Integration is key factor as more immigrants settle in S'pore: Minister

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/261658/1/.html

In this article, it is noted that new immigrants to Singapore are not adapting well here as locals and the foreigners are not able to accomodate each other. There are prejudices and stereotypes between the two parties and hence a social problem is created.

Personally, I feel that locals are more at fault for causing this problem. First of all, locals should accept that most of the foreigners who come and work here are true talents who can bring in benefits for our economy. They are highly skilled professionals who can easily get a job at places which offer better opportunities like New York, Shanghai, etc. But they chose to work here, and they can help pull up our economy with their skills. So, we should actually appreciate that they are willing to come here to apply their skills. Yet, if we keep thinking that it is unfair that foreigners can always get good jobs and treat the foreigners badly, they will not want to come and work here anymore and throwing away talents like that is really very wasteful. Although foreigners might seem arrogant, but we should try to understand how they feel. After all, they are foreign to Singapore, so they will try to shield their emotions and build a wall around them until they are closer to the locals. Hence, they will seem arrogant and aloof, but if we do not give them a chance to slowly get close to us, and instead term all of the foreigners as arrogant, the foreigners will not even feel encouraged to warm up to us. Obviously, they will be angry at us and we will be the ones losing out if all these talents are not willing to work in Singapore.

There are also many times when locals lose out their jobs to foreigners and says that employers are biased and will rather hire foreigners instead of locals. Though, this might be true sometimes, there are times where we have to accept the fact that there will be people more qualified to the job and in this case, foreigners. We cannot always give excuses such as employers being biased toward foreigners to cover up the fact that the foreigners might just be better than us at some aspects. We have to know that most of the time, everyone is given an equal chance, so if we really lose out our job to foreigners, maybe it is just that they are really better than us. Instead of coming up with excuses, we can just learn from the foreigners and in the future, we can be as skilful as them in our jobs.

If Singaporeans can just stop acting like a bunch of sour grapes and just try to understand the foreigners instead of condemning them so fast, this social problem can surely be solved and this will lead to Singapore's economy rising, which will then attract more foreigners to work here.