Have got some friends who are planning to move to Thailand to retire.xmastree333 wrote:Hi. I'm a 33 year old American who is a software developer with 10 years of experience in America. I have a Thai wife, married legally in Thailand.
2 questions.
1. Would I be able to get her and myself relocated to Singapore on a residency status?
2. This question is a little more subjective. Would both my wife (Thai, 27) and I be welcomed in Singapore overall, legally speaking? Obtaining the needed visas and residency status is one thing, but is immigration welcoming of legal foreigners? I ask because Thailand is not very welcoming of legally registered foreigners, regardless of if they work at a corporation even as big as Agoda and even if they are married to a Thai. I am forced to leave Thailand every 90 days and re-enter, there is no residency option that is attainable, I have to keep applying every year for a visa. And more recently, the police (a squad of 9 armed with guns and flak vests) knocked on my door and thousands others as part of "Operation X-Ray Outlaw Foreigner" which is a xenophobic campaign to simply stick-it to foreigners, even ones like me who cross all their t's and dot their i's. We have squads of police knocking on our condos doing on the spot searches and it's just embarrassing for my neighbors to see me like this, as though I have warrants or am a drug dealer. I can't imagine raising children in the state that Thailand is with its current military Junta.
Barnsley wrote: Have got some friends who are planning to move to Thailand to retire.
Is it really so bad , as what you say doesn't seem to be getting much press and many folks I know are looking at Thailand to retire , this is with the knowledge that they will be unable to work whilst there.
PR won't be easy and it takes time. You need to be here working for several years before there is any point in applying. Neither of you is a preferred race so that further limits your chances. If you breed boys (for National Service) that could help.xmastree333 wrote:Pardon me for asking such a newbie question but, how difficult/likely is getting PR for myself (American, IT worker) and also for my wife (Thai, housewife). I'm mostly asking from a "starting a family" situation in mind. I might just have to move back to America for that, but I was wondering if Singapore would be an option as I like the area based on visiting a few months ago.
These are good points actually. In the past, I lived in Thailand for 5 years and never bothered applying because I had remote so it was a no brainer to work online. However, remote work from the US isn't that easy to get, and I rather have something with better family raising hours such as 9am-5pm instead of 9pm to 5am. Now, I'll toot my own horn here, but I'm a really good software engineer so I could see myself being employed readily in Singapore/etc as I would be offering expertise since I have worked at Amazon in the past. I got the skills for sure, and I actually am ok with making far less money than in America. And from what I hear, SWE's like myself easily get employed in this region, it's just a matter of if they are willing to make low wage and work in a bueracratic mess whereas most SWE's prefer writing "botique/hipster/hand-crafted" software isntead of the kind of spagehti code that can occur in autocratic bureaucracies. From what i hear, getting the job is easy, it's getting over the cultural differences that is not. So I may be best off heading to America afterall.sundaymorningstaple wrote:The biggest problem he's going to have is finding a job in the first place, let alone worrying about how to get PR. Too many from SE Asia with IT degrees who will work a heck of a lot cheaper than he probably will unless he gets transferred here by a MNC employer from a western company. Methinks he's going to need a rather large dollop of luck, truth be known.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests