These laws are generally well intentioned, but I am skeptical of the results. The testing for PE provides some measure of understanding of the applicants understanding of engineering principals, but generally doesn't evaluate understanding of how safety is related to any of that. Most importantly it doesn't measure commitment to safety.
Those aspects of the registration are where the money grabbing tends to focus, but isn't the primary protection anticipated from the legislation/law.
Corrupt/dodgy/incompetent engineer with all the right qualifications can continue approving/designing public/safety infrastructure/objects, as they didn't need to maintain any ongoing check of them upholding legal (even before considering ethical) obligations as other professions do.
With some form of mandatory registration, in theory, if a body finds that person acted unlawfully then they could be de-registered and no longer able to practice in those areas requiring registration.
Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, Pharmacists, etc all follow that model and it works better than having nothing (but industry capture tends to make their enforcements soft and investigations superficial/ineffective).