Peesai Leedership Fcuked Up. How to Compare With USA?

[makapaaa]

<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Integration and immigration: Copying the US won't work
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->BASING our integration and immigration efforts on those of the United States, as Mr K. Kesavapany suggested last Saturday ('Integrating immigrants: Learn from American experience') may not help Singapore. Our experiences are different and based on contrasting paradigms.
Improvements to the demographic profile of the US are not due to its immigration policy but the result of some two centuries of nation building by prudent leaders who enjoyed the advantages of a large country with rich natural resources and a fundamentally strong industrial base buttressed by a critical mass of home-grown citizens.
The US does not suffer from the problem of economic migrants. Also, the comparatively small number who want to make America their home must assimilate, and not the other way round.
Singapore is different. In just 10 years, the population jumped a mind-boggling 25 per cent, to four million in 2000.
Here is the nub: The Singapore Department of Statistics in 2002 showed that in 2000, 63 per cent of all ethnic Singaporean groups aged 35 to 44 years attained only secondary level education. Can these groups compete with well-educated foreign migrants for high-paying jobs created by sophisticated multinationals? Are we creating a poverty trap for low-income Singaporeans?
My understanding of Mr Ngiam Tong Dow's commentary last Thursday ('Lest we become strangers in our own land') is that he wants to remind our population planners to rethink an immigration scheme precisely because Singaporeans face unequal competition from a massive influx of economic immigrants.
In large developed countries with solid home-grown global industrial bases like the US, economic migrants are insignificant and their function is to boost the American economy.
They cannot influence America's social system radically.
Can Singapore's economic model - based on global trade and foreign multinationals - continue to retain the brightest and the best to call this country home?
With 6.5 million people, can we integrate more than three million new citizens over one or two generations successfully through an open, meritocratic system that will not fundamentally affect Singapore's social fabric?
If we fail to integrate our new citizens, the mistake will be irreversible and we will become strangers in our own land.
Paul Chan

 

[makapaaa]

<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>US not a good example for Singapore to follow on integration
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I REFER to Mr K. Kesavapany's response last Saturday ('Integrating immigrants: Learn from American experience') to Mr Ngiam Tong Dow's comments that integrating immigrants may make us strangers in our own land, and runs the risk of Singapore being used as a stepping stone and being left with a second tier of average people ('Lest we become strangers in our own land', Thursday).
Mr Kesavapany gave the example of the United States as the right way for Singapore to follow. But the US is the most powerful country in the world and a leading economy, and so will invariably attract the talented to live, work and sink their roots there.
How can we compete with a country like the US?
John Ng


=> In addition, the US ensures its own citizens get the goodies first while Peesai is the other way round. Kick out the Familee traitors first then say lah!<!-- end of for each --><!-- Current Ratings : start --><!-- Current Ratings : end --><!-- vbbintegration : start -->

 

[makapaaa]

And it's double sin to piss them off by selling them out!

<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Can't stop the best and brightest from migrating
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I READ with interest the excerpt from a 'fireside chat' Mr Ngiam Tong Dow delivered to the Singapore chapter of the World Presidents' Organisation ('Lest we become strangers in our own land') last Thursday).
Mr Ngiam lamented that 1960s Singapore's 'stop at two' population policy resulted in a drastic drop in birth rates. Since then, Singapore is unlikely to ever restore its natural birth rates to replacement levels, and so we have no choice but to rely on immigrants.
Although Mr Ngiam is right that today migration is economics-driven, with the best and the brightest moving round the world searching for higher-paying jobs, he also reminded our population planners that the immigration issue is no longer a numbers game. Regrettably, he did not offer his opinions on how to curb the continued decline in birth rates.
In reality, it is very hard and not pragmatic to stop the best talent and promising entrepreneurs from moving round the world as they treat it as their performance platform and mobile home. Hence, Singapore must ensure it is among the most competitive and attractive places for the best to live and sink their roots in.
I agree with Mr Ngiam that our population planners should not be hasty to accept anyone seeking citizenship, as we need stringent criteria and tests to measure up potential citizens. For example, the authorities can require new citizens-to-be to do a lengthy period of community service. This will test whether they have what is required.
Teo Kueh Liang
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