PREJUDICE

The following story (in italics) appeared on today's (or rather yesterday's) Sunday Times cover page.

It is really true and fascinating how skin colour can become an issue. I've experienced it myself a few times in Europe.

Like what one of the interviewees said,

'Really, you're not one of them, and never will be, no matter how hard you try to speak, think and act like them.'

I love London, but I just don't belong to London. I know that I don't belong to England. Singapore is still my home.

Yeah. No matter how hard I try, I never will belong to London. Simply because of my skin colour, my accent, my hair colour.

All these factors may seem cosmetic, but its just the way the society works.

Racism and prejudice exist, everywhere, even at home. Perhaps racism and prejudice are innate and inborn.

Don't believe it?

Think about YOUR treatment of the international and exchange students (esp those not of the same colour as you) in our very own universities: NUS or NTU or SMU. How do you treat them yourself? I bet you wish that they have nothing to do with you, or you have nothing to do with them. I bet at some stage or another, you wish they have not been in NUS/NTU/SMU to compete with you for grades, for honours, for whatever opportunities etc. Why are those China people so intelligent? Why are they here to compete with me? Why do those Indians smell? Why do...... The list is neverending...

They just disgust you, they irritate you, they annoy you. Simply because they are not Singaporeans, or simply because they are not of the same colour as you.

In short, they are just different from you.

Think seriously about it. Nothing can be done. It's just like that.

Rather sad, ain't it?

By the way, are you thinking of migrating? Give it a second (or more) thought.

Why S'poreans return: They simply miss home
By Li Xueying

THEY had what many Singaporeans covet: permanent residency (PR) in such countries as Australia, the United States and Canada.

At their doorsteps were Victoria's bucolic landscape, job opportunities in Manhattan and a laidback lifestyle in Vancouver, fringed by water and mountains.

But some have chosen to return home, turning in their green cards, or letting their PR lapse.

Why? Some felt like outsiders in their adopted countries. Others felt discriminated against. Many simply missed home.

It's not known how many have given up their overseas PR, as host countries either don't monitor numbers or say the data is confidential. But they did give numbers for Singaporeans granted PR.

Between 1998 and 2002, 2,418 were granted green cards, said the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Australia granted PR to 6,506 Singaporeans between 2000 and last year, said its High Commission here.

Last year, Canada granted immigrant visas to between 950 and 1,000 people who named Singapore as their last country of residence. Some may not be Singapore citizens.

Over the last 10 months, 49 Singaporeans have been granted British residency status, and 217 cleared to enter with a view to settling there.

Singapore clubs overseas and lawyers who handle immigration matters said it is a rare Singaporean who chucks his PR status.

Lawyer Chen Chun Kiat said: 'It's not easy to get PR and when Singaporeans do, they won't let it go easily.'

But for shipping executive Z.Q. Tang, 42, coming home was a clear-headed decision.

'All my friends asked if I was crazy,' he said wryly, recalling their disbelief when he left in 1994, giving up his green card after 10 years in San Francisco.

Racism, he said, had disabused him of any rose-tinted visions he'd once had of spending his life in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

'Like it or not, your skin colour is an issue,' he said, from colleagues joking about his lunch 'something moved on the plate, eh?' - to strangers telling him to 'return to your own country'. Once, two Americans who had taunted him while he was driving, punched him till his face was bloodied. His mother, unused to the lifestyle, had returned to Singapore a few years before he did.

He said: 'Really, you're not one of them, and never will be, no matter how hard you try to speak, think and act like them.'

His unhappy experience may seem extreme but he is representative of the single professionals who find it easier to up stakes again and come home if things don't pan out as they want.

Those who have transplanted their children to a new country usually try harder to stick it out.

To retain one's PR status, one has to fulfill certain requirements such as spending a certain period of time in the country, and demonstrating a genuine commitment to settling there.

Australian PRs, for instance, must chalk up at least two years' residence every five years. Businessman Joe Patrick, 41, didn't.

When he was a 24-year-old graduate, he found Singapore 'too small and stifling'. In 1987, wanderlust drove him to settle in Australia, where he worked as an accountant in Sydney.

'I romanticised the idea of big, open spaces, living and working in a different country with a different lifestyle,' he said.

He liked it there, but came home after two years. His sister was getting married, his family was still here, and he had 'gotten the travel bug out of my system'.

It was also family ties that pulled training consultant Wang Decheng, 49, home eventually.

In the 1980s, he badly wanted to work in the US, and hoped that getting Canadian PR would help. He applied in 1998, spent $2,000 on interviews and medical checkups and visited Vancouver looking to buy a home. Yet, he let his PR lapse last year.

'I love Vancouver, it's beautiful,' he said wistfully.

But sitting at a cafe one morning, it struck him as 'ridiculous' that he was there alone, while his family, including his 80-year-old mother, were in Singapore.

Having opened his own consultancy business in Singapore, he's also no longer enamoured of working in the US. 'In the end, it was about me and my comfort zone. About family, friends and knowing instantly who to call if I need a plumber or doctor.'