Singapore proves that immigrants can conform to basic values in their new country

 One of the infuriating aspects of the leftist approach to immigration, both legal and illegal, from Third World countries with values antithetical to the West, is that these new immigrants cannot be expected to conform to the customs and laws of their new homes.

However, a few hours spent in Singapore’s Little India convinced me—as if I needed convincing—that this is complete garbage. Given sufficiently strong disincentives, new immigrants will conform perfectly well to the laws of their new countries.

Where this leftist attitude toward excusing serious crimes by immigrants shows up most is in the case of those immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, accused of rape. This is because we have been accustomed to the revolving door of criminal justice for crimes other than rape and murder, and that’s true whether the offender is here legally or illegally. However, we still take rape relatively seriously, a legacy of a time when the West felt it was compelled to protect women, and of the feminist MeToo movement.

Thus, in Maryland, it appears that judges are doing their best to protect child rapists to prevent their being deported:

A FOX45 News investigation found that Baltimore County Circuit Court judges disproportionally hand down lenient sentences in criminal child sex cases involving illegal immigrants.

Public records show that Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger’s office filed 99 child sex crime cases between January 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Nearly 10% of the child sex cases in Baltimore County, involving nine defendants over a 17-month period, involved illegal immigrants from Central American countries.

And in Minnesota, there was the case of Abdimahat Bille Mohamed:

Abdimahat Bille Mohamed, who legally entered the US during the Obama administration, is charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman over several days in a hotel room in September.

Mohamed, 28, was only free because of sweet deals he’s received from state courts in two previous rape cases, including one involving a child.

“Sweet deals” is not an exaggeration. If you go to the article at the New York Post from which I quoted, you will be shocked at Mohamed’s light-footed journey through Minnesota’s criminal justice system.

The situation in the United Kingdom, of course, is much worse. Do I need to expand on the history of the Rotherham rape cases? These travesties of justice continue to be a huge problem in England with Muslim immigrants, whether legal or illegal, who know that the likelihood of being seriously punished is minimal.

For example, Qais Al-Aswad, a newly arrived illegal Syrian immigrant housed in an immigrant detention center, went on a one-man crime wave of sexual assault. He received an extremely light sentence, which many ascribed to the fact that the judge commented on Al-Aswad’s unfamiliarity with the fact that you do not sexually assault women in Britain.

The message is clear: they are not like us, nor should we expect them to be. We must constantly turn the other cheek as they violate our laws, customs, and mores.

Singapore, however, does not have this attitude toward immigrants. When you come to Singapore, you are expected to follow Singaporean law. You are also expected to arrive legally, which means you will have had time to familiarize yourself with the big no-nos in Singapore.

I thought of this when I visited Singapore’s Little India neighborhood the other day. The main streets differ markedly from those in Singapore. That’s because Singapore, which has almost no natural resources, is a business hub, and this business attitude trickles down to the fact that it is the most amazing mall country I have ever seen.

In the more affluent parts of Singapore, there are blocks and blocks and blocks of interconnected shopping malls filled with hundreds of shiny, often very high-end, stores. The malls are safe, the bathrooms are clean and well-maintained, the food courts are magnificent, and the ease with which you can spend money is almost frightening. And of course, it’s all air-conditioned and out of the rain.

Little India is also replete with stores. However, it doesn’t feel like Singapore. Instead, my companion, who has also visited India, said that it really does replicate the feel of India, with myriad open-air booths lining the street. It’s an immigrant neighborhood, and the ground-level streets are a poor man’s shopping mall. This wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me, of course, because I have traveled in parts of the Middle East. Little India is typical of poorer commercial communities.

What distinguished little India from the Middle Eastern neighborhoods in which I’ve traveled, and, according to my companion, from India itself, is that it’s so clean. It wasn’t just the absence of road dust. It was the absence of garbage, spitting, food rotting in the streets and behind restaurants, and any other offensive detritus you can imagine in a busy and poorly maintained area. (See my photo, above, of an alley behind some restaurants.)

The cleanliness and order are at odds with the culture that the Indian immigrants left behind in India. Perhaps I’m reading too much into things, for I am, after all, a recently arrived tourist, but it seems to me that the Indian immigrants were able to change their behavior patterns because they were expected to do so. As everyone knows, the laws in Singapore's Little India for littering and otherwise despoiling one’s environment are extremely specific and severe. Consequences work.

I suspect the same is true for the more serious crimes. India has long been known for having a “rape culture.” Singapore, by contrast, does not have a rape culture. Not only are the consequences for rape severe, but I am willing to bet that the judges do not accept cross-cultural excuses.

That may explain why, in a country of slightly over 6 million people, Singapore had only 401 reported cases of rape last year. Of course, there will always be underreporting, but even that is unlikely to change the total figure.

Singapore demonstrates what we all know: immigrants are fully capable of complying with the laws of their new countries if they understand that those laws will be enforced and that enforcement will cause them pain. As long as the West refuses to enforce its laws and to make clear that we expect all people to conform to customs and mores when in the public sphere, we can expect our continued degradation into a third-world status.

Singapore proves that immigrants can conform to basic values in their new country - American Thinker