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Singapore fact of the day
Using the latest data available, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs puts Singapore’s foreign-born population in 2006 at 42.6 percent.
That's by Kerry Howley of Reason, here is the full article, which argues that Singapore's guest worker program is working. But such high levels of immigration work through:
Singapore’s willingness to accommodate conservatives through policies of segregation that Americans would probably find odious...[Singapore has] a system that invites immigration while emphasizing legality and distance. A comfort with hierarchy expresses itself as a comfort with inequality, and countries that can tolerate inequality can allow huge influxes of poor people.
The same could be said for many of the Gulf States; few members of the Dubai ruling class are saying to themselves: "We wanted workers but we got human beings in return." Loyal MR readers will know that I am generally pro-immigration, but this article is a good place to start for thinking through possible conflicts between immigration and liberalism.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 18, 2007 at 07:04 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
If you are not only comfortable with inequality but gain money and power from it -- as is the case for organizers of NGOs for the downtrodden and for very progressive politicians -- then you will have a comensurate personal incentive to advocate more-open immigration policy.
Posted by: sammler at Dec 18, 2007 9:07:55 AM
Yeah, but they have to live in Singapore - the TGI Friday's of Asia.
Posted by: McLovin at Dec 18, 2007 9:16:43 AM
“Hierarchy and segregation are part and parcel of the Singaporean psyche,” says Leong Chan Hoong, a psychologist at Singapore National University and an expert in the public perception of foreign workers. “Because of that, you are able to accept foreign workers more readily. You are assured that you will have some space, that your social, spatial identity will not be compromised with the huge influx of foreigners coming in.”
Those pesky cultural factors refuse to go away.
Posted by: 8 at Dec 18, 2007 9:34:19 AM
And it won't be surprising most of them are middle-class educated Malaysians, predominantly Chinese, who are driven away from their home country due to discriminatory and racially motivated policies at home which ironically make them having more equality in most other countries than their own.
Singapore, being almost identical culturally and historically, but 5-6 times richer and only few hours from Malaysia, is an obvious choiced destination.
Posted by: Elanor at Dec 18, 2007 12:06:07 PM
Singapore's geography and legal environment are special. A small island and a common law legal system enable tight immigration control that is moderated by a legal system which can adapt to circumstances.
Posted by: PJ at Dec 18, 2007 1:14:04 PM
I endorse the Gulf State model. If more of the open borders crowd could embrace that they'd get less resistance and it would certainly be the case that many people would improve their lives.
Posted by: TGGP at Dec 18, 2007 2:57:18 PM
I live in London but have worked in Singapore - I love the food & people, and generally liked it there.
But the menial workers (maids, builders etc.) brought in from Malaysia, Indonesia & India are treated very poorly - immorally so in my opinion.
Free & open to migrants Singapore is not - maids routinely have to pay a bond & their passports are confiscated by their employers. That's indentured labour in the 21st century - and I understand the same is true of the Gulf states.
True sustainable migration requires parity of esteem (or at least the chance of it) to work long-term without civil unrest. That said, it does appear that people will willingly suffer without parity of esteem for many years when moving from poor countries to richer hubs like Singapore.
Posted by: nick at Dec 18, 2007 3:25:58 PM
More than 50% of Torontonians were born in another country, and we have resisted implementing any sort of caste system. I think a more useful distinction might be between immigration from many different places and immigration primarily from one place.
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