Singapore, a city state of 5.45 million people, has in recent decades sought to augment its population with new arrivals, mainly from other Southeast Asian nations, as well as China and India.
Official data shows that around 15,000 to 20,000 new citizenships are granted each year, in tandem with some 30,000 citizen births annually. Authorities in the city state have declined to reveal the breakdown of new citizens by their original nationalities.
Singapore’s passport was named the most powerful in the world earlier this month by the Henley Passport Index, which ranks nations according to the number of places people armed with their passports can visit. A Singaporean passport allows visa-free travel to 192 destinations.
Bhima Yudhistira, executive director at the Jakarta-based Centre of Economic and Law Studies think tank, said that immigration official Silmy’s comments were meant as a wake-up call for Jakarta to improve the calibre of its workers.
There really is a brain drain and if you let it, Singapore will get a lot of value from the people who actually enjoy support from the Indonesian government
Silmy himself studied overseas – including at the George C. Marshall European Centre for Security Studies and the Nato School, both in Germany.
“This is a criticism of the quality of civil servants, including at the immigration department,” Bhima said. “There really is a brain drain and if you let it, Singapore will get a lot of value from the people who actually enjoy support from the Indonesian government.”
Since 2011, Jakarta has provided scholarships for top students to study overseas, under the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) scheme.
Recipients are obliged to work in Indonesia for several years after graduating. However, from 2013 to 2022, 413 graduates did not return, the fund said last year.
According to global recruitment consultancy Morgan McKinley, the average monthly salary of a full-time worker in Singapore in 2023 is S$5,783 (US$4,360). In Indonesia, data from the statistics agency showed the average monthly salary of graduates last year was 4.3 million rupiah (US$286).