Wooing overseas S'poreans By Derrick Ho , Gracia Chiang and Sharon Lin
Publisher:The Straits Times - Publication Date: 15-06-2008

It was Sept 11, 2001 that changed Amy Hwang's trajectory.
Although she had been scheduled to take United Airlines Flight 175 for Los Angeles to visit a friend, a computer glitch switched Hwang's flight to Sept 10 instead.
The next morning, Flight 175 smashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Centre. "Everything could have ended there and then. I just wanted to be with my family...I just wanted to go home," she says.
The 31-year-old former communications executive, who is now on a break from work, spent 13 years completing her high school and university education, then working in Australia. This is her third attempt to settle back in Singapore.
She first came home in 1999 to work in a dot.com company. She was a fresh graduate from the Curtin University of Technology in Perth. But, two years later, she quit and took off for a summer course in Boston.
That year, her close shave with the New York terror attacks made her catch the first flight home. Still, she left again in 2003 for Perth to pursue career opportunities.
For the past three years, her longest stretch here since 2001, she has remained in Singapore to be with her elderly parents.
Even so, she says that she can take Singapore only in little doses. She packs her bags and leaves every month for places such as Viet Nam or Cambodia. Some trips are for work, but many are what she calls 'escape'. It is her way of easing back in.
Like her, many returnees find it hard to reconnect with the Singaporean way of life.
Their struggles have triggered support groups such as the Returned Overseas Singaporeans in Singapore (Ross).
Started in 2006, the group is an online forum for those who have worked and lived overseas, allowing them to network and share re-entry blues. It has 107 members who meet up for coffee or meals three to four times a year.
One of its organisers, San Choo, 59, a London-based Singaporean who has lived in Britain for 41 years, is trying to grow Ross into a lobby group for returnees. "At the moment, we're too small to be able to do much to help. I'm just hoping that, as we grow larger, we can actually be an active force in helping Singaporeans re-integrate," he says.
Bleeding talent
Today, there are more than 150,000 Singaporeans scattered across the globe, from the mega-cities of London and Shanghai to remote areas in Kazakhstan. The number has quadrupled since 1990 and is fast growing.
More Singaporeans are leaving, with relatively few returning. A survey by Singapore Press Holdings in 2006 revealed that more than half, or 53 per cent, of teens here want to leave permanently, compared to 28 per cent in Malaysia and 39 per cent in India.
Singapore eggs its citizens on to go global, yet reminds them that the door is always open for them to come home.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his 2006 National Day Rally speech: "We encourage Singaporeans to go abroad, spend time abroad, gain experience, understand how the world operates."
Yet he also said: "But of course, while it's good to have people abroad, we also hope that they don't spend all their life there and, at some stage, they will decide to come back to Singapore."
The government is anxious to lure its citizens home. For a start, a hefty S$8 billion (US5.79 billion), a fifth of Singapore's annual budget, is spent on education. The government subsidises a Singaporean undergraduate in a local university by as much as S$20,000 (US14,498) every year.
In April, PM Lee revealed that one in four top A-level students settles abroad every year. About 1,000 Singaporeans give up their citizenships annually, attracted by better work opportunities and scholarships abroad. With such a small pool and every Singaporean a top-dollar investment, losing just one is keenly felt.
This brain drain is also affecting political renewal. Last month, PM Lee broached the issue not once but thrice, reiterating that Singapore's shortage of local talent may leave the country without a 'central core' for political renewal.
"In politics, we need Singaporeans who have grown up here, have friends and family here and can identify with the aspirations and problems of the people," he said.
This call for its emigres to return is a bold about-turn by the Government. Although emigres were labelled 'quitters' and betrayers as recently as 1997, the state now keeps its arms wide open to welcome home those who have left. "We have to help Singaporeans to come back," said PM Lee in his 2006 National Day Rally speech.
The Overseas Singapore Unit (OSU) under the National Population Secretariat has dispatched representatives to cities with huge overseas Singaporean populations. The unit's job is to assist any who wish to return.
Tapping the nation's obsession with food, the OSU organised the inaugural Singapore Day in New York in April last year, showcasing delicacies whipped up by hawkers specially flown in for the event.
There are sceptics. The use of local fare as a hook might have worked before but chicken rice as a selling point is fast becoming stale, says Dr Leong Chan Hoong, the head of the Singapore Institute of Management University's psychology programme.
"Asian food can now be found in almost any corner of the world," he says. These days, satay and laksa can be enjoyed in Asian restaurants from Nepal to Cape Town.
Dollars and sense
Besides culinary appeals, the state's hard-nosed marketing of its economic prospects has also garnered mixed results.
It took two visits to the Biopolis and a doubling of her salary before Singaporean researcher Tara Huber accepted a senior position at the Genome Institute of Singapore last May.
The 36-year-old, who had previously spent 17 years studying and working in the US, admits that the deal was hard to beat. "Funding here is a big draw and less time is spent writing tedious research grants," she says.
But handsome job opportunities are only half the story. She yearns to feel an emotional connection to her country. "It has to be a story of falling in love with where you came from," says Huber, whose father is Swiss and mother, a Chinese Singaporean. "It would be nice to find that you genuinely feel that way."
Lawyer Moses Lin, who came back in 2006 from the UK, shares the same sentiment. Instead of using economics as a magnet, he suggests that the state focuses on "strengthening emotional attachments and creating a sense of ownership" by giving more people a say in how Singapore is run.
The 25-year-old founder of Confluence, an annual overseas symposium where Singaporean students engage in discussions with ministers, finds the state's hard-sell tactics a turn-off.
He recalls frequent visits by government delegations from Singapore while he was a law student at University College London. "They would always try to push the economic side, like getting people to join the public sector," he says with a grimace.
The sales pitch was predictable: relatively low living costs compared to other major cities and a good track record of job creation over the last few years. The website of Contact Singapore, a partnership between the Economic Development Board and the manpower ministry to attract global talent, carries a list of the nation's growth industries and high-demand occupations.
But Lin points out: "If it's just about jobs, there are many cities in the world that are better. Lawyers in Hong Kong earn three to four times more than those here."
By replicating the work of headhunters and multinational corporations looking for overseas Singaporeans to fill local positions, efforts like Contact Singapore's may be redundant today.
International migration specialist and consultant to the United Nations Peter Stalker says: "I'm not sure that adds any value on top of what companies would be doing by themselves. I somehow doubt it."
Patriotism aside
Pockets and stomachs aside, the Government has also tried to appeal to the conscience of overseas Singaporeans. Despite the obvious attempts to tug at the heartstrings through rousing National Day songs and speeches, returnees say that the government's pleas have had little to do with their decisions to return.
"People go home because of their own reasons," says Stalker. "It's more of a question of nostalgia than guilt. It probably is a good idea to reach out, but don't guilt them. Unlike in undeveloped countries, it's not going to make them feel that they impoverish the country by staying away."
Few have responded to the call for loyalty. For starters, many overseas Singaporeans see themselves as Asians rather than Singaporeans.
The country's cultural policies that promote identification with one's ethnic roots have led to the creation of a 'hyphenated identity', one that diminishes their understanding of what it means to be Singaporean, says Dr Elaine Ho, a Singaporean social-cultural geographer from London's Royal Holloway College.
While studying in Brighton, 26-year-old Vivek Krishna found it frustrating to repeatedly explain where he came from. "People had this thinking that Singaporeans must be Chinese. They don't understand that the country is multicultural, so I had to explain that my roots are in India but my parents are Singaporean."
It does not help that Singapore is bulldozing its nostalgia-rich landmarks in a bid to shed its old, dowdy image. Familiarity with the local landscape can provide a firmer grasp on national identity and ease the process of settling back in, says Leong.
This rapid change in landscape spells a deep loss for many, like Britain-based Josephine Chia.
After living in West Sussex for the past 20 years, the 56-year-old is unused to the fast-paced metropolis that Singapore has become. "To come back and see just shopping centres, cars and people is overwhelming," says the author of two novels set in post-war Singapore. She now writes memoirs of Singapore set in the 1950s to reconnect with the island she once knew.
Reminiscing about places like the old Magnolia Cafe, she says: "It was the first air-conditioned cafe in Singapore. It was the top dating place."
She moved to the UK in the 1970s with her British husband and gave up her citizenship at his insistence. "If they had allowed it, I would have remained Singaporean and British, because it was very traumatic to have to give it up."
Now divorced, she is thinking of returning because of her son's recent marriage to a Singaporean. But she fears it may be tough for her to re-qualify for citizenship.
Dr Ho notes: "There is a fear about the vindictiveness of the state. People believe that if I give up my Singapore citizenship now, it's going to be very difficult to get it back in the future, because the state will think that I've betrayed it."
These fears, she says, need to be allayed.
Bonds that bind
If there's anything at the end of the day that does make Singaporeans flock home, it is family. For many, ageing parents are the strongest pull.
In 2001, Melissa Phey returned to be with her widowed mother and decided against applying for Australian permanent residency after five years of studying at Monash University in Melbourne. "It makes it hard to step away knowing that my mother will be living here alone," says the 31-year-old, who now runs an ice cream cafe in Sunset Way.
There are others who want their children to know their grandparents and extended family living here. Lawyer Kevin Wong, 44, came back after 12 years away in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai for that reason.
His six-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter now spend the weekends playing video games and picking up skills such as sewing from their grandparents.
"My parents were very happy that we came back and they really enjoy having their grandchildren around," he says.
When all else fails, the best pitch, experts say, is personal connections. The state's best bet is an emotive approach that says: "Come back because this is where you went to school, played 'catching' and had your first kiss. This is where your memories and family live."
Even as Amy Hwang complains about Singapore's many regulations, it is hard for her to sever ties because of her family.
She said: "People have children because they want them to be around. I've been away for 15 years and my dad is in his 60s now. I want to be around them because you don't know what will happen."

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