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[h=1]CONTINUOUS, HIGH IMMIGRATION WILL LEAD TO IMMIGRANTS FAILING TO INTEGRATE[/h]
Post date:
5 Mar 2015 - 11:15pm
Dear TRS,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/who-are-we/
The link above contains a very useful review of Samuel Huntington's book "Who are we?". The book contains highly incisive perspectives from Professor Huntington on immigration. Huntington is a highly respected political scientist, as well as the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council during the Carter administation.
There is an uncanny similarity towards how both countries grapple with immigration. I have substituted Miami for Geylang, and America for Singapore, in a few choice quotes below:
"In his book, Huntington argues that post-1965 immigration is very different from previous waves in two significant ways. In the first place, it consists of continuously high levels of immigration. Previous immigration was either low but continuous or a series of high peaks followed by low troughs. Continuous high immigration tends to retard the assimilation of immigrants into the host community and to foster ethnic ghettoes that then accommodate semi-permanent ethnic diasporas."
"If immigrants speak several languages, they have a clear incentive to master the lingua franca that will help them to communicate both with each other and with the native-born. If they speak one language, however, they are more easily able to continue living in a linguistic enclave that is an overseas version of home, such as Aljunied, where it is the native-born who feel foreign."
"Here the second sociological reason comes into play: America’s elites—both the corporate elites of the Right and the academic elites of the Left—do not share the opinions and tastes of the Singaporean people. Both elites have been, in effect, “de-nationalized” by the processes of economic and cultural globalization. They are more likely to share the tastes and opinions of their counterparts in other countries than those of their own countrymen in heartland and small-town Singapore. They regard patriotism and national feeling as atavistic emotions that retard both economic rationality (in the case of the Right) and cosmopolitan ideologies of “democratic humanism” (in the case of the Left). And they see Singapore not as a nation like other nations, if more powerful, but as the embryo either of the global market or of a new “universal nation” without boundaries or restrictive citizenship. As a result, on a whole range of policy issues, the Singaporean people are firmly on one side and the Singaporean elites are on the other.
Son of Pasir Ris
TRS Contributor
Post date:
5 Mar 2015 - 11:15pm
Dear TRS,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/who-are-we/
The link above contains a very useful review of Samuel Huntington's book "Who are we?". The book contains highly incisive perspectives from Professor Huntington on immigration. Huntington is a highly respected political scientist, as well as the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council during the Carter administation.
There is an uncanny similarity towards how both countries grapple with immigration. I have substituted Miami for Geylang, and America for Singapore, in a few choice quotes below:
"In his book, Huntington argues that post-1965 immigration is very different from previous waves in two significant ways. In the first place, it consists of continuously high levels of immigration. Previous immigration was either low but continuous or a series of high peaks followed by low troughs. Continuous high immigration tends to retard the assimilation of immigrants into the host community and to foster ethnic ghettoes that then accommodate semi-permanent ethnic diasporas."
"If immigrants speak several languages, they have a clear incentive to master the lingua franca that will help them to communicate both with each other and with the native-born. If they speak one language, however, they are more easily able to continue living in a linguistic enclave that is an overseas version of home, such as Aljunied, where it is the native-born who feel foreign."
"Here the second sociological reason comes into play: America’s elites—both the corporate elites of the Right and the academic elites of the Left—do not share the opinions and tastes of the Singaporean people. Both elites have been, in effect, “de-nationalized” by the processes of economic and cultural globalization. They are more likely to share the tastes and opinions of their counterparts in other countries than those of their own countrymen in heartland and small-town Singapore. They regard patriotism and national feeling as atavistic emotions that retard both economic rationality (in the case of the Right) and cosmopolitan ideologies of “democratic humanism” (in the case of the Left). And they see Singapore not as a nation like other nations, if more powerful, but as the embryo either of the global market or of a new “universal nation” without boundaries or restrictive citizenship. As a result, on a whole range of policy issues, the Singaporean people are firmly on one side and the Singaporean elites are on the other.
Son of Pasir Ris
TRS Contributor
