Before I start on the actual content of my article, I would like to say that I will be dead honest in what I write. Some may call it 'insensitive' but I hope no one is offended by it. I will say exactly what I think is the truth, and I will be open to comments and criticism. Also, I do have some criticisms of postings on The Real Singapore itself, but I assume that these posts were contributed by other people and not necessarily the admins of TRS itself. Therefore, my criticisms are directed towards these people, not TRS.
Whether or not foreigners belong in Singapore has always been a cause for controversy, with popular social media websites such as The Real Singapore commonly criticising foreigners' acts and PAP's decision to "import" foreigners. A few recent examples of anti-foreigner posts from The Real Singapore being the Philippine woman who earns $2480 per month, the Bailey De Villiers incident and an incident of a PRC defecating in public .(I will use these examples later). On the other hand, the government insists that it is the right thing to do. So, there is obviously some tension between what the people think and what the government of Singapore thinks.
I personally think that it is fine for Singapore to hire foreigners, but only to a certain extent. In Singapore, we have a relatively high standard of education. Many Singaporeans can earn pretty high qualifications by the time they finish their formal education as compared to other countries. So, if everyone in Singapore is so highly educated and have good qualifications, who would want to clean toilets, cook food or attend to customer service as a living? There are some, but many don't imagine themselves doing that as a living. In this aspect, hiring foreigners who don't mind doing this is fine. However, the worry is that foreigners fight for us with jobs that we actually want and when there are too many foreigners as compared to Singaporeans, Singapore might lose its spirit and culture.
There are also worries that hiring foreigners might "lower the standard of service". For example, hiring a foreigner as a waiter may not be good because foreigners' English might not be as good as the average Singaporeans'. However, if you think about it, many Singaporeans descended from foreigners. When foreigners first come to Singapore, obviously their English may not be excellent if English is not spoken in their home country (e.g. China). However, after years of staying and working in Singapore, they learned our culture and our language and we, their descendants, have actually use English as our first language in this country. Who would have thought of that when Indian, Malay and Chinese foreigners were the ones who were coming to Singapore?
Some might say that this is not true because as soon as foreigners finish their contract and earn enough money, they will just go back to their own country and live their life in luxury. However, many Singaporeans themselves are proof that this is not true. Our ancestors who came to our country as foreigners worked here to earn a living, but there were some who found Singaporean culture interesting or perhaps better than theirs' back at home, and decided to bring their family here to work and live. I personally know of some Australian and Indian families who have completely moved into Singapore and integrated into our culture, even though at first it was just one family member who came here to work on a contract. Sure there will be some who will just leave, but there is already evidence that some will stay. Therefore, as long as we give foreigners time to integrate into Singapore, I believe it is possible to live together in harmony. In the 1950s, it was hard to believe Singapore would come together as a nation because of its different cultures as well, so Singaporeans' doubts are not unfounded, but I believe that showing foreigners care rather than cruelty is the first step to achieve racial peace.
Anyway, my opinion on whether foreigners should be allowed or not in Singapore is probably the least of your concerns. But I would like to point out another problem pertaining to this issue. For this, I would like to use TRS, the very site I am using to voice my own opinions. TRS is a good site because it provides uncensored voicing of opinions, unlike national newspapers, for example. However, I find the people who use the site as a place to post their opinions may have the wrong intentions. Looking at the comments of many TRS posts, there is a lot of hate-speech. For example, "f*ck <person>", "<Person> don't belong in this country. If you not happy then just leave!", "<Person>'s English is so bad still wan say things". In many posts, <person> will refer to foreigners. Let me give an example:
http://therealsingapore.com/content/foreign-student-international-school... (I recommend reading this article and the comments by some people at the bottom of the article to understand what I'll be trying to explain later).
This was an article posted on TRS pertaining to the Bailey De Villiers case. Comments to this post was mainly sarcasm, vulgarities, photos of Bailey to shame him, photo-shopped photos of Bailey (to shame him even more?) and overall hate-speech toward foreigners in Singapore. The TRS community condemned his actions, which is a good thing. However, it might interest you to read this article now:
"Dear The Real Singapore,
On 12 Sep 2014, Jee Morgan and Sean Josh Albertan, two netizens, insulted the local foreigner community by calling them "idiot kind" and likened one particular foreigner to "a fcuking alien" who looked like "satan". Jee Morgan even questioned "how his mother looks".
These two netizens' vileness and hatred towards Singaporeans, is the same disdain that Americans had towards African Americans in the past.
This clearly contradicts Singapore's values of "Pledging ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion" as recited in the Singapore pledge. Is this resentment rampant amongst Singaporeans. Having better medical attention and education opportunities as compared to foreigners and PRs, many Singaporeans are taking it for granted and are mocking foreigners with contempt.
The local Singapore authorities must ensure that such indoctrination is stamped to prevent Singapore's own racial discrimination, where the majority Singaporeans discriminate against the minority groups of foreigners and PRs causing racial tension.
LJS"
Sounds familiar? This was an edit of the original article posted on TRS and if you're wondering the insults were comments by people on TRS' article. I'm not trying to hate on Singaporeans instead of foreigners now, but I'm trying to show how ironic we can be sometimes. We post an article of an "uncivilized" foreigner who without any logical reason insults Singaporeans. No doubt his actions are wrong and he deserves to be punished, but what do we do in return? We comment and flame all foreigners for being ungrateful without any logical reason. We shame him, insult him and shame him again. How is this any better than what that teenager has done? Soon ICS will really be posting the above article to The Real Singapore and the flame war just goes back and forth, back and forth forever. Why can't we just say what the boy did wrong in a non-aggressive tone and condemn him?
My last point will be pertaining to the case of a PRC who defecated in public. Once again, this was posted on TRS and the shame and flame started again. Many comments were similar to "Remove all foreigners from Singapore!", "PM Lee what are you doing about this?" and "Vote PAP out in GE 2016!". Not to mention the infamous "F*ck off, we're full" photo. There is no denying that defecating in public is wrong and should be condemned, but let me give you an example to show how irrational we are when we say something like "Remove all foreigners from Singapore!". For example, let's say in a particular building, a light bulb bursts and kills a man. This is something that may have happened before, but how often do we hear of this type of news? A light bulb is not supposed to be able to kill a person, but in this case it did. Following the response from Singaporeans on the TRS post, many people would say "Remove all light bulbs from Singapore!", "PM Lee why aren't you banning light bulbs from being used in Singapore?". However, we don't do this, do we? Why? Because although a light bulb burst and killed a man, we realise that the chances of it happening are actually quite low and this was a one-off case. Imagine all the times the light bulb did not burst and kill a man. The chances are probably 1/100000 or something for both to happen. However, when it comes to foreigners, is this the case? The moment one foreigner does something wrong, we say there is something wrong with all foreigners in Singapore. But do we actually remember the other 9999 times we have walked out of our house and a foreigner was not defecating in public? Nope. We only remember the one time it did happen. Therefore, we generalise that all foreigners are disgusting and uncivilised. To remove ourselves from this bias, whenever something happens, we should think of all the other times it did not happen and thus weigh how often it really happens. Also, there are cases of Singaporeans who defecated in public. Yet we only remember the times when it was a foreigner, but forget all the times it was a Singaporean.
This is just my opinion on the current situation in Singapore. Once again, I would like to say that my opinion on whether foreigners should be allowed in Singapore or not is just my own opinion and I'm not forcing it down anyone's throat. However, the two issues about Singaporeans expressing their views towards foreigners I think is a problem that really has to be solved or foreigners will never feel comfortable living in Singapore. Imagine you are a poor Philippine citizen who has run out of jobs at home and desperately needs one to feed the family. Hoping to find a job in Singapore, you go there to work as a humble cleaner, dishwasher, waiter, etc. However, the moment you reach there you find everyone hates you and you don't understand why. My message to everyone is that if you want to express your views freely, express them in a non-aggresive and non-insulting manner such that everyone can understand. I will be open to comments and criticism and will try to reply to them if possible.
Lee Jin Shaun
TRS Contributor