High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Before and after Independence, Singapore has attracted foreign workers from South East Asia, in particular peninsular Malaysia. There are smaller numbers of expatriates from advanced industralised countries. However with increasing cost of living and difficulties to maintain fast pace of growth in the foreign investment driven economy, the island state has taken some steps to maintain GDP growth using labour inputs. Manpower Minister Ng presided over the largely unpopular liberal policy to allow influx of foreign workers to work in Singapore. The first huge noticeable wave in the 1990s saw large numbers of Bangladeshi labourers brought into Singapore to work in local construction projects. The second wave signaled a subtle change and special class of work permits saw created for white collar Indian and Chinese professionals earning $2500 or less to work in Singapore in the early 2000s.