Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Singaporean or PR

Yesterday while I was watching the news, I read that Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong wanted more Singapore Permanent Residents (PRs) to take up Singapore citizenships. SM Goh got a lot of work in front of him.

Seriously, nowadays who is their right mind would prefer to be a full Singapore citizen when he could be a PR? As a PR, you can have almost the same benefits as a Singaporean while having the option of dropping the PR at a moment notice. We had seen a lot of foreigners who came to Singapore, get the PR, make their money for a few years, then drop their PR status and go back to their home country.

I mean there isn’t that much of a difference between full Singapore citizenships and PRs at the moment. In fact, there are some people (including some PRs) who believe it is more advantageous to being a PR than a Singaporean.

I do not know if this was an off-the-cuff remark or if he was serious, but if the SM is serious; I love to see how the government intends to convince PRs to become Singapore citizens.

2 comments:

Alan Wong said...

Remember the strategy behind making the PR pay the full price when the HDB lifts are upgraded.

And not forgetting the pilot who got his stripped of his PR.

It's all political. PAP can be as calculative and vindictive when they choose to be so.

Would you like your govt to behave in such a uncivilised manner ?

Ghost said...

Well it seems this is a no-go area now. The response from PRs has been so swift that even today's Straits Times had to say that "PRs won't be forced to become citizens."
Bottomline: It's better to be a PR than a citizen here in Singapore and our PRs knows it.