Residency visas

[lwgray]

I wonder if anyone can give me some information about how to apply for a long term residency in Singapore.

I have property here and when we retire from Hong Kong I would like to move to Singapore.

I occasionally teach here and visit frequently, and would assume that I would do more here if I lived here.

We have no children. No family connections in Singapore. And as freelances, no employers to sponsor us. We might actually hire Singaporeans to work on various projects, depending on the situation. But we have no immediate plans regarding that.

I cannot find any information on the government sites that apply to us. The closest is the business visa but as a writer and film maker, I'm not quite in the kind of business they assume.

Any idea of who i might phone in the MOM?

[AngMoG]

lwgray, I'll let others weigh in with more details, but in a nutshell - you probably will find it difficult to get a more permanent visa, let alone a residency, in the beginning if you are planning to freelance as you do in HK.

The classes that the gov is looking for right now are:
- Employees that work here for a company, and receive a regular salary and
- Entrepreneurs that plan to employ Singaporeans (in permanent positions) via EntrePass
- Companies opening up offices in Singapore

The only way for you that I see would be via a Pte Ltd company, which is fairly easy to set up. See the various threads regarding this. You could then be an employee of that company. However, as a one-man-company, you may face some additional scrutiny, and getting a visa as an employee is not necessarily guaranteed.

You can get residency (PR) after a couple of years (though quite difficult these days) of working here, then you have more liberties.

[JR8]

What AMG says above rings pretty accurate with me. I was also going to suggest looking at the Entrepass.

You need to consider that SG does not encourage '''passengers''' here (no offence, just the facts of it). So to move here as stand-alone retirees, no family... they're not going to encourage it (or even, facilitate it, without seeing some serious money on the table).

An alternative could be Malaysia ... ?
http://www.myexpatmm2h.com/MM2H-Require ... ass&cid=13
[I'm not recommending the above website, it appears a commercial agency of some kind, it was the top hit from Google, and I'm linking it just you can see some outline details of the scheme itself...].
alt: do some Googling on 'Malaysia My 2nd Home', and/or 'MM2H'.

[FaeLLe]

In addition to what others said LTVP route for owners of foreign property in Singapore has been discontinued, there used be a scheme previously by ICA for those aged 45 years and above + house worth $500,000 or more + $400,000 savings or earning $7,500 per month.

Now LTVP can only be applied under certain criteria, details on http://www.ica.gov.sg/services_centre_o ... pageid=376

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The only alternative is if you have a company operating for 3 years with a turnover of 200 million $ or so.

It is called the Global Investor Programme (GIP) - http://www.contactsingapore.sg/gip/

[JR8]

The Malaysian route ... http://www.mm2h.gov.my/

FaeLLee. Yes, I remember that scheme in SG. The MM2H route is a close parallel - I don't recall which scheme came first, but do recall that the SGn version only lasted a couple of years (IIRC)