Singapore Expats FB Group Breeding Anti-Local Comments

A private Facebook group Singapore Expats with over 16.5K members has recently been under fire by some netizens. According to complaints sent to All Singapore Stuff, the group has seen an increasing war of words between foreign expats and locals.

While some reasonable voices from both sides have participated in various discussions, the topics on livelihoods and jobs availability in Singapore has created some controversy. It seems some Singaporeans who are group members have been banned from the group after being accused of being "xenophobic." An entitled FB group member sarcastically invited other "xenophobic idiots" lurking in the group to leave.

The expats themselves are not blameless. A few of them were witnessed making comments to mock Singaporeans. An example would be a female netizen who harboured thoughts about Singapore regretting about its decision not to hire foreigners. Another foreigner also exaggerated Singapore should not close itself "under a protective and politically inspired impulse" even though statistics released by the Prime Minister’s Office Strategy Group showed the dip in the non-resident population was largely due to reduced foreign employment in the services sector.

Such comments are seen as being arrogant and condescending, especially when well-paid expats push across such views in a time when Singaporeans have been losing their jobs.