Cheap foreign labor flocks to Singapore because it's much richer than the countries around it. But that's not how it got rich in the first place. Singapore had a restrictive policy on foreign workers until the 1980s. But by that point its GDP per capita was already almost as high as the UK's: https://emergenteconomics.com/2012/03/12/718/

And insofar as Singapore has such a policy now, the rest of the world should take notes. Creating wealth from poverty within a few generations is miraculous, and the system that achieved that should be emulated.

No, the real secret is an expansive list of capital crimes! Or maybe it’s the public flogging. It’s hard to tell.