Hi guys, I've received a strange question on one of my posts from 2013 - whilst I've always fielded questions from Singaporeans about moving abroad, this one was different. The question was whether or not Singaporean men (yes, males in particular) who give up their citizenship can get PR later on and the person asked me whether or not if was possible to renounce your Singaporean citizenship, become the citizen of another country, then move back to Singapore (presumably on a work permit) and then eventually obtain PR status in Singapore. So I shook my head and thought, you're asking the wrong question, presumably because you have incomplete and/or incorrect information about how this all works. Thus allow me to illustrate why this is a highly implausible situation and why this makes no sense whatsoever.
Firstly, how do you gain citizenship of another country?
There are two main ways for Singaporeans to gain citizenship of another country like the UK: you can either marry a British citizenship and assert your rights as a spouse to gain residency/citizenship in the UK or you can work here for five years until you qualify for indefinite leave to remain ('ILTR', this is known as permanent residency or 'PR' in Singapore). Obviously, it is slightly faster to use the marriage route but only just. With the marriage route, it takes just 3 years to get your British passport. Otherwise, if you go down the work permit route, that takes slightly longer at 5 years (though in practice most people take about 6 years). I'm using the UK as an example - the rules do vary country to country. For America for example, it takes much longer (more like 10 years) to get your American citizenship whilst in Italy, the moment you marry an Italian citizen, you can get Italian citizenship in as little as 12 months after you get married if you live in Italy and have children. I can go on exploring how the laws in different countries work in terms of offering migrants different routes to citizenship but the bottom line is that it usually takes a few years and even if you do marry a citizen of another country, you'll only be granted residency rights as a spouse in that country in the first instance rather than a passport the moment you have the wedding. And that's if you marry a citizen of that country - you can also emigrate via the work permit route but it is far more difficult as most countries will only offer work permits to highly educated, highly skilled professionals like doctors, nurses, engineers and scientists. Even if you do manage to get a work permit, it can still take many years before you will qualify to naturalize as a citizen of that country; it certainly isn't a fast process at all.
There are a few ways but it is never easy or straightforward.
I have also seen people who have mixed both of these routes - allow me to use the case study of Jenny (not her real name) from Singapore. She was working in London when she met her British husband, so she could either get married and use her status as a spouse to gain ILTR or she could go down the work permit route. However, Jenny was not happy at work and couldn't get along with some of her colleagues - she didn't want to feel obliged to stick with that job just for the work permit to remain in the UK (note that if she left her job, she would have to leave the UK too as the work permit was issued specifically for that job) so once she went down the spousal visa route, she was no longer obliged to stay with that company and was free to find a better job. Hence my point is simple: even with the fastest route, even if you manage to find a shortcut (the way Jenny did), gaining citizenship of another country is a process that does take quite a long time. What this means is that you will have plenty of time to think during this process: am I happier in this new country I am now living and working in or would I rather return to Singapore? This is a complex question as there would be a mix of push and pull factors. Let's talk about pull factors: factors that make you like a place, so you may prefer your life in the new country if you have managed to get a great job with a dynamic company and you're having great opportunities that weren't available back in Singapore. On the other hand, if you're very close to your family, then you wouldn't want to be too far away from them, so that would be a major pull factor for those to choose to live in Singapore.
The classic push-pull model for migration.
Then on the other side of the equation would be push factors, these are the reasons why you would dislike a place. So for example, if you hated cold weather, then having to survive the bitterly cold winters in a country like Finland or Canada would be a push factor to deter you from moving there. Likewise, if you are a Singapore who disliked the PAP, then the knowledge that they will always be in power no matter how the opposition tries could be enough to push you to move away from Singapore. The fact is people who are seriously considering moving away from Singapore would have run through these various push and pull factors a thousand times in order to make the right decision. The fact is nobody is ever going to rush into a decision on a whim and then accidentally make the wrong decision for a simple reason: time. Imagine if you're in this situation: you're on holiday and you've decided to book an apartment with AirBNB. So when you arrive there, there's some food left for you in the kitchen and you think, oh how nice. You reach for the bottle of milk in the fridge and pour yourself a nice glass of cold milk but the moment you take a sip you sense that something is not quite right - the milk isn't fresh and it has gone off. So you pause for a moment before you continue drinking and then you smell the milk, it doesn't smell right either. What would you do in this case? Would you still continue to drink the milk by simply ignoring the rancid smell and taste or would you stop drinking it at once and pour the rest away? My point is simple: when you sense that something is clearly wrong, you would not go through with your initial decision - you would change your course of action accordingly. Your innate desire to protect yourself from further harm will kick in like a reflex.
When you do stop drinking that milk if it tastes really bad?
Put yourself in the shoes of a Singaporean expatriate who is working in London, this is the equivalent of pouring yourself that glass of cold milk when you arrive at the AirBNB apartment. Within a few months, you probably have a pretty good idea if you are going to be happy in your new city or if you would much rather just go back to Singapore. Some of the factors that would affect your decision would be the answers to these questions: do you like your new job? What is your boss like? Can you get along with your colleagues? Have you managed to make many new friends outside work? How many hours a week do you work - do you have a good work life balance? What kind of place do you live in? Is it comfortable and spacious? Do you feel safe or do you worry about crime? Are you getting enough sleep? Do you have enough leisure time to do fun activities? Are you generally in good health? Do you have enough money to treat yourself to the nice things you enjoy? The answers to those questions would determine whether or not you are happy and if you happen to hate your job, if you have a nasty boss and you are very unhappy with your living conditions, then that would be the equivalent of drinking the milk and realizing that something is desperately wrong. No, you would then probably just quit your job and return to Singapore if things were that bad. You wouldn't remain in such a miserable situation for many more years if things just weren't working out the way you had hoped for. Therefore the only people who would burn all bridges with Singapore by taking that final step in naturalizing as a British citizen and renouncing their Singaporean nationality are the people who have reached the conclusion that they really prefer life in the UK to life back in Singapore.
Can we try to apply some logic and common sense please?
So what this person asked was really weird: why would someone choose to go through the whole process of obtaining citizenship of another country - effectively saying, "yes I prefer to be a citizen of this country, it is better than Singapore so I am renouncing my Singaporean citizenship", only to then change their mind after having made that decision and want to return to Singapore? It makes no sense, if you're a Singaporean working abroad and things simply have not worked out for you there, then it is far easier to return to Singapore as a Singaporean. Unless you were extremely happy with the way your life has turned out in this other country, you probably wouldn't be that keen to burn that bridge with Singapore. Thus if life was so good in your new country that you've decided to give up your Singaporean passport and become a citizen of that country, then why would you want to return to Singapore and try to obtain PR status back in Singapore? It doesn't make sense at all: allow me to use a flow chart to illustrate how most normal people would make such decisions.
Scenario 1: The happy immigrant
Q1: You're a Singaporean working in the UK. Are you happy in the UK or are you miserable?
A: I'm very happy here, things have been really great here since I've moved to the UK.
Q2: Do you want to keep on living and working in the UK in the long run then?
A: Of course, I've got a successful career, I've got my friends and my whole life is here now.
Q3: Do you want to take on British citizenship since you have no intention of returning to Singapore?
A: Yes please. My future is definitely here in the UK, I have no reason to want to return to Singapore.
Scenario 2: The unhappy homesick expat
Q1: You're a Singaporean working in the UK. Are you happy in the UK or are you miserable?
A: No, actually I've really struggled to adapt since moving here and it has not been easy at all.
Q2: Do you want to keep on living and working in the UK in the long run then?
A: I don't want to give up so easily but I do miss Singapore a lot and want to return home eventually.
Q3: Do you want to take on British citizenship?
A: No, I want to retain my Singaporean passport so I can return back to Singapore any time I want.
To renounce or not to renounce, the choice would be pretty obvious.
Thus when you encounter Singaporeans working abroad, you would get a pretty clear idea whether they fit the narrative of scenario 1 or 2. Even if someone is kinda mid-way between the two extremes, say they're not entirely happy, things aren't perfect but they're trying their best to make things work but they just want to keep all options open at this stage - so they would still default to scenario 2's outcome by holding on to the Singaporean passport knowing that they can naturalize as British citizens quite easily but it would be very hard to find a way back to Singapore once you've burnt that bridge by giving up your Singaporean passport. So why would someone who was in scenario 1 - the happy immigrant - suddenly have a change of heart and want to return to Singapore? If your intention was always to return to Singapore, then why would you give up your Singaporean passport then? This then prompts me to wonder if the person who asked this question is trying a cynical ploy to try to get better working conditions in Singapore as an expatriate rather than a local - after all, as a Singaporean man, you would have no NS liabilities nor would your employers have to worry about CPF contributions. If this was indeed the case, then it seems like a rather convoluted scheme to try to get better a better deal from your employer in Singapore - surely it would be far easier to focus on improving your skill set by undertaking more training, learning a foreign language or two and improving your social skills to make yourself far more attractive to Singaporean employers to get a better deal than to try to use this bizarre route to gain some kind of marginal benefit in the Singaporean job market? Do expatriates and "foreign talents" really get a much better deal than Singaporean locals?
The reason why using this method to gain an advantage in the Singaporean job market makes no sense is because there are far easier methods that cost less, take far less time and would lead to a far bigger advantage in Singapore. As explained earlier, it takes at least a few years before you can become a citizen of another country and renounce your Singaporean passport - not only is that process time-consuming, it can also be very costly. With that same time and money, you could easily get another degree and/or set up your own business in Singapore - both of which would allow you to explore so many more interesting options for your career to ensure that you end up very successful in Singapore. Let's put it this way: let's imagine your career to be a plant in your garden and you're looking for the best fertilizer available for your plant. So you do your research online and there is brand A which costs just $10, it has been used by many people and there are great reviews online for this brand of fertilizer, then you have brand B which costs $800 - nobody has ever used this brand before and there are no reviews online by anyone claiming that it works. So even if brand B fertilizer was available to purchase, who in the right mind would ever pick that over brand A? If there's a simpler, cheaper, easier method to achieve the desired result, why would anyone pick the more difficult, more complex and expensive method then? Oh and let's put the marriage route aside for the sake of the argument because I believe that you should marry for love rather than use it as a short cut to gain citizenship of another country as a spouse. Even if this was just a cynical ploy to try to get a better deal in the Singaporean job market, this is still a terrible plan to say the least!
There are many countries in the world and Singapore is just one of many options.
Furthermore, another massive oversight on the part of the person who asked this question is the very simplistic way they have divided this choice into two options: Singapore or the rest of the world. So if Putin were to invade the UK (highly unlikely, but for the same of the argument) and I am forced to leave the UK as a refugee - would I run back to Singapore? Actually no, I wouldn't. I would probably pick a French or Spanish speaking country to live in as I am totally fluent in both languages and I adore being in a non-English speaking environment. If things really didn't work out for me in the UK or if circumstances like a war forced me to leave the UK, then there would be plenty of other countries I would want to move to before even thinking of moving back to Singapore. Over my career, I have done short stints and contract work in over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - hence I don't find the idea of moving to yet another country daunting at all. I understand why there is that temptation to return to Singapore if you have grown up there and you still have some family there, but if you have left to seek greener pastures abroad because you simply weren't happy with your life in Singapore, then returning to Singapore wouldn't solve anything. On the contrary, you would simply be knocked right back to square one and be forced to confront all those push factors that compelled you to leave in the first place. But let's face it, if you were really that happy with the way things were in Singapore, you wouldn't have wanted to leave in the first place - only people who are seriously pissed off with Singapore would want to look for greener pastures abroad.
Allow me to talk about an old friend Tony (not his real name), I got to know Tony during my NS days and he is a smart guy who has worked in five countries over his career. So we share many things in common. The problem Tony faced was that he is an expert in a very niche area so whilst he is very highly skilled in his field of expertise, there are relatively few jobs for him even if he was willing to move to any country in the world - compare that to someone who is a doctor. Every country in the world has hospitals and need doctors, a doctor can find a job pretty easily in sharp contrast to Tony's situation. This was part of the reason why he had worked in five countries over the years. A few years ago, Tony simply couldn't find a job in his area of expertise and decided to return to Singapore to plan his next step but then the pandemic hit and it became a lot harder to him to try to find a job in another country. In the meantime to earn some money, Tony was forced to take on a job in Singapore that he was vastly overqualified for and he tried to tell himself that this was a short term solution, that it would be at best for a few months before he found something more suitable. However, that was simply not the case as he is still stuck in Singapore doing that job he hated. Recently, Tony took advantage of the VTL to visit a country he used to work in and I could tell from his social media posts that he was very happy during that trip but he went all quiet after he returned to Singapore. Tony is a good example of how simply returning to Singapore if things don't work out abroad wouldn't automatically solve all your problems - after all, the root of the problem in Tony's case is his inability to find a job that he is qualified for and that is what he needs to deal with to solve his many problems.
In the case of Tony, the problem he faced stems from the fact that he has chosen such a niche area to develop his career and that has really limited his career options. I don't want to reveal what his area of expertise is but imagine if he was an expert on pandas, then there aren't that many pandas around for him to take care of and make a career out of being a panda expert. Contrast that to if he was a vet who could deal with dogs and cats, then he would find it a lot easier to find work as a vet! As someone who chose to leave Singapore years ago because I didn't like certain aspects about life in Singapore, I need to state the obvious: at the end of the day, you need to make sure you have a successful career. Simply changing countries - be it moving away from Singapore or moving back to Singapore - isn't going to solve any issues with your career development if you do not tackle the root cause of the problem. I remember trying to talk to Tony about his situation - after all, I knew he was a very intelligent guy who had some transferable skills, thus he could easily switch to a different industry where he could at least start earning some decent money; but he got very defensive, "but you don't understand, I'm really good at what I do and I like what I do!" Whilst both statements are undoubtedly true, the fact that he has always struggled to find paid work in his niche area of expertise meant that his career has stalled for years and he is not getting any younger. I've backed off in the case of Tony, as he doesn't want to listen to me but he's a great example of how moving back to Singapore if things don't work out abroad wouldn't solve anything. Tony is pretty darn miserable right now because of his dire employment situation - I certainly hope he figures something out very soon.
There is a broad list of things that most adults want in their lives: we want to earn plenty of money to support ourselves and our families, we want to be successful and happy in our careers, we want to have friends and an active social life, we want to be healthy (both physically and in terms of our mental health), we want to get enough sleep and have enough leisure time outside work, we want to feel safe and secure where we are in our lives and we want to minimize our worries and stress. In order to achieve everything on that list, you need to get a lot of things in your life right and it's a pretty tall order to say the least. There are no simple answers and this is why I refute the theory of, "I want to try living and working abroad but if it doesn't work out, I want to know I can always run back to Singapore." My point is simple: that can quite easily be done if you work abroad as an Singaporean expatriate on a work permit but as I have illustrated in Tony's case study, running back to Singapore doesn't automatically solve any of your problems. If things went wrong with your career whilst working in another country, those problems aren't going to somehow just fix themselves the moment your plane touches down at Changi airport. I once met a woman who tried to preach to me on a train in London, I asked her a very complex question about Christianity and rather than try to answer the question, she just sidestepped it skillfully and offered a very simple answer: she claimed I was too impatient to learn everything, right here right now. But if I had faith in Jesus, then he would reveal all the answers to me in good time, God has a plan for us all. That wasn't what I wanted to hear, she didn't even try to answer my question at all. I wanted a concrete answer, a cogent argument grounded in logic!
Simple (and stupid) people prefer simpler answers.
To be honest, I don't think that preacher lady was that intelligent, certainly she was no match for my intellect. But I didn't want to be condescending, I gave her my attention and if she wanted to speak to me about Christianity then I expected her to answer my questions on the topic. However, there was just no way she could have engaged me properly given that English wasn't her first language and if I may be totally blunt, she came across as a simple, uneducated working class peasant who liked the appeal of very simple answers rather than complicated arguments that involved far more logic than her brain could possibly handle. Trust me, my parents are uneducated, severely autistic and really quite stupid - I can see how they go through life looking for simple answers to complex issues, but that's just how simpletons cope when faced with difficult challenges in life. They learn to ignore the difficult question and simply reach for a simple answer, even if that answer doesn't really address or resolve the issue at all but they are nonetheless satisfied with having gone through the motions of giving an answer to a question. Thus it is entirely possible that the Singaporean who asked the question about getting a passport of another country and then returning to Singapore to work towards gaining PR in Singapore is simply an idiot looking for a very simple answer to the question, "how do I make sure I am successful and happy as an adult?" Thus the answer of "as long as I can return to Singapore at the end of the day, everything will work out fine one way or another" is the equivalent of "just put your faith in Jesus and he will show you the way in good time. You need to trust God - God has a plan for everyone." You can see why stupid people often become very religious.
Trying to cure a hangover with more alcohol.
So the argument is dependent on the fact that the person believes that being able to return to Singapore as a PR is the safety net they need just in case things don't work out after migrating to another country. However, if you liked Singapore so much and think it is such a lovely place to live and work, then why are you even thinking of leaving Singapore in the first place? The cause of the problem cannot be the cure - imagine if you went to a party and drank way too much alcohol, you wake up the next day with a terrible hangover (as expected of course). So as you crawl out of bed and stagger into the kitchen, you are thinking, "I'm in such agony, what do I need right now to cure this awful hangover?" You may want to take some strong painkillers if you have a terrible headache. You may want to drink a lot of water to try to flush the toxins out of your system. You may want to take an antacid to settle your stomach and there are so many other suggestions about what one should do to deal with a hangover, but one thing we can agree on is that you really shouldn't drink more alcohol to make the hangover go away as the hangover is effectively alcohol poisoning - you body is reacting very badly to the large amount of alcohol you have consumed. Thus consuming more alcohol when you already have a hangover is only going to prolong your hangover and make you feel a lot worse: the cause can never be the cure. If there was one aspect of life in Singapore that irked you so much that you are considering moving abroad to start afresh, then using Singapore as a 'safety net' in any plan to move abroad is as illogical as trying to cure a hangover with more vodka - you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more logical plan, with a different more robust 'safety net'.
So there you go guys, that's it from me on this issue, what do you think? Have I covered all the angles? on the topic? Do you think there might be another reason why a Singaporean man would want to become the citizen of another country and then come back to Singapore to seek PR status? Are these people asking the wrong question because they are simply misinformed or are they searching for a overly simple answer to a very complex question? Would you ever return to Singapore after having moved to live in another country? Please do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
I would think that this convoluted route is something only very wealthy people would do. There are many wealthy Singaporeans with 2nd or 3rd passports or PRs in other countries. They do it because they have the time, money, and desire to sit in their vacation home for 6 months of the year abroad, and they also fear having to flee the country for whatever political reason. But otherwise for the average middle class and even "working rich" type of person, it's of no material benefit. I'm just LOL-ing at the thought that a foreign talent has a better deal in Singapore than a local. Sure the males don't have any reservist duties, but a PR still has to pay CPF and any male children they have must serve NS, or they have to give up their PR.
ReplyDeleteI think you've hit the nail on the head, it is a convoluted route to obtain citizenship of another country then try to return to Singapore and 'game the system' by only being a PR instead of a citizen. It's like a man who feels that being a father and husband is a huge responsibility, but simply being a boyfriend can bring the same benefits with much lower expectations of what he is expected to deliver in that relationship. Thus the preference of being a PR to a citizen, but to try to return to Singapore as a PR from another country takes so many years to engineer - imagine navigating the immigration systems of two countries, first a respectable country in the West (like an EU country, Australia, US, Canada etc) and then the Singaporean system. Thus the person who asked the question seriously underestimates how much red tape and bureaucracy is involved in such processes.
DeleteThere are short cuts to simply buying a passport in a country like Vanuatu which will give you a passport if you invest $130,000 USD in the country and the process takes 2 months. Not the world's most useful passport but at least if you're desperate to get your hands on a new passport, it's pretty straight forward. A more respectable Cypriot passport will cost you 2.2 million euros in investments and that process take half a year, but if you have six and seven figures to spend on buying a new passport, then that means you're RICH and have plenty of money to spend. You wouldn't be trying to use this convoluted route to try to 'game' the system in Singapore by getting a better deal as an expat (no NS liabilities) and people with PR status in Singapore still need to pay CPF contributions anyway. It's a moot point because if you're rich enough, then you have the resources to have a comfortable life in Singapore and you wouldn't worry about trying to get a better deal. No, the people who asked this question are either working class or 'working rich' as you put it - say a person earns a very respectable salary but he's trying to support an extended family with that income and after paying taxes, servicing the mortgage, giving money to everyone there's little or nothing left.
Yes some foreign talents do get a better deal than Singaporeans in terms of having no CPF contributions and no NS liabilities, so the odds are really stacked against the male Singaporean in this job market. However, the way to deal with this challenge is not to become a foreign talent in Singapore - it is simply to make sure you invest in yourself: what are your skills and how can you improve them? Where can you get extra training and more valuable work experience? How many foreign languages do you speak fluently and how can you learn more? Who is in your professional network and how do you expand that circle? This morning at a meeting, the client mentioned the name of a company 'Novia Global' and my boss then turned to me and asked, "do you know anyone at Novia?" Urgh, I had to say no, I don't but I'll try to find a way in to get a meeting there for us. I wish I could say something like, "oh yeah I have an ex colleague who is now working there etc". You get the idea, there are so many ways to make ourselves even better and more competitive in the business world, yet all these people have done is focused on a simple solution to a complex problem - they think as long as they can compete in Singapore as a foreigner/PR they will have better odds to succeed in Singapore when really, they're missing the point. You wanna succeed, you need to invest in yourself and become so awesome at what you do that people will wanna hire you and pay you a lot of money regardless of your nationality.
I'm just ROFLing at your analogy of a husband trying to divorce his husband/wife/spouse in order to downgrade to "boyfriend" status to get a better deal. But I think being born a citizen of a country is closer to being a legitimate child of two married parents. Why would you want to downgrade to nephew/niece/family friend's child or even bastard child instead? I suppose you don't have to take care of your parents in their old age and can leave whenever, but if you're gonna leave don't stick around. A rich person picks up extra passports/PRs as a luxury item. Like how a rich person has 6 or more cars even though most people can get by with just 1.
DeleteYes the problem is not due to citizenship alone. Actually local Singaporeans have access to cushy government jobs that foreigners don't. It's not like there's cushy jobs foreigners only have access to and locals don't. And if locals complain that yes, in fact there are jobs that prefer foreigners, it's usually jobs that don't pay very well. And then there are the frequent complaints of classism that pop up, where people in the government have been rich all their lives and take all the good jobs which the 99% can't access, but that's true in every country, even in the UK and America(looking at you Boris Johnson and Donald Trump). Its not that the 99% can't make it, but they need to have good skills/connections/experience which has nothing to do with the passport. A skilled doctor is welcome in any country after all, even if they have to navigate a lot of red tape to be certified in other countries. But other jobs don't, like software engineer or scientist for example.
By the way I just have to say I admire your hustle in trying to find someone who knows someone who knows someone at Novia to please a client. That's the attitude people have to have rather than throwing their hands up in the air and saying "this company prefers to hire foreigners because they don't have NS reservist duties and can work an extra 2 weeks per year." That's the attitude of someone working in a job that treats its workers like commodities who are paid by the hour rather than by the idea. To me its a very working class mindset to worry about competing with foreigners in the first place. In non working-class jobs one is always competing with foreigners anyway, because with the Internet trade and ideas have no borders. Like in my job in the science industry I don't just have to worry about competing with other American scientists, but scientists everywhere around the world in Europe/Asia/Africa/Latin America. Even within America in many universities 70% of the personnel aren't even American, and the US grants unlimited numbers of work visas for scientists compared to other jobs where there is a cap on visas granted. I think the same is true of banking where so much money crosses borders and changes hands even in the blink of an eye. You have to be smart if you want to make money in these industries, not just willing to settle for a lower wage or work longer hours, which is when someone's passport does matter more.
DeleteHi Amanda, yeah well if my parents were ill, then their children would be expected to take care of them but if your uncle/aunt was ill, then all you'd need to do was send some flowers and that'll be already more than enough. "Oh look Amanda cared enough to send flowers, she's my favourite niece." Whereas it was only the pandemic that prevented me from going to Singapore when my father had heart surgery in Singapore and that would have been the kind of thing which would have obliged me to return to Singapore for a visit.
DeleteYou have also raised a very good point about the attitude towards competition - a lot of Singaporeans have that sore loser mentality whereby they think, "look at all these foreign talents coming over to Singapore taking our jobs, the government is doing nothing to give Singaporeans priority over these foreigners, damn I ought to become a foreigner then I can come back and waltz right into one of these well paid jobs as an expatriate." What they don't realize is that these foreigners are taking your jobs because they are better qualified, more highly skilled, have more interesting work experience and in comparison to them, Singaporeans pale in comparison if they're not doing enough to keep up with the competition. This attitude is a result of Singaporeans being unwilling to take responsibility for their own failures in making themselves more attractive to employers - many Singaporean men feel like they deserve some kind of priority in the job market after having made the grand sacrifice of serving national service but that's clearly not how the government feels about the issue. The rational reaction to this is to simply focus on making yourself a better candidate by investing in yourself rather than trying to cheat or game the system by inventing a shortcut.
Oh yeah I solved the Novia problem, I went onto Linkedin, found that I had some mutual friends with the CEO so I sent him a connection invite and now we're connected. Problem solved. Not rocket science really. We're in the same industry so it's hardly surprising that we would have a lot of mutual friends.
Yeah there's a lot less obligations as a niece/nephew, but you also don't get much money from your uncle/aunt in return. Likewise, foreigners can't access any welfare, even as a PR. Here in the US I'm a PR but if I lose my job, although I won't be deported I'm not entitled to any government benefits in the form of food stamps or unemployment insurance, even though I pay all the same taxes that American citizens do. Dunno how it is in the UK, but I assume its something similar or else locals will complain that foreigners will marry UK citizens just to be on welfare.
DeleteLOL. What locals forget is that foreigners in Sg are self-selecting. Only educated/intelligent/qualified foreigners are let into the country via a job offer and then a visa system, unless of course it's a low paying job with very low requirements. But that's the mindset of someone who was born in the country. This is what I think is the "fallacy" of patriotism. If you're born in a country you're taught to love it from birth, but an unintended side effect is that you feel entitled to the country "loving you back." But a country, and especially a country's economy, is not a person, it can't "love" anything back. Regardless, like a scorned lover a citizen feels they are entitled to a job over a foreigner just because they've been there longer. I've moved countries twice and have only worked as a foreigner, so I feel whether I get a job or not has nothing to do with my passport and everything to do with capitalism. But then again I'm a scientist so there is never any preference for a local over an international, and there are many inter-university/inter-country collaborations anyway. The only case where I have seen a preference to hire a local is when a research lab is so poor they have to rely on specific government subsidies to hire researchers, which of course can only be used to hire locals. But why would I want to work for such a lab in the first place? I would instead target a rich successful lab which has millions of dollars in industry and unrestricted grant money to hire the best scientist/employee regardless of their passport.
Good job with the Novia problem! LinkedIn makes it surprisingly easy to find connections nowadays, and networks only grow further the more people you know.
DeleteOh in the UK I got a bad deal when I was a 'PR' aka ILTR here (or a green card holder in the US), I paid full whack in taxes and whilst there was free healthcare on the NHS I got absolutely nothing in terms of any kind of government assistance (like unemployment benefits etc). Furthermore, you're right about the 'loving you back' mentality - Singaporean men do feel like the state is obliged to give them something in return for having made the grand sacrifice of service NS but really, it is very hard for the government to do anything to influence the way individual employers make their choices when it comes to whom to hire. The only practical and fair way to do it IMHO is to pay these soldiers a lot more money when they're serving NS, so they can see the reward instantly but of course, as you know, the soldiers serving NS are paid peanuts because the government can get away with paying them peanuts. Furthermore, it also forces those who are really, really desperate for money to 'sign on' - ie. they then join the army by signing something like a contract for a longer period like 5 years. So if you were already receiving good money for serving 2 years, there's no real incentive for anyone to sign a longer contract so this has been a way to increase the number in the military in Singapore by driving the very poorest to sign these longer contracts in exchange for a fairer salary. Mind you, it's still nothing compared to what you and I earn but compared to what those conscripts are typically paid, it's a lot more decent.
DeleteAnd you're also absolutely right, if there's an employer who is hiring people for reasons other than merit (say there's a lot of nepotism) then I would say screw it, that's a formula for disaster I want nothing to do with that company.
Lol I suppose since Sg doesn't even have unemployment benefits or single mother benefits to begin with, having a PR isn't as bad of a downgrade versus being a citizen compared to being a UK or US PR.
DeleteI swear no citizen of any other country believes that national service is a huge sacrifice that entitles them to jobs/etc. But then again other countries are at war and see it as just something essential to running the country, like say Israel or South Korea. Sg isn't at war so Singaporean men feel the country owes them something in return. And yeah I have heard the stories of poor Singaporean men signing on to serve in the armed forces or police full time after NS because there is a huge signing bonus (a friend told me it's about $20k sgd). Usually the people who sign it have an extended family to support and can't afford to go to university to not work for a few years.
This reminds me of your last blogpost when you mentioned your Singaporean father said "Angmoh give you chance." As if you're stupid enough to pick companies with racist people. But then again your father probably assumes every company run by white people is racist.
The part that doesn't make sense about this 'formula' is that in order to downgrade from a citizen to a PR, you first have to obtain citizenship of another country (like the UK for example) but if this other country does offer unemployment benefits and other forms of welfare, then why would you then move back to Singapore if those are the perks you were after in the first place? This makes me believe that the person who proposed this formula is seeking a better deal in Singapore but missing a few really glaringly obvious points: he might be better off living & working in another country and he also might be better simply investing in himself to become so much better at his chosen career path rather than try this formula to get a better deal in Singapore.
DeleteAs for NS, well it is inspiring to look at what's happening in Ukraine with the men willing to die for their country to fight the Russian invaders - Russia is so much bigger yet Ukraine stubbornly refuses to surrender and is holding back the enemy regardless of how much bombardment they are taking. Whereas in Singapore, the men have no choice but to serve as it is conscription but there simply isn't that same sense of patriotism if the men already feel like they are getting a bad deal.
I had an old class mate from a poor family who did sign on for precisely that reason you described - there was no way his family could pay for his degree and he had a few younger siblings as well. So it was a lifeline for him to get a degree, he was the first person in his family to go to university and I can't remember exactly how many years he stayed in the army, but it was a means to an end. It made complete sense for him to do it then as he had few other options.
My father works on the basis of "assumed mutual hatred" - ie. "if I hate all white people, then all white people must hate all Chinese/Asian people." That's not the case of course, there are a whole variety of reasons why one would hate another person and racism is but one of a long list of factors in that equation. I've been living in the West for 25 years now but my father has never ever sat down and asked me, "so son, what's it like living with white people?" That conversation never happened because he doesn't like changing his mind, he doesn't want to hear me telling him that all his presumptions of white people are totally wrong - so he would rather avoid talking to me than have his POV challenged. In any case, it's not like I'm desperate to talk to my father; I'm like whatever, I've got better things to do than to talk to my father. If he's not interested in talking to me, I'm not interested to talk to him either by the same token.
Yeah exactly Alex! Can you imagine plotting to obtain an Australian citizenship then coming back to be a PR in Sg? In Australia they have a generous minimum wage, free government healthcare, lots of land/housing, and also 0% interest student loans for any children one might have in the future. To be fair though, Sg is a bit "cramped" in that there aren't a lot of clear-cut good career paths for anyone who isn't a straight A student getting into NUS/NTU. Like remember how you panicked about the thought of your nephew failing economics and going to SIM instead of NUS? I think the people who complain about foreign talents taking all the good jobs aren't the scholars at NUS/NTU, or the really bad students at SIM, but the people caught in the middle. Not quite good enough for NUS/NTU, but still intelligent and ambitious enough to aim for a decent white collar job. That doesn't even count the blue-collar Singaporeans who are even more scared of the government importing cheap labor for jobs like restaurant waiter/admin staff.
DeleteYeah I mean you even see Ukrainian men abroad living in the US or UK returning to fight for their country. Also people who have done NS say that their bosses are under no obligation to be nice to them because they are literally there under threat of jail time. NS has completely taken out the romance of 'dying for your country."
To be fair though, the military has always provided opportunities for working class people to make a decent living without much education/money. So I don't think this is such a bad thing they provide large signing bonuses and generous scholarships. But a friend of mine who served NS did say there were NSmen who did sign on, but only because they had a child before NS even started. Jeezus being a teen dad is just a bad decision to make. Even being a young dad in his 20s with a minimum wage job is also terrible. Which reminds me, another friend of mine mentioned during his PhD in the US another guy in his lab, a Chinese national, had a child with his wife, and then sent both the wife and the baby home to his parents in China for the next 3 years while he finished his PhD. I suppose in Asia it's not unusual for parents not to see their kids for the first few years of their lives while the grandparents look after them. But still, a PhD student salary is nothing so the grandparents were really supporting the family until this guy graduated.
Hahaha "assumed mutual hatred" sounds so autistic/selfish to assume everyone else must have the same worldview. I can see why your father has no friends, because a huge part of friendship aside from sharing similar worldviews is to ask people about their different experiences/views. Yeah it sucks you don't really have a working relationship with your parents. But oh well, there are other people in your life like your sisters/the people from gymnastics/welsh club/this blog.
Hi Amanda, a couple of points for you here: firstly, I believe if a Singaporean person has lived a couple of years in Australia, they would easily see how they could get used to a different way of life with much cheaper property, enjoying the great outdoors and all the other perks that come with living in Australia. However, it seems that the person who raised the question in the first place hasn't actually lived abroad (yet), so he was merely focused on how he could downgrade his status from husband to boyfriend, citizen to PR without actually contemplating how the grass can be so much greener on the other side of the fence in somewhere like Australia or Canada. Like I said, it's a complex issue and these people are often looking for overly very simple solutions.
DeleteTo be honest, I'm not that worried about my nephew's future in Singapore. Given how he is autistic and is a creature of habit, he likes being in a familiar environment and having a set routine to stick to. I rarely see him pushing himself to step out of his comfort zone and even if he doesn't end up earning as much as his parents, it doesn't matter - he doesn't have any pressure to earn a lot of money to support his family since his parents have good jobs anyway. He'll be fine actually.
As for my father's assumption of mutual hatred, oh he hates a lot of people - including people whom he has never met and he then assumes that they hate him too. Can you imagine going through life with that kind of assumption in your head? Eeeks.
Do you think it's easy for Singaporeans to immigrate to the West? Maybe if they were highly skilled doctors/engineers/scientists/bankers. But for an average office worker, I suppose it depends on the industry and if they could outcompete a western local to be worth the immigration red-tape for the company. All depends on skills and work experience and nothing to do with the passport I suppose... And local Sgans think every foreign talent has it easy haha, wait till they try to be a foreign talent in a western country. Like you faced the same red-tape barrier in the UK when you first graduated uni. Not like you had ILTR already, so the UK company did have to get a work visa for you right?
DeleteYeah it seems your nephew stands to inherit a lot of money from his parents and grandparents. It seems being in Sg was one of the best options for him. Also he gets to leverage his parents' connections. Neither of us had that when we first started working since we didn't work in our home countries. Wow come to think of it after NS you didn't come back to work in Singapore for ages. You might as well have been a Brit after finishing undergrad.
I have no idea why your father even hates people except that he has a tendency to say crass things which could piss people off and make them go cold on him. But I do know people in similar situations. It's a miserable existence.
I think it's a question of supply and demand - so in the UK there is a massive shortfall of nurses and so there are recruitment companies going to countries from Romania to the Philippines to hire qualified nurses to come and work in British hospitals and care homes. A nurse may not be as highly qualified as an engineer, but we roll out the red carpet for nurses as we desperately need them. Whereas there's no shortage of people working in finance here in the UK, so it's probably easier to come to the UK as a nurse than as a banker because of this supply and demand situation. I remember once this younger Malay guy asked me how he could move to the UK and I told him, simple: just become a qualified nurse and you can move here anytime. But he didn't want to work as a nurse and therein lies the problem. Oh he wanted to do something creative with the internet and websites, social media blah blah blah and I told him to pursue that in Singapore.
DeleteI refer you to the reference to 'Jenny' in the story above - I did what she did, I could have depended on a work permit or I could get married. My husband said we're gonna get married anyway so don't let your employers take you for granted. I've seen horror stories of people from countries like Russia, Israel and Ukraine being treated like crap by their employers and being badly bullied at work. But it was like, you're not happy you can quit but that means you have to go back to your country, do you wanna do that? No? Then shut up and do as you're told. Nah my husband never wanted to see me in that kind of situation.
I never worked in Singapore after NS, I left straight away for my studies abroad then I did a short stint in 2011 but that was long after I had naturalized as a British citizen anyway. Even through the marriage route, it took a while before I could get my British passport. But all that means so long ago, I'm onto my 2nd British passport now and each one lasts 10 years.
My father hates people because it is a preemptive strike. Let's take the parents of my former classmates, my father never liked Mr and Mrs Goh because they were English speaking and well educated. My father just assumed that they would look down on him because he spoke Mandarin instead of English and couldn't communicate with them in English. Mind you, Mr & Mrs Goh were lovely people and even if they looked down on my father - well, they would never show it in public, not to me anyway, they were more tactful than that I assure you. They may have no feelings at all towards my father, ie. "oh we barely know Alex's father, I think we may have met him once or twice but we never spoke." Thus this 'no feelings' means not having an opinion at all, which was probably the case with Mr & Mrs Goh. But somehow my father just jumped to the conclusion that they would look down on him and so he decided to tell me just how much he hated them. And I was like, woah what did they do to offend you, to make you hate them this much? Hindsight is 2020 of course, I saw him do that with a lot of people and clearly, that was a manifestation of his insecurities: ie. he feels embarrassed about the situation when he can't speak to Mr & Mrs Goh in English, so he deals with it by telling himself that they are horrible people who hate him thus he has every right to hate them. Roll eyes. That's not how you deal with your insecurities. He needed to deal with his feelings in a far more constructive manner.
If I may clarify, I think it's okay not to like people. You're not obliged to become everyone's best friends - there will be people whom you meet whom you have little in common with and just don't get along with but you simply keep your distance from them. You don't need to hate them or assume that they must somehow hate you. If my father had better social skills, he would have just accepted that he had little in common with Mr & Mrs Goh and just left it at that without cooking up this ridiculous assumption that they really look down on him and hate him, thus he must hate them in return. They came outta nowhere.
DeleteUrgh, I hit publish before I completed that last sentence. That hatred he had for Mr & Mrs Goh came out of nowhere, they did nothing to make him react in such a hostile way to them.
DeleteYeah when people immigrate they don't usually think "hmm how can I make myself useful to this new country", but then again most people don't think their own country has a shortage of labor since everyone seems to find it hard to find a job that pays decently. I think Singapore itself also has a nurse shortage too.
DeleteAww that's sweet of your husband to marry you to help you in the job market. Yes I've heard many horror stories in the US too of people being exploited when on h1b visas, except it's even harder to get a PR in America on a H1B because of backlogs in the system due to the yearly cap on green cards granted. Being an immigrant is hard, I think I'll talk more about this topic on your next blog post which is about the HK BNO entry route. But the UK systems seems to be a lot less crazy than the US.
I think it sounds like there were one or many events which made your father have very low self esteem which meant he couldn't risk meeting anyone who could possibly look down on and insult him. Which is frankly quite sad, he is missing out on a lot of social interactions in life.
I think a good example of how someone who has thought through this process is Choaniki (one of my regular readers here), he gave up a good job in IT to switch to healthcare and is now an X-ray specialist, because he knows that as a healthcare professional he can move to any country he wants but with IT it would be a massive struggle to do that as a simple function of supply & demand. When I had my British citizenship ceremony, half the room were nurses from the Philippines who worked here long enough to get British citizenship. As for people heading down the marriage path rather than sticking to the work permit route - there are a lot of nasty employers out there who will exploit people desperate not to wanna return to their home country and literally just bully them. I had a former colleague from Ukraine who was treated like crap and bullied badly, then she married a British man and left that horrible company. I also knew of a company who would hire people from places like Israel for that very reason: the Israelis were overworked and underpaid compared to their British counterparts because they were in a vulnerable position.
DeleteAs for my father, sigh. You know I have a crazy rich uncle who was a multi-gazillionaire right? Imagine what it must be like to see your big brother become so crazy rich whilst he became a humble primary school teacher. That's the key reason why he had poor self esteem growing up. His big brother was always the good looking guy who got the best results at school, who had the attention of the girls, who had the love of his parents, who then went on to make a ton of money in Singapore etc whilst my father had none of that. Gosh, that must really suck y'know.