I would have written something about this letter when my friend sent it to me earlier had I not been bothered by work and some personal matters. Here’s the letter in question:

It appears to me that PRs from this one particular country always have this unusual and unacceptable ‘mentality of entitlement’. We have far less issues with other PRs, apparently. I recalled having written another blog post before, after another PR (apparently of the same nationality) shamelessly wrote in asking why he can only get HDB flats off the open market and not the ‘subsidised’ ones which are offered only to Singapore Citizens who are first time owners.

When I first read it, my response to the friend who sent the article to me was simply this: “This is like a customer, whom after being served a cup of plain water, asks for a cup of chai latte – for free, and also to be served first.”

Frankly, I don’t understand where her argument of “compromising her children’s education” is coming from. Giving priority to the children of citizens in getting a place in schools would hardly compromise her children’s education. She either have to send them further away to study if she can’t get her children a place, or to a private school. After all, we citizens expect her to pay the full fees for her child’s education for taking up a place which would otherwise have been given to a Singaporean child!

According to this article, Mrs Sweta Agarwal had also issued a veiled threat that PRs may consider leaving Singapore if their children cannot get into the schools of their choice, and had justified the equal chance given to PRs because they ‘pay taxes and abide by Singapore’s laws’.

That’s preposterous! Everyone is expected to abide by the law of the land, wherever he / she is, and this PR should not forget that Singapore provided her the job opportunities in the first place and thus paying taxes to our State is a duty and in my personal opinion, an institutionalised method for people who has benefited from the society to give some of it back. It doesn’t matter whether the government gahmen uses that money to build infrastructure or invest (and lose) it in investments. Ultimately, that money is spent with the intention to benefit everyone staying here. Before Mrs Sweta Agarwal issued her threat, she should first ask herself why she has chosen to come to Singapore, if not for the fact that Singapore offers the best deal? Unless she is really exceptional, Singapore losses nothing in a win-win deal like this since someone else either more capable or equally capable would have quickly filled the positions she vacated.

As my friend Modeus put it: These people probably think Singaporean men do our national service and get allowances and enjoy free meals paid by them. Personally, I am not surprised if these people think we citizens enjoy our lives on their hard work and money or that Singapore cannot do without them. After all, whenever the Singapore gahmen defend the Foreign Fallen Talent policies, they have repeatedly make it clear that while Singapore can fill some of these jobs, we do not necessarily have the critical mass to fill all of them. As such, the gahmen opened up the labor market to attract investors to set up shop here, so that the investors won’t take it elsewhere. To put it in a simple analogy: We’ll let some outsiders come and eat the pie, because we can’t finish it all. That is better than losing the entire pie to someone else entirely.

Either way, this is not the first time a PR issued such a threat when PRs in general faces a backlash from citizens. However, PRs would do well to remember that when Singapore’s economy change, they might find themselves obsolete just like many of our own graduates trained in the wrong trade. While they may currently be in demand, they shouldn’t think that Singapore owe them a living. After all, they may come a day when their currently valued ‘talent’ become obsolete and available at a cheaper cost at some newly industrialised economies elsewhere.

We Chinese have a saying: 山水有相逢. It literally translates as: Even the mountains will meet the water. To elaborate, the mountain maybe high, but even then one day the water once flowing at its foot will be on its peaks. What it really means is that a person shouldn’t feel so high and mighty, because conditions can change so drastically that it takes others on top of you.

When the day comes where Singapore’s economy no longer needs the likes of Mrs Sweta Agarwal, I hope the ICA officer at the customs putting the chop on her passport will say:

Good riddance, to bad rubbish.