Daily Lesson from Life 21 March 2009

"Sat, Mar 21, 2009 AFP - S'pore needs immigrants to survive: MM

SINGAPORE, March 21, 2009 (AFP) - Singapore, which is facing its worst recession in history, needs foreigners to survive in the long-term, founding father Lee Kuan Yew said.

The city-state is not reproducing itself fast enough and the government has in recent years opened its doors to attract more talented migrants to avert a serious population shortage.


"Without new citizens and permanent residents, we are going to be 'The Last of the Mohicans'. We will disappear," Lee, 85, told an audience at a local university late Friday.

Lee is the country's first prime minister and remains an influential figure. He is an adviser in his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's cabinet with the title minister mentor.

Singapore needs a fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain its population naturally but a string of incentives including monetary ones to encourage Singaporeans to have babies has failed to make an impact.


A report released this month by the Department of Statistics showed 39,935 babies were born in 2008, well short of the 60,000 births the country needs each year. Singapore has a population of 4.84 million, including about one million foreigners who work in the country and their families.

The local economy is projected to shrink by up to 5.0 percent in 2009 and the elder Lee told the audience at the university it may take up to six years to recover in a worse-case scenario.


In a sign of how tough times are, Singaporeans trained as engineers are looking for jobs such as bus drivers once shunned by locals, The Straits Times reported Saturday."

There is NO doubt that Singapore need foreigners since it is not replacing it's own population adequately. However, what is not properly understood is: WHY Singaporeans are NOT interested to replace themselves?

Lessons for me are:

1. we always need new blood in any organization for it to remain vibrant and relevant. The new blood preferably should come from within the system that is conducive to the existing members to rejuvenate themselves. For some reasons, the government has not found out the reason why Singaporeans are not interested to replace themselves. I even feel that it has stopped trying? Am I right?;

2. when the existing members of any organization do not see equitable treatment of the old and the new members, they will form an opinion regardless of what the authority said about the need to bring in new members to keep the organization relevant. This is human nature and the authority will need to double the effort to explain and persuade even when it met strong skepticism! To give up is not an option!;

3. more resources should be devoted to understanding why Singaporeans are not interested to replace themselves. Many have voiced their concerns about the high cost of living (NOT the high quality of living!), the perceived unfair treatment being given to 'new foreign origin' Singaporeans, the compression of wages in the service industries while loss of jobs in the traditional manufacturing industries, etc. Somehow, no concrete move has been made to let the people feel that the authority is taking them seriously! In fact, some felt they were been chided as losers and whiners!

There is no doubt Singapore need foreigners. However, if the underlying tensions between the new migrants and the existing Singaporeans are not addressed heads on and properly, the crack will appear later and widen to irreconcilable level. That will not be good for the nation as a whole! I hope that the authority will take appropriate actions in time to prevent it from undermining the achievements that Singapore has attained since independence!