When Singaporeans complain about foreigners, they are particularly referring to people from their neighbour country “Malaysia”. They need to use subtle way to complain to the Government.
Most Singaporeans are afraid to discriminate and complain against Malaysians because Singapore is small and solely depending on Malaysia for many things and their survival.
Singapore and Malaysia are just across the border and people from Malaysia can come into to Singapore at anytime to get jobs easily because they can speak Chinese, English and Malay which are the 3 main national languages in Singapore. Especially, when the people from nearby Malaysia border area can just spend 5 to 10 minutes on the bus to get into Singapore.
Addition to that people from Malaysia can acquire permanent resident and citizenship easily. After they receive the residency or citizenship status, they can get access to education, housing, healthcare and etc from another side of the fence.
One of the good examples will be – after being granted resident or citizenship status, they will buy the HDB house to rent it out.
Then, they travel back and forth to go to work in Singapore daily because housing and living cost at Malaysia border is a lot cheaper than Singapore due to the strong Singapore currency.
Singaporeans are so angry about their neighbour country exploiting them but on the other hands they can’t reject them directly.
If you go and ask them, they will say it is not true for sure because they don’t want to sour the relationship with their neighbour for survival sake.
They will always say, “we are brothers and good neighbours”.
Editor’s note: This article is retrieved from a comment posted and it reflected the true sentiment of many Singaporeans here due to the historical and cultural similarities between the two neigbhouring countries. It is estimated that more than 300,000 Malaysians are working and residing here with as many as 150,000 living as permanent residents. Many remain as permanent residents after more than 20 years refusing to convert to Singapore citizens.
Many thousands commute daily between the two countries via the Johore Bahru checkpoint due mainly to our strong currency difference and professional work culture.
Many companies also prefer to hire Malaysians due to their strong work ethics and survival instinct. Many took on significant positions within the companies and become a important pillar in the work hierarchy.
Source: www.transitioning.org
