Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by n00b101 3434 days ago
> As a New Zealander, born and raised in Auckland. Immigrants are bad for society ... There are large pockets of Indian and Chinese people who refuse to integrate into society. Refusing to learn English ...

I'm just going quote the original article here: "Of those who do choose to move to New Zealand permanently, analysis of the New Zealand General Social Survey show immigrants integrate well. They are less likely to claim a benefit, more likely to be employed, and their children have better education outcomes than native born New Zealanders."

> I live in Singapore now.

This is rich. Singapore's official languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. The official national language is Malay. Let me take a wild guess ... as an immigrant to Singapore, you've been studiously learning Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and you absolutely do not segregate into a clique of white anglophones in your social life. Good for you, model immigrant that you are. /s

3 comments

This is rich. Singapore's official languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. The official national language is Malay. Let me take a wild guess ... as an immigrant to Singapore, you've been studiously learning Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and you absolutely do not segregate into a clique of white anglophones in your social life. Good for you, model immigrant that you are. /s

Your ignorance of Singapore is showing here. English is by far the most widely spoken language of that country. it's the language of the education system, of the government, road signs, etc. It's the most widely spoken language at home, and the lingua franca of the country. You might as well berate immigrants to New Zealand for not learning Maori or NZSL.

>Your ignorance of Singapore is showing here.

Thanks, but I have spent a great deal of time in Singapore and know perfectly well what language road signs are in.

> You might as well berate immigrants to New Zealand for not learning Maori or NZSL.

You are comparing the importance of Malay and Mandarin in Singapore to sign language ... I think perhaps it is your ignorance of Singapore's ethnic peoples that is showing here.

Singapore is a city state, and its main language is English. Not learning one of its secondary languages hardly equates to not integrating.
I'm a New Zealander, and strongly pro-immigration. Given how many emigrants there are (including, currently, me), if nothing else we'd run out of people pretty quickly without it. And I don't believe integration is currently that much of an issue in New Zealand. However:

> "Of those who do choose to move to New Zealand permanently, analysis of the New Zealand General Social Survey show immigrants integrate well. They are less likely to claim a benefit, more likely to be employed, and their children have better education outcomes than native born New Zealanders."

None of those show integration in a way I recognize as valuable culturally. They would be equally true if we were measuring a segregated expat enclave in a developing nation, but that's simply a factor of leveraging existing power structures.

Lol love the assumptions.