Saturday, February 28, 2009

Permanent Residency Application February 28, 2009

Some possible reasons for applying PR:
1. Possibility of taking roots in Singapore
2. Travel conveniences
3. Taxes is much lower
4. CPF (Central Provident Fund) which will be payed partly by the Employer and partly by you
5. More jobs available for PR since some companies prefer to hire PR's or Singapore Citizens

We applied last Nov. 15, 2009 which is our e-appointment. You get the forms from their website www.ica.gov.sg. After filling it up you have to make an e-appointment online on when you're going to submit the forms. Weekends are allowed but due to large numbers of applications sometimes the next available slots are 2 months ahead so make sure to reserve your slot as early as possible. Personal appearance is required for the applicants. Just follow all requirements stated in the form.

I would suggest taking your passport id picture in ICA itself to avoid inconvenience. Right now it's just S$5 for 4 id's. Get 4 additional copies for your formalities so that you don't need to come back.

We didn't get our medical examination since another friend of ours advised us that if your last medical exam happened 2 years from your formalities appointment date then you don't need to undergo medical examination again. Just to make sure my Wife confirmed this on ICA hotline. Remember to ask where you can get the declaration form where you outline details like Pass-type (Q1, Q2, etc), Date of acquiring that pass and it's expiration, etc. This declaration pretty much says that during your PASS application you already had your medical exam which is within the 2 years time frame.

The submission is no hassle. It took us an hour.

Common application takes about 3 months so 2 weeks before the 3rd month i called ICA to verify my application since my Wife's S-PASS is going to expire on Mar. 10, 2009 so we needed to know if she'll going to renew her pass or not. The operator said our PR application has been approved and told us to wait for the letter of approval. We waited for another week but no letter arrived. We called again to the ICA if it's possible to retrieve the letter personally in ICA office. They asked for our contact nos. to get back to us regarding this.

1 day later someone from ICA called my Wife's mobile and informed us that the letter was sent on January 29, 2009. If they will resend the mail it will take additional 3 weeks so they gave us instructions on when and who should we approach in ICA to retrieve our approval letter. Sure enough the letter was handed over to me personally when i went there.

That same day during the evening we tried to schedule an appointment for the formalities however the reference no. of or approval letter doesn't work. I tried again the next morning and then i was able to go in and set our formalities on Feb. 27, 2009 (Fri.) at 11:45. For formalities only weekdays are allowed so we need to take day off on that day.

A very useful advice was given to us by my friend that we need to scan our approval letter in 5th floor of ICA to get the queue number when it is already 10 minutes of our appointment time. Meaning if our appointment is set to 11:45am then we should scan between 11:35am to 11:44am. If you scanned too early it will consider you as a walk-in and it will take the whole day for you to be accommodated. Even having an appointment it feels like your a walk-in. We arrived early to have our breakfast. We didn't found any fastfood around so we settled for their cafeteria. Not much to choose from in our opinion. We're not very fond of some of their traditional menu. We just bought egg sandwiches which costs S$1.80. Could be more cheaper. My wife had an orange juice and me a squash lime which we thought could use less water. They shouldn't dilute the drinks to much.

About approx. 30-45 mins. our number was called to a counter where we submitted the completed forms. After we informed of our medical examination the officer gave me the declaration form to fill-up and my wife filled-up hers on the form attached to our approval letter. It's a good thing i have my Cards with me because they only accept NETS for payment! They could have posted this in their website or something to inform the public. I'm not sure what would've happened if we don't have NETS. Sheesshh!! We paid S$150 per person.

After that the officer gave us the new counters that we need to wait for the queue number. These counters are for the thumb printing and scanning. We waited, i think, for about 2 hours and my pregnant wife is already hungry since the last food that we ate are just sandwiches. We keep seeing numbers higher than us being called but not ours. Just makes you wonder if it's by random or is their any pattern that I'm not seeing.

After the thumb printing and another round of payment (S$50 per person for the IC Card) we we're told to check the queue numbers being called at room 40. We were given the collection slip for our IC cards. The officer informed us that one of us can get the IC from 8am to 4pm on Mar. 6, 2009 (Fri.).

After about 30 mins. our number was called with a bunch of other numbers on the same room (rm 40). I think about 5 numbers were called. Inside another officer gave us our passport, Re-Entry permit and yellow cardboard which the officer told us to photocopy and give to our employers for the CPF contribution.

So we started at 11:45am and we finished at around 4pm. What a day. And we still need to go to Expo that day for the Baby Expo. But I'm glad we are now PR. Another milestone for my Family.


Disclaimer: Information contained in this blog are personal experiences and not to be used as factual information source. It may or may not apply to you so do your own research.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very Informative and usefull. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, this was very interesting to read as we're just applying for PR ourselves!

Jel said...

Do share your experiences also if it's different from ours. Thanks a lot.

Unknown said...

Useful info man.. you rock..

Diwa

Unknown said...

Useful info man.. U ROCK!!!

Jel said...

Thanks Bro, just share with your friends if they need help. Let me know if there's any info that is outdated.

Unknown said...

Hi, stumbled on ur blog and found this topic, would like to check, do ICA holding your passport during completion of fomalities until they issue the IC? And are we able to travel on that time? Thanks.. :)

Jel said...

I believe ICA will not hold your passport for PR formalities. If you're travelling you can still use whatever working/dependent/long term visit pass you're currently holding.