Most Singaporeans welcome foreigners but…

This is the finding of the most authoritative English newspaper in the island. It did a survey on 400 individuals on their views about foreigners and the result is published in the paper today.

Coincidentally the finding is as good as what is expected. The people welcome more foreigners and foreigners are needed if we want growth. Also foreigners are more talented for sure. And foreigners will contribute to our growth. But I am to fill the survey form, I think my answers will be very different. And if there are 400 respondents like me, I don’t think anyone will want to publish the result of the survey.

It is not that I am anti foreigners. I think there is a place for some foreigners to be here. But I strongly disagree with the number of foreigners here. I strongly disagree that they are needed for the type of growth the average Sinkies want and the kind of lifestyle that they are forced to live with. And to call them talents is rubbish. There are many more local talents that are now regarded as non talents. Many are not better than the average Sinkies in all levels except the very exceptional like the few American entrepreneurs. And many are of dubious background but with a lot of money to throw.

We definitely need the foreign workers in the construction industry and some lower level jobs that no Sinkies want to do. We definitely do not need plane loads of questionable middle level executives to compete with our graduates from the three top local universities. Unfortunately, somehow, the local graduates from the local universities will never be good enough. Even at top management level, many are also found not good enough, especially in finance. But this problem will be solved in 20 years time. They realised that we are not producing good finance talents and they are starting to work at it. In 20 or 30 years time, the top banking institutions may see a chance to be headed by our own, genuinely local talents.

I wanted to conduct a survey on the views of netizens on how they feel about this survey and how they feel about foreigners. Then I know that the result would be what I expected. I humbly understand the biases in a survey sample and would not have the audacity to claim that it reflects the view of the average, or majority of Sinkies. That is how real people can be and how unreal people can be in the conduct and findings of surveys.

If I were to do a survey with an intended outcome, I can even jig or rig the result by carefully choose who I ask, how many is the sample size, the smaller sample the better, how the questions are phrased, and even throw away those answers that don’t fit the results that I wanted. Heh heh, it is so easy to conduct survey to produce the result that I want or for whoever wants it. I can simply cheat or game the result.

But that is me, or that is the kind of result one can get from the netizens, biased and unrepresentative. Big reputable organisations will not do such silly things or conduct surveys on netizens when the results will be known even before the survey is completed.

Back to the ST survey. Now that it is confirmed that Sinkies are quite happy with the foreigners here, then everything is fine and there is no problem bringing in more, except a little bit more, not so many. How many is not so many?