Free immigration and open-border policies are issues that we never talk about but should, especially after a political party remarked that foreign workers must bid and pay for the right to work here.

I am not talking about laws or policies that favour certain groups within Singapore, but those that keep people out. If Singapore is to be closed to most of the people on Earth, that is racist.

Picture walking down Orchard Road and seeing a starving person trying to sell trinkets to feed himself. You offer to buy one because you like them. But a police officer comes along and says you cannot give this person money and he cannot give you his trinkets. That is what closed borders do on a massive scale.

It is wrong because birth is a lottery; one cannot choose where one is born, so it should not determine the future one will have.

Because of this, countries have made a big assumption in favour of immigration so that people can make their lives better.

Let us leave aside the fact that it is ridiculous to say a job is ours simply because the business offering it is in the same country that we are. In reality, Singapore does not have a finite sum of jobs.

Our population has increased in the past decade, but there are now more jobs than there ever have been.

Immigration creates jobs: Economists have estimated that if every country were to open its borders, world gross domestic product would double. The reason for that is we would unlock the potential of immigrants who would otherwise have wasted their promise by toiling in fields or dying young of a disease. What if a cancer cure is trapped in some Rohingya child’s brain, but she never gets the opportunity to develop it?

Let us leave aside the fact that every modern nation, including Singapore, has been built on the back of immigrants. Cultural diversity is incredible, and one does not have to believe in free immigration to understand this.

There is no such thing as a single Singaporean culture, and it gets better when more cultures are added.

It is nice to drive a European car to get Indian food to eat in front of one’s Japanese television while watching American television shows. Our life and culture would be miserable if everything was Singapore-made.

Singapore is a land of opportunity. We may not have abundant resources, but it still offers hope of a better future. It would be selfish to live in a land of plenty but not let anyone in to drink the milk and honey.