used to be foreign direct investment and the foreigners that came with it was a huge source of new jobs for sinkies. So in that sense, it was correct.
But now what you have is that we are importing labour which is direct competition for jobs. The few and the wealthy immigrants such as the haidilao boss may or may not contribute some jobs to the island, but it's no longer like the old days where you can get a factory set up for thousand of employees.
Partly it's a failure of policy to allow direct competition at a lower level where foreigners do not create jobs, but partly it's a result of Singapore pricing itself out of manufacturing which was more labour intensive.
haaaaa