Bilahari Kausikan says Singapore needs new approach to integrating immigrants in age of technology

SINGAPORE: In a recent interview with the digital magazine ThinkChina, former diplomat Bilahari Kausikan spoke on the rivalry between the United States and China, but touched on a number of related topics, including tensions in the South China Sea.

In the context of global uncertainties, Mr Bilahari was asked by editor Chow Yian Ping what Singapore should do to stay out of harm’s way.

His answer had to do with immigration, in that the city-state should do a better job with socialising immigrants, especially in the light of how much different things are today.

“We have not recognised, I think, sufficiently, that the nature of immigration has fundamentally changed,” he said.

“Your ancestors came from somewhere else, mine did; half of mine came from China, the other half came from India. But wherever they came from, whether China, India, Indonesia, wherever, when you left your ancestral country in the past, you really left,” he added.

And even for those who planned to return to their homeland later on, while they were away, there was hardly any contact with those who were back home.

Today, the situation is far different, Mr Bilahari said, in large part due to technology, which everyone carries around with them.

“Nowadays, you don’t leave. You carry your country in your pocket. You may leave physically, but you get your information, you get your contacts, you get everything in your pocket. 

So you leave physically, (but) you don’t necessarily leave mentally,” he said.

Mr Bilahari went on to clarify that he was not calling new immigrants disloyal, regardless of where they come from. However, he added that because “their cultural reflexes are different,” Singapore should change the way it socialises new citizens, by using the new technology that has made today different.

The current ways, he said, are “rather mechanical” and “not adequate to the new challenges posed by technology… and so we have to use new technology to counter it.”

Mr Bilahari’s full interview with ThinkChina may be viewed here. /TISG

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