The hidden consequences of massive immigration

This post is terribly current given the state of the global economy and the spate of traffic accidents involving locals and foreigners. I didn't plan it this way, but here it is.

[BTW, the taxi-Ferrari accident couldn't have happened at a worst time for the PAP. The rational PAP elite would dismiss this as having no bearing on the Hougang by-election. Such a rational PAP elite would be a f***ing idiot in my opinion.]

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As was amply demonstrated over the last several months since before the General Elections of 2011, the PAP government likes to strenuously protest that its ways are the right way. Then, after the GE campaign started looking less sanguine, it started getting religion, the highlight of which was the PM's unprecedented apology. 

But months after the GE, I think it's mostly been window dressing, backsliding and soft-pedaling on the hints of promises for reform and change, renewed justification of prior policies, and a belief that the current direction is fine, just that better perception management of us unwashed peasants is required.

Sort of the PAP equivalent of sticking the fingers in the ears and going lah-lah-lah-lah-lah.

Well, today, I'm going to talk about the hidden consequences of massive immigration [and this is over and above the spate of traffic accidents we are seeing]. 

Because I believe it is not going to be long before these hidden effects stop being hidden and start exerting themselves in ways that will make life very uncomfortable for the average Singaporean.

Even if the government is no longer handing out visas, PRs and pink ICs like candy at Halloween (and it's debatable that they have stopped doing so), the fact remains our population has almost doubled in the past 10 years, and the composition of our population has dramatically changed.

As a flaneur, an observer of the city, I am going to stick my head out and make some predictions. Take what you read here with a pinch of salt, as these are mere prognostications of an Internet blogger. Still, if these predictions come to pass, remember, you read them here first.

First, the preamble. I believe the precipitating event for these hidden consequences will the next global recession, or rather the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 Continued, since that particular drama hasn't actually ended; the debt was merely transferred onto sovereign balance sheets. For reasons too long to discuss here, I believe that the next recession will be particularly bad for countries that currently run trade surpluses. So, countries like Singapore that appear to be coasting along swimmingly just now will probably see their economies pancaked in the next couple of years.

The "morning after" of massive immigration...when the next recession hits:

1. We know that foreigners are quite often preferentially hired over qualified Singaporeans by employers, particularly when the hiring managers are foreigners, and especially so when they come from countries that are known to be more...clannish. Heck, some hiring managers are even brazen enough to advertise specifically for foreigners of a certain nationality.

Well, when the next recession strikes, don't be surprised if Singaporeans are preferentially retrenched over foreigners. There are no safeguards in place today, and even if there were, the government would be weak at enforcing them. Besides, as soon as employers cry hardship, the PAP government will cave like a cheap whore on a slow night.

2. In a bad economy, a lot of foreigners will leave the country. What works well on the upturn works just as well on the downdraft.

Singapore is an expensive city to live in. It's even more expensive when you're a foreigner. And foreigners are frequently single who spend a big chunk of their income each month.

That means that foreigners probably account for a massive amount of discretionary consumer spending in our economy. If a foreigner loses his job and decides to balik kampung, he takes all his spending with him. That isn't going to be pretty by any measure. Suddenly, I think we'll see a lot more boarded up restaurants, bars, clubs, hair salons, nail parlors, retailers and the like. 

Which brings me to point number 3...

3. The market for goods and services will shrink. Expect fewer choices in the future.

Remember, a big reason why Singapore is oh-so-cosmopolitan and you can get your Gap, H&M and Topshop here now without going overseas is because having doubled or even tripled our working (and spending) population, Singapore as a market is now large enough to accommodate several niches for various consumer goods and services.

If you've gotten used to the wider range of goods and services, not just in retail, but in restaurants, bars, clubs, salons, bakeries, upscale grocers, boutique bike shops, rock concerts, theater performances, museum exhibitions...think about the bad old days when you wished Singapore wasn't such a cultural backwater...cuz those days could make a reappearance faster than you think.

4. With fewer foreigners, the property market will plummet, taking everyone invested in property with it.

No surprises here. The amazing thing is not that property prices have gone up in a big way in the last decade, or that people are up to their eyeballs in debt servicing mortgage debt. The amazing thing is that so few people I've talked to realize that for these property prices to be sustained, not only do we need our foreigners to stay, we also need (a) the supply of housing to continue to be throttled (which is unlikely to happen now that Mah Bow Tan has exited stage right) and (b) the rate of immigration continues to be sustained at the high level of previous years.

(b) is simply not going to happen because it is politically untenable and the infrastructure is already coming off the rails (literally).

If foreigners actually start leaving because of a weak economy and the expense of living in Singapore, the property market will collapse like a house of cards.

5. Many foreigners will stay on in Singapore. And that's actually a bad thing.

Realistically speaking, even in a global recession, prospects are still better for some foreigners here than back home, or elsewhere. I'm talking about Filipinos, PRCs, Myanmarese, perhaps the odd Greek or Irishman too. That's partly a function of how bad some other countries are doing, and also a function of how undiscriminating how government has been in the quality of immigrants that it has let in. See the above comment on handing out visas, PRs and pink ICs like candy.

If you're a foreigner with a PR or short term visa, and you've lost your job, but you don't want to leave, what would you do?

Doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. You move out of your apartment and downgrade to digs with cheaper rent. Or you double-up or triple-up with other foreigners you know. Some Singaporean landlords are going to knowingly or unknowingly become tenement slumlords. And that leads to...

6. An increased incidence of petty crime, vice, panhandling, domestic violence, you name it.

Unemployment or underemployment, adrift in a foreign land with limited family support or frayed relationships, overcrowding in tenement apartments...it's a bad combination. 

It's likely you'll be seeing more foreigners in your neighborhood if you live in the suburbs, simply because it's cheaper to live there. Perhaps the occasional foreigner selling tissue paper at the hawker center. Or panhandling (begging) even.

I lived in Baltimore for a few years. There was a practically a panhandler on every street corner. And the crime and homicide rate was among the highest in America. So, I'm cool with this kind of situation. Not ideal, but hey, I lived in Baltimore, I can live anywhere.

Some Singaporeans would probably need some time to get used to such a situation though. Good luck with that.

7. Because these ill sentiments tend to feed off each other in a bad economy, expect tensions to rise between local Singaporeans and foreigners.

Singaporeans are going to go from grudging indignation to righteous anger to blood boiling rage. As for foreigners, they've long been accustomed to being treated with kid gloves by the PAP, so much so that there is an entrenched sense of entitlement among them. It would be funny if it wasn't so terribly tragic that should the first riots in decades to occur actually happen, they would more likely be fueled not by racial differences, but anti-foreigner sentiment.

No need to elaborate further, because the anti-foreigner sentiment that is current will simply be a foretaste of what is to come. And the PAP government will be heavily blamed. Then perhaps, the calculus behind massive immigration will finally be recalibrated to reflect the true cost of immigration, which can only be a good thing.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm not a supporter of xenophobia; I'm simply predicting which way the wind is going to blow.

Book List Refreshed 14/5/2012

I have removed:

How to Disappear by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan
Extreme Money by Satyajit Das
Factions and Finance in China by Victor C. Shih
When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson

I have added:

Cyber War by Richard Clarke
Cornered by Barry C. Lynne
Quiet by Susan Cain
Currency Wars by James Rickards

For the love of flying...my heart belongs to the sky.

Lake Maninjau, West Sumatra, May 2012.

(That's me in the top right, sharing airspace with my friend N. Credit to T. for the pic.)

1.1 billion dollars more of buses will not help

I've waited a few weeks to post my opinion on the government's move to purchase buses to improve the public transportation system for a number of reasons, mostly because I wanted to wait to read the opinions of other bloggers.

As it turns out, the few people who blogged about this expressed opinions that differed little from the general sentiment of "It's a step in the right direction, but it comes a little late, and honestly, more should have been done earlier. But let's wait and see how well this turns out."

As always, I write only when I believe I have something fresh to offer, and this is my clear and unequivocal opinion:

I do not think adding more buses in the way that the government has envisioned will improve the public transportation system appreciably. And the train situation as it stands now will NOT improve because of this new addition of buses.

I take buses much more often than I do trains to get around, so I think I'm qualified to comment. And my reasons for being so unequivocally negative on this extra-budgetary measure are as follows:

1. If you read the puff piece that the Straits Times published a few weeks ago (follow the link in the first sentence of this post), the reporters wrote on how taking service 128 was in fact slightly faster and much more comfortable than going the feeder bus-MRT mode. The piece spoke specifically about how the bus was less crowded than MRT trains at peak hour.

A word to the wise: As anyone who builds or manages systems will tell you, adding more capacity to a mode of transportation that already has spare capacity (i.e. is less crowded) is not a strategy for improving operational outcomes.


It was this single fact alone that revealed the Straits Times piece for the cheerleading article that it was. Editors at a national propaganda machine should know better than this. Chances are, service number 128 was cherry-picked to "demonstrate" the merits of bus versus train travel.

2. Anyone who takes buses will know that journey times by bus are generally longer than journey times by MRT.

There are 4 basic components to journey time:
a) Walking times to and from bus stop / MRT station
b) Waiting times for arrival of public conveyance
c) Stopping times at bus stops / MRT stations
d) Actual travel time enroute to destination

MRT wins hands down over buses due to shorter (b), (c) and (d). It's no surprise that most people prefer trains for their speedier transit. Ergo, trains are crowded while buses less so.

There are groups of people for whom buses make sense over trains. These are people who can't stand crowds (yours truly), do not live sufficiently near to an MRT station to take advantage of its speed (and hence have to take feeder bus services or walk relatively long distances, yours truly again), or have to endure the hassle of making multiple transfers across rail lines even on MRT.

But by and large, for most people, the speed of the MRT wins out over buses.

Which brings me to this point: adding more buses on the roads generally only reduces (b). It does very little for the other three components that make up journey time by bus. MRT will still be faster for most journeys.

In addition, we have to consider the fact that even if the buses succeed in attracting passengers off the trains, they will only attract the marginal travellers who value space and comfort just that much more over shorter journey times. That's going to have limited impact on improving the train situation.

3. But wait, there's more.

Adding more buses on the roads will reduce waiting times, making journey times by bus shorter and hence a viable alternative to trains that more passengers will consider. That's what our public transportation planners would like to think.

As it turns out, there is already a way to reduce waiting times for buses to a minimum, as savvy bus travelers like myself know. Two things: schedules and bus transfers.

Going to work in the morning, buses travelling from the suburbs to the CBD area tend to arrive on time and on schedule because traffic is relatively light on the roads around the suburbs. After all, people live distributed all over the island. It's a different story in the evening when the roads out of the CBD are filled with vehicles all trying to get out at the same time, and arrival times for buses tend to become unpredictable.

When I head to work every day in the morning, I make it a point to reach the bus stop only 2-3 minutes before my bus arrives, a trunk service that brings me to within a 5 minute walk from my office building. No transfers, minimal waiting time. Granted, the bus takes a circuitous route and it's still slower than the feeder bus-MRT mode, but there's no jostling with the crowds and much less walking.

Going home in the evenings, I can take the same direct trunk service again to get home, but because of the aforementioned unpredictability in waiting times, I choose a different strategy instead.

I walk to a bus stop that has not one, but two bus services that take a very direct route toward home, but can only drop me off 4 bus stops short of my destination.

From there, I have two buses that can take me straight home, and another four that can take me 2 bus stops closer to my destination.

And finally, at this third bus stop, I have 4 buses that can take me the final 2 bus stops back to my home.

I call this extreme bus transferring. And it makes total sense after the transition to a distance-based fare system last year. At every stage of my journey, I maximize the number of buses I can take and minimize the waiting time. It's not uncommon for me to drop off a bus and take the next one that's either right behind it or in front of it at the bus stop. Total waiting time for my journey ranges from 2 minutes to perhaps 7 minutes, comparable to the MRT.

But even with all these stratagems, I have to say: the MRT is still faster. Getting from my office desk to across the doorstep of my apartment, or the converse, takes about 45 to 50 minutes by the walking-MRT mode. The same journey by bus takes perhaps 55 minutes to 1 hour 5 minutes. For reference, I work in the CBD and my home is in the Dover area.

So, despite the best intentions of our transport planners, the point I'm trying to make is that even with reductions in waiting time brought about by more buses, MRT still wins out.

Even with bus lanes and the newer concept of "bus hubs", it's unlikely stopping times and travel times will appreciably improve for buses and make them competitive with trains. Which is why I seriously doubt that more buses are going to alleviate the train situation.

The real kicker in this long post of mine discussing our woeful public transportation situation?

I run home from office twice a week, and I take just 1 hour 15 minutes to do so. Now that's fast.

The remarkable Singaporean work ethic

In a space of 2 weeks, I had 3 different friends, in separate conversations, relate how hard it was to find Singaporeans to work with at work, and what a shame it was, because oftentimes, the foreigner colleagues they had to deal with had a poor ethic, were more concerned with political machinations in the office than getting things done, or were simply incompetent at what they had been hired to do.

And in many cases, they felt that they had to pick up the slack in order for any headway to be made at work. One friend was a manager at an IT firm who still had to do coding himself on occasion for lack of available expertise. Another was an IT recruiter who could see the consequences of his boss relying too heavily on a Filipino colleague, a colleague who was extremely political, clannish, and who would, he surmised, eventually leave the company for a better offer, taking all his Filipino cohorts and accounts en masse with them. Yet another friend was a doctor who frequently picked up after her less meticulous foreigner colleagues because, "otherwise, it's the patient who suffers".

Now, I have to stress that these 3 friends of mine all stated that not all foreigners that they worked with are thus so, and that they knew on a personal level examples of great people from various nationalities that they would be happy to work with. So, these 3 friends of mine were neither the xenophobic nor the ultra-nationalistic type.

The interesting thing was that despite their misgivings of some of their...less professional colleagues (and just as a sidenote: Indians from India and Pinoys tended to the most frequent targets of their venting, perhaps because of these nationalities' propensity to talk up a good show but not actually delivering), my friends all seemed much more focused on getting their jobs done, and done properly, than suing for some fairness at work, or for their less professional colleagues to be forced to live up to higher standards.

I could understand the logic behind such thinking, since as my doctor friend did put it, if she didn't pick up the slack, the direct result might well be a poor patient outcome, which nobody wants to see. Still, I couldn't help but marvel that Singaporeans, on the whole (and exceptions of course do exist everywhere), are quite hardworking and responsible, and perhaps to our own detriment, generally respectful of authority and non-confrontational.

No wonder those friends of mine who were in a position to hire lamented that they could find relatively few qualified Singaporeans to hire! And those that were not hiring managers did state that they would prefer to work with more Singaporeans.

I used to think that more foreigners meant more competition for locals at work, that Singaporeans would have to up their game, and perhaps end up working longer and harder. Now, I guess, the picture can be much more complex than that.

Having more foreigners may also mean lowered productivity, as not all foreigner hires are quality hires, and the resulting burden of greater work stress may fall disproportionately onto the responsible Singaporean shoulders.

It's interesting to speculate how much our diminished productivity growth in recent years has been due to our insourcing of cheap, unskilled labor, and how much of it has been due to the lack of quality people that we bring into the country that nonetheless take up middle class and middle income jobs.

If Singaporeans were once lauded as the world's most hardworking and productive workforce, it should hardly come as a surprise that as the proportion of Singaporeans that comprise it reduces, the quality of the workforce correspondingly diminishes

When keying in PIN, cover the keypad, 'nuff said.

By now, everyone and their mother should have heard about the theft of funds from DBS bank accounts through card skimming.

This is such an old scam that there are forum posts on it dating back to the early 2000s. Just do a Google search on it.

And just like in previous years, it was done in almost exactly the same manner: a card skimming device attached to the card reader and a spy camera to capture the PIN as it is punched in by the cardholder.

[Obviously, the ATM card you carry doesn't hold the PIN information. That is stored centrally at the bank itself.]

Which is why, for years and years since the first skimming incident, I have always covered the keypad with my left hand as I enter my PIN at the ATM with my right hand. In fact, I don't even look at the keypad when I enter my PIN. I use all five fingers to punch in my PIN with my right hand on the keypad, just like on a keyboard when I am at a desktop computer.

So, for those who haven't adopted such a habit yet, and the statistics indicate at least 400 / 2700 = 15% of users haven't, please do yourself a favor and cover the keypad when you are entering your PIN at an ATM.

Book List Refreshed

I have removed:

Aftershock by David Wiedemer et al
Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Red Capitalism by Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie
The Spirit Level by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson

I have added:

Extreme Money by Satyajit Das
Factions and Finance in China by Victor C. Shih
The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar (recommended)
Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare