S'pore struggles with anger against migrants
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong touched a nerve by saying residents, including new arrivals and those on work visas, are "all participating in one big Singapore family" at an Indian New Year celebration this month.
However, increasing numbers of citizens in the city state express resentment at the foreign professionals and workers who makeup nearly 40 per cent of the population.
“That’s it! He’s selling us out,” wrote reader Christopher Lim on the Facebook page of The Online Citizen.
Singapore lives in uneasy symbiosis with its immigrant workforce, owing much of its economic success to the foreigners but also increasing tensions in the conservative society.
“The social costs in terms of congestion, competition for public goods, the sense that our Singaporean identity is being eroded, have probably increased,” said Donald Low, lead author of “Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus.”
“Some Singaporeans have responded by directing their anger at the migrants themselves,” he said. Foreigners have been slammed on social media for their behaviour.
“To build a strong Singapore and get compliant workers, the government promoted a pragmatic Singapore identity primarily based on ideas such as meritocracy and multi-racialism,” said Stephan Ortmann, a research fellow at the City University of Hong Kong.
Consequently, nearly 30 per cent of the 5.4 million population are non-residents on temporary visas, mostly for work, and another 10 per cent are non-citizens with permanent residency, authorities reported last year.
Common Singaporeans feel further isolated by a perceived inequality of how the fruits of the labour force have been distributed.
“The high income inequality has heightened a sense of increasing alienation between the elite, represented by the government, and the people,” Ortmann said.
The government has responded by restricting the intake of foreign workers and ramping up infrastructure development. But the number of immigrants is still growing, albeit more slowly, and so is the voice of public discontent.
The harshest comments have been reserved for Lee’s statement at the Indian New Year event that Singapore “is a place which is special, which belongs to all of us”, as reported by Channel News Asia.
“A leader making this kind of statement is not fit to be a prime minister of Singapore!” 37-year-old taxi driver William Lim said.
A petition he started for Lee’s resignation has more than 2,700 signatures, no mass movement but significant in a country where political opposition is subject to repression. And the government has not let up in fighting its critics.
When demonstrators announced plans to burn an effigy of Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in January, authorities warned that it might breach fire and safety regulations. A crowd poured water on it instead.
In May, blogger Roy Ngerng received a letter from the prime minister’s lawyer demanding an apology and monetary damages for a post criticising the management of the state pension fund.
Last year, the attorney general charged blogger Alex Au with scandalising the judiciary.
Such legalistic measures may seem genteel to the outsider, but are effective in Singapore in creating a “climate of fear”, Ortmann said.
“While many continue to press their demands, especially educated Singaporeans are more worried about the impacts of their criticism”, and hold their tongue, he said.
