The use of policies to rigorously manage the use of foreign labour is widespread in both the developing and developed world. Singapore, Indonesia, Malyasia, Hong Kong, Japan, most of Europe, and North America, to name a few, have some sort of fee and/or quota system to regulate the inflow of foreign labour. In fact, Bahrain and the other Gulf countries have among the world’s most lax regulations on in this regard. In addition, the policy proposals which aim to liberalize the market are also common in many countries.

Singapore provides an interesting example. In the mid-1970’s, Singapore embarked on a program of comprehensive reform. There too, employers were complaining about the poor quality of the Singaporean work force: common complaints included that Singaporeans would not perform shift work, lacked quality consciousness, would not take initiative beyond the narrow confines of their job, and would frequently hop from job to job. The government’s response was comprehensive refrom, including labour market reform to manage the flow of low-skill foreign labour and to increase wages of Singaporeans, education and training reform to improve the skills of the workforce, and economic reform to spur private sector job creation. Today, Singapore has a world-class workforce, with a thriving private sector and one of the most competitive economies in the world.