Saturday, March 21, 2009

Singapore needs immigrants to survive


Follow me to Singapore!
Source: Asiaone

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.


Interesting. While other places like Japan and Korea forbid immigration, Singapore needs more people to come. There's not enough baby-making going on! Most of the immigrants would come from China or Malaysia I would guess.

2 comments:

J said...

Hmm... immigrate to Singapore, huh? That might be an attractive option if things were really bad for those of us in the States.

Degenerasian said...

Yup it should be considered.

You have practice though. End every sentence with "lah", lah!