Quora Answer: Why Does Singapore Not Send Back All Foreign Workers, & Take in Rohingyas for Construction?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why does Singapore not send back all the foreign workers, and take in Rohingyas for construction?  Singapore can earn more since we do not have to pay them.  We just have to give them food and shelter.” 

Are you suggesting that Singapore take in refugees, and turn them into slaves?  This is not 1000 BC, and we are not building monuments to the god kings.  This is the 21^st century, and we are building modern infrastructure, using modern technology.  We need semi-educated and educated people to operate machinery.  That is why the work permit system emphasises skilled labour through the different costs of the foreign worker levy. 

Aside from the fact that this is clearly against international law, and a violation of human rights, this means taking in hundreds of thousands of people with no related skills, of a different culture, and entirely disenfranchised from the community.  Do you know which society was built on that level of slave labour?  Ancient Sparta.  It meant an over-militarised society that needed to put down frequent revolts.  Sparta faded away, and became a sort of theme attraction during the time of the Roman Empire. 

Slave labour is a disincentive to innovation and technological development.  That is the opposite of Singapore’s values.  Slaves need to be fed, with little return on investment, since educated slaves will revolt, and create disorder.  Either way, the cost benefit analysis is not attractive.  In a modern capitalist world, slavery does not work, and that is why it really died.  During the American Civil War, the slave-holding South was always going to lose to the industrialised North.  Slavery was a disincentive to industrialisation.  This would guarantee Singapore eventually fails. 

Singapore is an exercise of social engineering on an industrial scale.  It would not make sense for us to undermine that by taking in an entirely new group of people, from a source of labour we have little interaction with, and destabilise our social contract.  Foreign workers come here for a better life, acquire skills, and bring it back home.  The absolute best and brightest stay and apply for citizenship.  Refugees, especially refugee slave labour, are here to stay.  If they are problematic, they cannot be repatriated anywhere.  There is no work permit to cancel.