http://enquirer.sg/2009/09/16/singapore-citizenship-a-national-credit-card/
The Enquirer, 16 Sep 2009
Singapore Citizenship: A
National Credit Card?
How much money is a
Singapore citizenship worth?
Budget packages, GST credits, CPF top-ups, subsidies for public
housing, education, health and so on.
This slew of financial
benefits offered to a Singapore citizen, Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong said, is the reason why a permanent resident from Malaysia
recently decided to apply for Singapore citizenship after living
here for many years.
Speaking at Nanyang Technological University Student Union’s
Ministerial Forum, he told the crowd made up mainly of
undergraduates, “I asked her why do you need this? You are a PR,
your family is here, there is no problem.”
“She said: ‘If you take
citizenship, you get (financial) benefits!’”
While the former American president John F. Kennedy could once
proclaim to his citizens to ‘Ask not what your country can do for
you; Ask what you can do for your country’, such patriotic
declarations today might simply drive people to immigrate elsewhere
instead.
The onslaught of globalisation has shifted today’s dynamics of
citizenship towards the people. The ease of uprooting from one
country to another has made each of us consumers in a supermarket
world of countries.
The product: Citizenship.
During the forum’s Question-and-Answer session, one international
student asked PM Lee on the benefits of becoming a Singapore
citizen.
Another haggled with PM Lee to provide affordable housing to
attract foreign talent like him to stay in Singapore.
Citing his fiancée and him as an example, the PhD student from
China said it was hard to make Singapore his home without a house.
He could not afford a condominium, nor was he allowed to buy a HDB
flat as both his fiancée and him were permanent residents.
Hence, in this global fight for
talent, how can Singapore tweak its citizenship scheme to have an
attractive card that a top talent would want in his or her
wallet?
Show them the
money.
The lure of low income taxes and attractive subsidies has
definitely made Singapore the destination of choice for many. Thus,
PM Lee pledged at the forum to sharpen the difference in these
benefits so that “citizens come first”.
But how different would
citizenship be from a credit card subscription then? If the choice
of where to make a home boils down to the place that gives you the
most monetary benefits – then what happens when there is no credit
left?
To brand our citizenship
by highlighting only its financial benefits surely attracts the
wrong kind of people.
After all, a nation is nothing more than an “imagined community”.
To tie the imagination entirely on money would mean the people, and
the country, could be gone in one economic recession.
It is why the appeal of a Singapore citizenship must go deeper.
People should want to be citizens of Singapore because of what they
can and will do to make it their home.
The pink card in your wallet and the red passport you use to travel
is not a key to more money. Rather, it symbolises where you’re from
and who you are.
As a popular credit card advertisement puts it:
There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s
a credit card.
----------------------------
Latest Updates @
Singaporenewsalternative.blogspot.com
1. Singapore Citizenship: A National Credit Card?
2. S'pore Govt U-Turn On Property Gains Tax Changes
3. PM Lee, if you are really interested in emulating Israel:
KCR
4. Most Singaporeans not feel well prepared to retire: media
5. SIA's A380 fleet size surpasses 747-400 with latest
delivery
6. Myanmar allegations highlight Singapore bank secrecy
7. Singapore: Maersk ship grounds off Sebarok island
8. Singapore's MoF Introduces TIEA Legislation
9. Singapore PM says to stem flow of foreign workers
10. Eyeing China, Singapore sees Mandarin as its future
11. Eircom lodges court appeal on ComReg charge ruling
12. Why Obama had to impose those Chinese tyre
tariffs
.
