During my tenure at Hewlett Packard, I was on several government IT projects. Over 90% of my 100+ person team were foreigners. Like many other companies, how HP cleverly circumvented being “obvious” was to use “contractors”. Our contract was with the employment agencies who, in turn hire almost only foreigners. Hence, the headcount was never really seen. Of the 100+ person who was staffed on this one particular government IT engagement, less than 10% were full-time employees hired directly by HP.

In addition to my own personal experience, I know with absolute certainty that many of my close non-Singaporean friends who head up IT divisions within the banking sector have similar preferences of hiring foreigners over Singaporeans. While I cannot condone such practices, the system makes it far too easy for this to happen. They claim that it is better to hire foreigners because these foreign workers are more than likely to stay as almost all of them want to ultimately obtain Singapore citizenship. Rather than formulating workable incentives to keep Singaporeans at their jobs, management takes the easy way out....

The vicious cycle is well engrained in every level of employment. Senior Management positions are given to foreign nationals. They then are inclined to hire their own kind, cutting people like myself completely out in the cold with no options but to seek higher-salaried employment elsewhere.

System makes it easy to hire foreigners at expense of locals | The Online Citizen