Twenty-second International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are economic development success stories in Southeast Asia. Since the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the late 1960s, these three countries have been the leading economies in the region. As economies of ASEAN countries have gradually been developed and as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which was created to reduce barriers to trade and investment in the region, has recently been in effect, intra-regional trade, investment, and human movement have all been rapidly accelerated. Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, in fact, have relied heavily on foreign workers to sustain their current level of economic development. Attempting to fulfill their labor demands, these three countries enacted immigration policies both to promote and control the volume of labor inbound. With close proximity and comparable benefits, these guest programs have regularly resulted in the competition among these countries to attract foreign workers. This paper examines how these countries have adjusted and reformed their immigration policies, their implementations, along with their effectiveness. Findings suggest that the success of these countries’ immigration policies, besides affixed working and residential conditions, have also largely been determined by immigration policy consistency, coherence among policies linking with immigration management, management capacity, pressure from the private sector, and cultural proximity between the immigrants and the locals.