Bizcuits | Import Policy on Professionals

Leanda Lee

Behind the statistics reported yesterday in MDT and Human Resource Office comments on the necessity of skilled non-resident workers, there is a piece of the puzzle missing about Macau’s working population. Our workforce comprises local residents, non-resident workers and those in between; the temporary and permanent residents, many of whom accessed Macau through IPIM’s Investment Residency program together with their families.
We were told that “the number of skilled imported workers in Macau has grown only marginally” as renewing blue cards has been difficult. The Human Resources Office referred to the law – as bureaucracies do – by advising that “the importation of non-resident workers is only allowed on a temporary basis under [certain] conditions when [the] local labour-force is insufficient.” Over the years, the expatriate community has understood temporary-residency status provided a greater range of benefits over the blue card, including reasonable circumvention of long-term fluctuations in labour-force supply and demand. Blue card holders were at the mercy not only of economic circumstance but of their employers to maintain their status. Employment mobility – particularly pertinent in the fickle gaming industry – was better facilitated through residency. Spouses and family members could work and become secure members of the Macau community, and companies required fewer blue card quotas.
This is where many of the “wealthier, better educated” become subsumed into the local resident population. The “growing number of qualified local residents” is not just a function of better education and training of the local workforce but of the shifting of this expatriate class of educated and skilled individuals into the resident category. Statistical re-classification through policy and regulatory change is not new to Macau: the shift from VIP GGR to mass has been aided by a similar reclassification.
Taking into account these temporary residents who’ve been granted right of abode, the numbers start to give added colour to the story. In 2005 the inflow of non-resident (blue card) workers was 27,160, but 11,395 people were also granted right of abode (the category into which professional expatriates fit). This figure, too, has been decreasing over time: 9,489 in 2009, 4,455 in 2010 and down to 2,278 in 2014 and 1,784 in 2015. The net figure for those granted right of abode is not as meaningful as the non-resident worker end balance, because temporary residents disappear from the ‘foreign worker’ statistics into the resident category as they are granted permanent residency. This is why foreign consulate services have difficulty in estimating the numbers of their citizens in Macau – the citizenship data on Macau residents disappears from the publicly available records.
The right of abode net figures do, however, highlight a discernible policy shift. The net figure is the difference between the right of abode granted in that year and the number of people who have had the right of abode annulled, which is what happens when a residency renewal application gets rejected. The net figure was 94% of the granted figure in 2007 suggesting that for temporary residencies granted up to that point, renewals were virtually automatic. This figure saw a gradual decline to 75% in 2010, until 2011 when it fluctuated around an average of 41% for the following years. This is a distinct change – not in law but in implementation of law – and those renewing their applications in 2011 and 2012 were at the receiving end of a sudden and inexplicable tightening of the assessment criteria. Expatriates caught up in this change were left shell-shocked.
The response from the Labour Affairs Bureau to MDT’s questioning this week was the default line: reference to the law. What various communities seek when such questions arise are explanations as to how and why the law is implemented the way it is, not what the law is. Our laws tend to change at little above the speed of inertia but the pace of change in the way those laws are applied often leaves families and businesses grappling to adapt. Behind those statistics there are people.