the population census was done. Speaking at a press conference to announce the new make-up of the population figures, Chief Statistician Paul Cheung said, "As a cosmopolitan city, this is something you would expect. It's similar to trends in other big, developed cities."

According to Michael G. Gray, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, chairman of the Feedback Unit group on foreign talent, a former Briton and now a "Singaporeanised" foreign talent himself, the truth of the matter is that foreign companies would always rather hire local talent if it were available as any company would also want to increase profitability and lower wage costs. He presented a paper on the issues relating to foreign talent during the July Student Symposium organised by the Singapore International Foundation.

Gray said that foreign investors have often found it hard to recruit local talent to fill posts in the local branch of their companies in Singapore. Reasons have ranged from the lack of relevant skills to a more basic complaint that Singaporeans lack the necessary creativity to think for themselves and were more often followers than leaders.

Another reason given for recruiting from outside is the perception that Singaporeans sometimes ask for unrealistic salaries. The way round this problem - and one taken by many employers - is to recruit the much-needed workers in countries especially China and India where skilled workers do not overprice themselves.

Said 48-year-old receptionist Lilian Lim, "Singapore can import foreign talent so long as it doesn't spoil the local market unduly." She added, "Some of these foreigners think very highly of themselves but I feel that some are here only because they can't do well in their own country."

Housewife Shanti Musa, 35, who said she welcomed foreigners from the region but not all from Western societies said, "There is a strong perception of unfair advantage of foreigners over locals just because of their skin colour. People unnecessarily think that foreign talents are the best and know their work, but most of them are just winging it!" Shanti has studied abroad and worked with both locals and foreigners in the service industry. Interestingly, her parents both teachers from Malaysia, are part of the original foreign talent migration to Singapore.

What some Singaporeans worry about is whether all the foreigners in their midst are "talented". Some are blue-collar construction workers and there are more than 100,000 foreign domestic maids in Singapore from the region alone. Some foreigners are definitely fresh graduates and some are not even graduates. Foreign residents have not been slow to take advantage of the chance to sponsor the entry of immediate family members and relatives to Singapore whatever their talent status.

Therefore, said Gray, the definition of foreign talent must be clearly spelt out. The official position is to accord foreign talent status only to foreigners who hold an employment pass and above. Work permit holders, into which category fall construction workers and domestic maids, are excluded.

The active recruitment of foreign trainees for attachment to both foreign and local companies as well as foreign graduates to local tertiary institutions, many of whom tend to stay on afterwards, adds to the youthfulness of the many foreigners here.

Tropical rainforest ecologist Dr Shawn Lum, 37, who is now a lecturer at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, came to Singapore as a University of California, Berkeley, postgraduate student on an overseas attachment programme with the then Department of Botany in the National University of Singapore in 1989. After his graduation, he was offered a job at NIE and the Hawaiian-born American citizen of Chinese-Polynesian-Japanese descent stayed on to work in Singapore. He became a PR early this year.

This youthfulness of foreign talent especially when it is male niggles at some Singaporean males: the citizens have to do national service, unlike the foreigners who enjoy the benefits of a secure environment without the effort.

Still, no economically-savvy- Singaporean disputes the need for foreign talent or the role of foreign investments and foreigners whatever their age in Singapore's economic prosperity. Even the blue-collar low-skilled construction workers and domestic maids play their part.

Among the reasons for facilitating the import of foreign talent into Singapore is the quicker reaction to fast changing economic and technological trends. Having to develop or train human resources from the ground up takes time. Importing what is immediately required cuts lead time - a tactic that Singapore has always used.

Besides positions in the banking, financial or IT sectors, other areas which cannot function adequately without foreign or global talent are the R&D institutes and institutions of higher learning. Without active recruitment of global talent, Singapore's recent push into the area of the life sciences would not be possible.

According to Lee Ying Adams, Assistant Managing Director (Operations), National Science and Technology Board, who is herself foreign talent, 20 to 25 per cent of their current pool of scientists in R&D are foreign talent of which only 50 per cent will stay on in Singapore.

Another reason for turning to foreign talent is to help make Singapore companies global players. S. Dhanabalan, the chairman of DBS Bank, the largest local bank in Singapore, recently appeared on Channel News Asia to talk about the bank's future directions, one of which includes a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. DBS Bank was amongst the first to recruit foreign talent for top positions in the bank as preparation for becoming a global business player.

The bank has the reputation of being the local company with one of the greatest number of foreigners in its top management positions. This includes their CEO, John Olds, an American formerly from JP Morgan, US, Jackson Tai, Chief Financial Officer, American and also formerly from JP Morgan. Other nationalities on the bank's list of foreign employees are citizens from Britain, Canada, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong and Australia whose ages range from 34 to 51.

OCBC Bank is another homegrown Singapore bank with a high concentration of foreign talents at the higher management level. Its CEO, Alex Au, is from Hong Kong and among its senior staff are Gary Lim, a Malaysian, and Michael Mobley, an American.

Some of Singapore's brightest students and overseas scholars see the importance and the need to encourage more foreign talent into the island state. At workshops during the recent Singapore Student Symposium, they spoke up in favour of foreign talent generally.

Their concerns are more over how Singapore can help the foreigners to integrate into society and encourage these newcomers to sink their roots and set up homes here and ultimately become citizens themselves.

Louisa Hwang, 20, a PSC overseas scholar studying at the University of Michigan, USA, said, "Foreign talent is critical for Singapore's economic growth. The issue then becomes not a question of whether we need foreign talent but rather a question of how we can facilitate the transfer of knowledge from foreign talents to Singaporeans." She adds, "In the short term, foreign talent alleviates our problems of shortage; in the long run, this transfer of knowledge can help Singapore to become more self-sufficient."

There are many Singaporeans who are alive to the fact that foreign talent is highly mobile. Said Tan Tat Ling, 20, a Singapore Police overseas scholar studying aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London, "The danger may be that these foreign talents are mobile and may just leave in an instant, making some sort of a 'talent vacuum'. It is important to integrate them into our society such that we can one day call them Singaporeans as well."

It's an important point that the government is fully aware of. Mobile global talent was one of the issues touched on by PM Goh during his recent National Day Rally speech - and that the challenge is no longer to just attract global talent but also to make Singapore attractive enough for them to finally think of Singapore as home.

Many will leave, but some will stay. One who did was Associate Professor He Jie, 39, a former Chinese national who was working as a plant physiologist in a renowned laboratory in Australia before being recruited by the Economic Development Board in 1991 to work as a lecturer in the National University of Singapore (NUS) with the promise of PR status. After several years at NUS, she moved to NIE where she worked with Dr Lee Sing Kong to pioneer the research and development of the first aeroponically-grown temperate salad vegetables now being sold at local supermarkets under the Aero-Green labels.

She later married a Singaporean, became a Singaporean herself, and recently added to the population of Singaporeans with the birth of her daughter. Because of her presence here, she has sponsored the migration of her siblings into Singapore and they, too, have all become active local citizens.

If Singapore can depend on foreigners to deliver the goods, could it happen that Singaporeans do not feel the nudge to do better and excel? Or that they may not be given the chance to? There is the danger that with "foreign talent" available, there may not be enough investment in developing local talent. Seah Cyn Yi, 20, an undergraduate at Purdue University, voiced her concern about the current practice of importing foreign athletes to compete for the country in international games. Once a national badminton player, she recalled that she found herself sidelined when foreign players joined the team.

Seah said, "The strong feelings invoked amongst Singaporeans on this issue cannot be simply dismissed by the government as a 'side-effect' of globalisation. Feelings are a sensitive issue and I feel that it is the government's duty to slowly let Singaporeans understand the necessity of foreign talent and to let them get used to the idea of external competition. After all, it has to be a cohesive effort on both the locals' and foreigners' parts for use to improve."

Where sports is concerned, there are many who question this drive to import foreign talent to bring in the international sports honours. One reader, Tay Lin Siau, wrote to the Straits Times Forum page questioning national pride if all it means was to win? When the first Singapore Everest team put two team members on top of Everest in 1998, a huge flurry erupted when it transpired that the two who made it were not citizens but long-term permanent residents from Malaysia. The two, Khoo Swee Chiow and Edwin Siew, subsequently became citizens.

In the recent Sydney Olympics, Singaporeans with dreams of an Olympic medal pinned their hopes on China-born Singaporean Jing Junhong. She batted her way into the table tennis semi-finals. She did not win a medal in the end but Singapore was proud of one of theirs even though she may not have been born and bred in Singapore.

Now that about a quarter of Singapore residents are no longer citizens, Singaporean-ness comes into focus. As does the issue of patriotism and commitment. There is talk of when the civil service will get its first foreign permanent secretary. However, the government continues to stress that governing of the country will be done by Singaporeans only. The Singaporean identity is still very new, some would say fragile. Yet pride in being a Singaporean is very healthy as a recent Institute of Policy Studies survey has shown.

In all this debate about foreign talent, it is sometimes forgotten that there are also ongoing campaigns to encourage identity with Singapore and Singaporean-ness. Perhaps, as now-Singaporean Mike Gray puts it, what is required is not to concentrate on negative aspects of foreign talent in Singapore but rather "why we need them and how we can retain them". That is also another ongoing campaign.

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The Gurkhas Have Unusual Talents

The first Gurkha Contingent (GC) in Singapore was formed in April 1949 as a consequence of independence for India. The Gurkhas that were to remain with the British Army were moved out of India to new bases in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. Malaya which was soon to be in the throes of the Communist-instigated Emergency was to have need for the tough little men from the hills of Nepal. They played a key role in the fight against communist terrorism in Malaya.

They were invaluable during the historic riots and civil disturbances in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1950 Maria Hertogh riots when the loyalty of the Malay rank and file in the Police Force was called into question, the Gurkhas were activated to quell the rioting that erupted between the Malays and Europeans. As a neutral force, they were especially invaluable during the 1964 race riots.

Noted for their bravery, loyalty and fighting skills, the Gurkhas provide a "strong-arm squad" within the Police Force to quell civil disturbance and carry out specialist security tasks like the protection of VIPs as well as guard certain key installations. To date, the home of Senior Minister Lee Kuan yew is still guarded by Gurkhas.

Last year, the Gurkha Contingent celebrated its Golden Jubilee in Singapore. Formed with an original staff strength of 142 men, the contingent has grown to more than 1,500-strong in the last 50 years. Currently, there are six Gurkha Guard companies commanded by Nepali Chief Inspectors. The Gurkhas also have their own Gurkha Band Contingent to provide the music for their parades and ceremonies.

Naturally enough, being a British colonial import, the first GF was let by a British officer. It is still led by a British officer to this day, the only military contingent here to be led by a British officer. Another thing that has remained unchanged is the Gurkha tradition of unswerving loyalty to their paymasters.