Trump's H-1B visa fee shock: Ex-Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew's opinion on foreign workers goes viral | Watch
Amid US President Donald Trump's decision to hike the H-1B visa fee to $1,00,000 and the anti-immigration stance, a response by former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew to a question on foreign workers has gone viral on social media.
Amid United States President Donald Trump's anti-immigration stance, ICE raids, and the hike in the H-1B visa fee to $1,00,000 to deter American companies from employing foreign workers, a reply on the issue by former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew is going viral on social media.
In 2003, when asked about the continued presence of foreign workers in Singapore during the post-SARS period of economic uncertainty, the PM's calm and methodical answer ended with the audience's laughter.
At the time of writing this article, the video, shared by Paytm founder-CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, has been viewed over 15,900 times on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter).
Why do we need foreign workers? Lee Kuan Yew answers…
The video begins with an audience member posing a heated question: “Why are the Filipinos still here when we are losing our jobs? And we are doing the same work, at lower pay. We are all taking lower pay than the Filipinos, but they are still in existence. You know how difficult it is for us to explain to our members?”
To this, Lee answered, “I'm not in a position to know the details of this Filipino worker in question. And the fact that this Filipino can be paid more and they still employ him, there must be a special reason. Otherwise doesn't make sense to me.”
Explaining the need for immigrants, he added, “If we get rid of all foreign workers — let's tomorrow say, in one year all foreign workers of this category will go because we got this unemployed Singaporeans who must be employed. I think our economy will go down in a tailspin.”
“I'm not saying Singaporeans are lazy and not willing to work shifts or 12-hour work or don't want to go to workforce in Jurong because transport is too long and costly and so on. We have on our books 89,000 unemployed. There are 2,00,000 jobs which they can do and they don't want to do. And we understand it, but we're trying to get them to understand that maybe their old job may not come back at all, most likely having gone to China,” he added.
‘Economy cannot go down, companies must stay competitive’
He noted that while the period of uncertainty is difficult, the country must make it through to emerge stronger rather than sabotaging systems for short-term fixes. “I understand how much pain it is. What can we do? We got to go through this. This is a bad period. You gotta go through it. We will go through it and we'll come out on top, but we do things in a sensible way,” he said.
“Don't let the economy go down; whatever else we do, our companies must be competitive and stay competitive. If they are dead, there are no jobs for anybody. So I'm sorry if I cannot give you a simple answer: 'Yes, let's sack the Filipino.' Can't be done,” he ended, to laughter from the audience.