I also asked him if there any interviews for the PR application. In my heart, I was thinking the immigration officials should screen potential applicants for various reasons such as security, their ideology, character etc. But the answer was a bit of surprise as he said there was no interview! Approval for PR was quite fast.
I was more curious and asked him if he will applied for Singapore Citizenship? The answer was even more surprised or shocking! The immigration department actually sent him an invitation to be a Singaporean!
This guy told me he had rejected the "invitation" because his pay of about $1000+ is not enough to support himself in Singapore because the cost of living in Singapore is very high compared to JB.
2 things had bothers me today:
- Ease of PR application
- Open invitation to Tom, Dick or Harry (no offense to the guy I met)
In general view, these are not Foreign Talent but just cheap labour because they are willing to work in Singapore and at the end of the day, remit the money back to Malaysia and China etc. The same type of work a typical Singaporean will not be taking unless u are living with your parent and without a family. This is another simple reason to explain for low fertility rate even after the PAP government dangled the baby bonus carrot to Singaporeans.
These are the social facts that no numbers can capture. And course the authorities - LKY included - know all these, but they have one and only one overriding consideration - get cheap good labour to run Singapore Inc - and they used numbers to lie and conceal.
ReplyDeleteThe country is literally being sold away for the sake of the economy. Where the economy is supposedly to serve the people, here the people are slaves, and if they are unwillingly to be slaves, get cheap foreign imports, and let the people who wants to be free, be poor.
thanks for sharing this observation! and keep up the good writing.
ReplyDeletethe difference betw pr and citizens is just 10% savings on health, education and housing as pointed out in another forum.
for 2.5+13yrs of blood,sweat and disruption. and the saf will shirk its responsibility as much as it can if u kanna injured.
health-hopefully no need use.
eduaction-is still affordable.
so that leaves hdb housing for the govt to 'show they care'. no wonder price keep on going up to make us citizens feel 'cherished'
And try to get a Malaysian PR? Hard to get. Try to go for Malaysian citizenship, even after years living in Malaysia and going for interview, if you are just any tom,dick,or harry, you can only dream about it.
ReplyDeleteAltho it is not easy to get a PR in other countries, you should try as you are still young. Go forth and explore the world and if you still want t come back because of personal reasons, you can still do so as a SG PR cos it is so easy to get.
ReplyDeleteI think the Malaysian you spoke to was being modest. The P, Q, and R Work Permit holders are not qualified to apply for PR in Singapore. Only the S-Pass Work Permit holders can apply. For S-Pass, the employee's monthly pay has to be $1800 and above. It is true that the approval is quite fast, once the required documents and photocopies of certificates are provided, and the applicant goes down once to the Immigration Department with the originals as proof. No need to apply for Certificate of Non-Criminal Convictions, no "in-demand occupation" list (one is welcomed into Singapore as long as one makes above $1800 per month), no need for proof of previous employment, no need for proof of activities for the last decade. I know this because I personally helped a Malaysian Chinese to apply for Singapore PR.
ReplyDeleteAs for the invitation to be citizen, this has already happened many years ago, since the early 2000's. Back then, when my Employment Pass holding colleagues got their PRs, they will automatically get invited to become citizens after a 2-years stay if they are ethnically Chinese. If the PR is of another race, the above does not apply. Similarly, the time it takes to process the Employment Pass and/or PR application seems shorter for the ethnic Chinese. Thus, it was obvious to us then that the immigration policies were racially-driven, despite the official silence on the matter.