Repeat after me... lah, lor, aiyah!

Foreigners who wish to obtain Singapore citizenship may have to go through a pre-citizenship test in the near future before gaining approval.

The government is now considering setting a pre-citizenship test that includes general knowledge on Singapore. It is following the footsteps of England, where foreigners there have to pass a test should they want to gain citizenship.

This new measure is effective in helping the foreigners integrate better. Instead of helping them, the foreigners themselves have to grasp as much knowledge about Singapore as possible in preparation for the test. This helps them better understand and integrate into our multi-racial society in a short time should they gain citizenship.

This suggestion by a MP is timely amidst pressing problems of low birth rate in our country. Foreign talent is needed and a way to test for talent and ability would be the pre-citizenship test.

The test, if approved, would most likely cover the areas of multi-racialism, housing, history, and other general knowledges.

Here are some possible questions:

• Expand the acronyms - ERP, CPF, GRC, AYE, PIE, HDB...
• What is the percentage of population living in HDB flats?
• What are the public holidays of Singapore?
• Who founded colonial Singapore
• What is the most common place of food in Singapore?

In America, Thailand and some other countries, they are taking up the method of naturalization, which I think is very effective way of integration. Permanent Residents woul have to stay in the country for a fix numbers of year - 3 to 5 years - to "naturally" obtain their citizenship.

In the years of waiting they would have already mix into the society and be part of it, understand the country very well, and when they obtain citizenship, they would very easily integrate into the society.

But Singapore cannot afford to lose so much time in this slow process of naturalization so it has to adopt the pre-citizenship test faster alternative - to "force" Permanent Residents to learn about the country in a short period of time of test preparation.

I hope the test will not include Singlish Fluency Criteria...!