>Give me a country with a despised underclass and low crime and I'll gladly concede.

Literally Singapore has a massive underclass of migrant workers from South Asia, who are given limited visas that don't allow them the rights of even a normal work visa. In 2020 hundreds of thousands of them were locked in tiny dormitories for over six months straight while covid spread like wildfire through them (the vast majority of Singapore's 60k covid cases were in migrant worker dormitories). Their salaries are less than $500/month.

Nope, they weren’t “locked in”. They were in fact moved out by the government into a large number of alternate accommodations ( hotels, schools, apartments, under construction sites, barges) to space people apart. Everyone was tested for free, hospitalised and treated for free. Neither workers nor employers were charged any fee. The workers have free wifi at their dorms now and a mobile app via which their report issues directly to the Ministry of Manpower. I’m commenting only on “locked in” and not about their salaries, or other matters.

(Edit: replaced “work“ with “wifi”)

Most of them weren't allowed to roam freely in the community until around December/January, that's what I meant by locked in.

Roaming around has been highly discouraged in any case. Social distracting, limited table booking at restaurants, limited admissions to public places, group sizes at five, limits of how many can attend the office in person - all these were restrictions in place until a few months ago. The restrictions were replaced slightly a few weeks ago. With a recent upsurge, restrictions have been reintroduced.

There aren’t that many places for dorm workers to roam. The most popular place is Little India, where they can procure goods that they are familiar with. I do see dorm workers regularly buying provisions at the same neighbourhood stores that I go to.

> Give me a country with a despised underclass and low crime and I'll gladly concede.

China?

China has a low rate of violent crime and shoplifting. But corruption is off the charts.

And China also executes more people than any other and has the harshest penalties for crime.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/china-must-co...

Westerner: "Did you see that drug bust in Shanghai China yesterday? Two pounds of marijuana!".

Chinese National: "Yes. I hear they received 2 days."

Westerner: "2 days! That isn't that bad. You can do a lot more time in the states -- well at least in Texas. It's legal now on the entire west coast."

Chinese National: "No. No. 2 days to live."

Fair cop.

I’m not sure China fit the bill “despised under class”. It would seem to me that China’s (Han Chinese) underclass, at least in urban cities, have a lot more access to welfare, like the GP was saying about Singapore

In China, the underclass are literally second class citizens who risk being exiled from major cities should they get into trouble. Social services are not available to them.