PM Lee correcting his "hum" mistake

Cockles aka "hum" picture from http://www.rasamalaysia.com

PM Lee in the pep talk to the NTU students on Tues night had said Singapore cannot take in unlimited number of foreigners. Er, I wondering who started it? And now PM Lee says now the pace of intake of foreigners must slow down?

No point talking when the social effect of liberal immigration policy had already taken root in Singapore..... PM Lee cannot simply undermined the Singaporean Society over $.

I feel that the PM is trying to explain to boost his image to Singaporeans on this "stupid" immigration policy especially when it can cost him votes in a GE and start to politically "correct" his past mistakes.

Especially the "hum" mistake during the 2006 National Day Rally.

In his speech to the NTU students, this paragraph caught my attention:

"The words you need, the phrases you need, carry a little phrase book with you, so you have all the words whether it is chilli, no chilli, whether it is laksa, no hum and so on."

In my mind, I was thinking: Why was the PM Lee's script writer "re-visiting" the hum? The "hum" mistake in the National Day Rally had such impact?

In the speech it also stated that:
"But nevertheless we know that we cannot take in an unlimited number of foreign workers. We already have almost a million (?) foreigners working here and we cannot imagine simply expanding year after year and one day having two million foreigners working in Singapore."

Is PM Lee's script writer white washing the actual amount of immigration by just emphasizing the Foreign Workers? Didn't the script writer include PRs in the almost a million statement?



Source: http://www.nps.gov.sg

Looking at the chart by the National Population Secretariat (an independent entity in the PMO) states that foreigners is 1.68 million (if include PRs). However, non resident is already 1.2 million! Where is the almost 1 million foreigners figure came from?

In the Population Brief report, page 3 states that: "The growth in Singapore’s population is largely due to the increase in the number of PRs and non residents. Singapore continues to face significant population challenges, brought about by low fertility rates and an ageing population. Our total fertility rate, which has remained below replacement level since 1976 (Who caused it?), has resulted in a smaller resident population aged below 35 compared with the older generations." Ref: Population Brief Pg 3

Full speech to the NTU students at PMO website.