As above, so below.

One of the points of constant interest for me, especially with the latest May Day rally against it, is the way a lot of the anti-immigration sentiment is reflecting that of western nations, with a few tweaks to give the whole thing a local flavour.

So what if the immigrants are of the same racial/genetic/ethnic stock as your locals? All the usual tools need are a little tweak - once it used to be "witch", then it got turned into "racist", and now it's "xenophobic".

It works just as well, aye? Doesn't matter if you're already multicultural, doesn't matter if you're already diverse. You just gotta shake up the slogans a bit!

"Singapore for Singaporeans?" That is very racis - I mean, xenophobic!

Our own ministers blare out the need for diversit - oh, I mean, integration.

And interestingly, the exact same canards are coming out of the woodwork - we are a "nation of immigrants", you see, and we simply need all these immigrants for economic reasons despite a jobs crunch here and the fact that real wages haven't risen for decades, and the old cry of "raciss-" oh, wait, "xenophobiss!"

Oh, sure, we still keep our borders - I would know, from my navy days - but some people are voicing concern that our immigration policies are just a wee bit too relaxed when people with criminal records can slip past Immigration and get permanent residency, if not outright citizenship here.

Currently, Singapore's population is comprised of 40% foreigners at 5.31 million. I've done some quick calculations - assuming that the native population doesn't shrink (unlikely) and the government does achieve its 2030 target of 6.9 million people, that means that less than half of Singapore's population will be native.

If any other non-nation state country was 40% non-native, you'd get quite a shock from, say, the white nationalists.

As I mentioned, not everything is the same. Just as we didn't quite rely on feminism to break apart the family and abused the east asian achievement drive for that instead, so the people arguing against immigrations here are quite on the left on other issues, as opposed to the more right-wing or reactionary nationalists we find here in the Anglosphere. That's why we get idiots showing up at anti-immigration rallies who believe that V for Vendetta is cool and edgy.

And naturally, we're so inherently subservient and have been conditioned that way for decades, that all Singaporeans can manage are a couple rallies and slogans sprayed on walls in the middle of the night.

Me? I have no skin in the game, really. Remember, I'm not looking to save this society, but to give it a nudge every now and then to send it over the cliff all that quicker. But I do find it a constant source of amusement and an interesting data point to study compared to various European countries or the US of A.

Because - and I'm being quite serious here - if you westerners can't manage it, I don't think anyone else can.