sundaymorningstaple wrote:dodrio,
stop and think about it for a moment. She's been here a couple of years, and up till last year's GE, it's been pretty much clear sailing. But not, the citizenry are up in arms about foreigners. MOM has been given the directive to trim the fat and get rid of a sizeable portion of foreigners. So, they raise the bar both in income and education for them. Lot's of them don't get renewed but as you say, have been here a couple of years and would surely like to stay, for various reasons.
If they are single, in the past, one easy way was to get married to a local. At least you could get to stay on an LTVP if not PR or finding another job and getting a work pass. Now it isn't so easy and to make it even more difficult, they are raising the bar for the local spouse so as to ensure that the "new" wife will not become a ward of the state. In other words, they want to make sure the local spouse is making enough to support two people.
Frankly, today, if you are earning under 3K/mo and have to rent a place of your own (you cannot just figure on getting married and living with you parents) you are going to be hard pressed to do it unless your wife is working as well. Therefore, due to inflation, ICA has raised the minimum salary/month as well. It's rough, but that's the way it is.
Hello sundaymorningstaple,
Thank you for the advises there! Have learnt something today, i agree that the standards of living in Singapore is rising, but just as to time passes now rental fee outside for rooms are as high as per month payment for a BTO flat nowadays! which is why we we have had thought of marriage way before but did not do it due to the set of criterias for approval from MoM themselves.
Since we're both ready to commit since then till now, we have decided that why not try for approval and since to buy a HDB, it will be much more convenient of a stay instead of just a rental room itself for us both.
Just hope that sometimes MoM would not only look at salary/month and qualification at times. but to also look at the situation the couple might be in.
Regards,
dodrio