On Citizens, Permanent Residents and Bumiputrification

I have wanted to write something about this for some time already, and my previous post serves as a convenient lead-in.

Three Reflections

Of the many national day rallies I have watched over the years, there is one that will be forever etched in my mind. It is the one when the then Prime Minister Goh suggested that Singaporeans who chose to leave were quitters, barely moments after praising Jing Junhong for winning us the Commonwealth gold medal and chiding Singaporeans for not accepting her as one of our own. Some amongst the audience must have turned to look at Jing. The camera too was trained on Jing's face, and the whole of Singapore watched. It was a moment of supreme irony, of contradiction, and of the tension that was globalisation. I think it was a TV moment that ranked up there with MM Lee's tearful interview after Singapore was ejected from Malaysia.

Two weeks ago, I was having my usual Wednesday coffee with some faculty members and colleagues. A lady researcher from Italy proclaimed that she was really proud to be an Italian when we were on the topic of football. A Swiss faculty member, Fred, replied in jest, "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. How could you be proud of something which you practically have no choice in?" Fred was right of course. Had the Italian lady been born English, she would have had nothing but football heartaches instead of two world cup victories in her lifetime.

My father was an economic immigrant from China. He had never wanted to make Singapore his permanent home. He arrived to a colony sometime in the late 1950s, but on the stroke of midnight 9 Aug 1965, he was suddenly a citizen of Singapore. Like many other Singaporeans, he found himself an accidental citizen of an accidental country. I, by default, became a Singaporean. If my father had gone to America instead of Singapore, his children would have been Americans.

Reduction of PR Benefits

Childcare subsidies for PRs being phased out over 2 years - Straitstimes 9 May 2007

Hospital subsidies for PRs to be revised from Oct 2007 - CNA 10 Dec 2006

Learning to make a distinction; PRs, foreigners to pay up to 80 per cent more in school fees over next two years - Today 6 Dec 2006


Levelling the Playing Field?

Much has been written, particularly in blogosphere, on the economic competition immigrants pose for locals. Three separate policy announcements on childcare, healthcare and education, but the overall thrust is the same. The Government, probably responding to popular pressure, is trying to show that it will put Singaporeans first.

The euphemism we often hear is that these policies are designed to 'level the playing field', which of course rest on the presumption that Singaporeans are economically disadvantaged compared to immigrants. Or it could be some assumption that citizens should always be treated better as a "legitimate sense of entitlement". Considering how accidental citizenship often is, the natural sense of entitlement is hardly a product of rational thought. Furthermore, as Wang points out, the fact that PRs do not get to vote sits badly with the principle of no taxation without representation. Not only do we not allow them to vote, we are now reducing the benefits they enjoy, even as they pay the same income tax, GST and COEs as the rest of us.

Let me now address the bugbear that is national service since so much has been written about the sacrifice Singaporean males make. We Singaporean males do national service because we are born Singaporeans by the chance of nature, and we basically have no choice about it. Some get on with it and with life, others perpetually turn it into an issue. If the government will to allow male Singaporeans the choice of reducing their benefits to the level of PRs in return for not having to serve, I think enlistment into SAF will drop by half. Besides, the female half of the citizenry do not have to make this national service 'sacrifice'. Are they then second-tier citizens? Who is balancing the equation or levelling the field there? It is an exercise in futility trying to always keep a benefit and sacrifice scorecard.

Softly Softly we Bumiputrify

When one looks at the various changes, it is just a couple of hundred dollars worth of benefits here and there between citizens and PRs. If national service is indeed such a big sacrifice as it is made out to be, we would be fools to think that a couple of dollars worth of subsidies can level the playing field. The difference is probably also too marginal, thankfully, to make Singapore less attractive to would-be immigrants.

Unlike Singaporeans born here, PRs choose to be in Singapore, their being here are not accidents of birth. Jing had to take up Singapore citizenship in order to represent us. Many PRs however continue to remain citizens of their own countries because of family ties, residual loyalty, and of nostalgia - perfectly understandable reasons, the same reasons why many Singaporeans choose to keep their Singapore passports even though they reside overseas. There is really no need to push PRs into taking up Singapore citizenship as many are already as Singaporean as you or I, having studied and lived here for years. A pink IC is no proof of loyalty to Singapore. Conversely, if many PRs became citizens just to advantage themselves with a few more hundred dollars of benefits, we should be very concerned indeed.

Though these changes are mostly cosmetic, an unhelpful precedent has nonetheless been set. Symbolic as they are, these new measures are acts of discrimination against permanent residents, which are aimed at placating locals who feel threatened by the perceived economic advantage of immigrants. The original bumiputra policy also began this way. If it is politically necessary to have these symbolic differences, so be it. But let's have the good sense to guard against any further bumiputrification of our socio-economic policies. We either welcome immigrants or we keep them out. Only an insecure nation discriminates against them.