jazzym

Hi everyone. New to the forums but hoping you can help me. We've had very minimal success through the official channels so though i'd try here.

My wife and I are looking to move to Singapore for around 6 to 9 months possibly from October this year. I am currently a freelance photographer but have been for a very short time. My wife is a part qualified ACCA accountant with at least 10 years experience.

We would ideally like to visit Singapore for a couple of weeks and then travel around asia for 2 - 3 months, returning to Singapore around Christmas / new year.

So we really need advice on what Visas we would need? There doesn't seem to be a visa that suits a newly self employed freelancer like myself.

How easy do you think it would be at the moment for my wife to obtain employment as a management accountant who doesn't speak any Mandarin?

Should my wife look for work before leaving England or she can she base herself in somewhere like Kuala Lumpur whilst looking for work?

Any other advice you can offer on our predicament would be most helpful!

We also need to know more about possible working visas for Thailand and Malaysia, should we need to stop there for a period of time while looking for work in Singapore.

Thanks for your help!

ex reg

You could look through this site click

Times are hard worldwide now so jobs are being cut rather than being more available.
In Singapore the fact your wife doesn't speak Mandarin wouldn't have a bearing on a job.
Unless you can travel here as a tourist and look around for a job whilst here then much better to look from the UK.

IIRC then tourist visa lasts 2 months and you might do the cross border shuffle and get an extra 2 weeks per shuffle.

Accommodation for 'short' visits will not be cheap. Having said that the fact that ex pats are now being repatriated may mean landlords are more willing to go with short lets.

Hopefully this post will get the ball rolling and there are a few here who will give more definite advice especially for Thailand and Malaysia.

Myself I can't see that either of you would find short term employment in the region especially for so short a period and you might consider it as a longer term vacation and get the feel of things here. If you have the spare dosh.

katongkaren

I would second everything ex-reg has said. For what it's worth you can take a look at the following sub-forum for visa info for Thailand.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-v...ermits-f1.html

The world recession is biting everywhere I'm afraid. There are huge numbers losing jobs in Singapore and quite honestly I think you'll find it tough. But as ex-reg said, if you can afford to do so, just treat it as a holiday and see what happens, get a feel for the different countries, and enjoy!!

I'm just wondering if Malaysia - KL especially - might be a better bet. I seem to recall reading that Malaysia wasn't having it so bad recession-wise. Maybe someone from Malaysia can confirm or deny this? You can also wing it easily in Malaysia with a 3 month visa on arrival and doing visa runs thereafter.

Kooky.

Agree with the others I'm afraid, jazzy - not speaking Mandarin is the least of your worries, especially considering the official (or at least schooling and business) language is English.

AFAIK to work on a self-employed basis you would need to start a business locally and get an Employment Pass for Entrepreneurs, I think it's known as an Entrepass. You would need to submit a Business Plan and I THINK invest an amount of money. So for you as a freelance photographer, to work legally - I think you'll agree it's way too much hassle for what you're looking at, essentially a working holiday.

As for your wife - sorry, but there are probably thousands of local part-qualified (and qualified) accountants looking for work right now. They are a lot less hassle for a company to employ than your wife, for whom they'd need to obtain an Employment Pass - and she'd need to satisfy certain criteria to even be eligible for one. Companies need to show that they've done all they can to recruit a local for the position, and have to have a certain local:foreigner ration. As ex-reg and katongkaren will know, there are ways round all this but TBH your wife would have to be pretty special for somebody to go to the trouble. There is a relatively new visa called a Personal Employment Pass but I don't know the terms of this and I think she would still struggle to get work.

If by some miracle she did get work and an EP, you would be her dependent. On a DP you can work for a company if they will employ you, and I know from personal experience that this can be nigh on impossible. I think you would still have to set up a business locally.

Sorry, I know this is not what you want to hear but this is the situation in Singapore at anytime.

As it is, Singapore is suffering; I personally know two senior and long-employed expats who have just lost their jobs and another who is being repatriated. One has been there over ten years, has a partner, owns property, and has 28 days to get out of the country unless he can come up with a Plan B because he never obtained Permanent Residency.

I think this is just the start of it.

Singapore is an expensive place to be unemployed, and not somewhere that travellers often stay for long due to costs. (We've moved on but have PR and think of it more as home than we do the UK, but we couldn't afford to live there without work.)

The link ex-reg posted may tell you more; you can also check out www.ica.gov.sg and www.mom.gov.sg.

katongkaren

I probably should've mentioned that I got an Entrepass employment pass with my OH back in late 2004, moved to Singapore in 2005 and quit Singapore late December 2007. I could write volumes on the Entrepass. You don't necessarily need to invest a lot of money in your business but you do need to convince them that you will be helping the Singapore economy in some way and a proven track record with your business and lots and lots of hoops to jump through. We found 'our way in' through contactsingapore. It's actually a government agency but pretends not to be . You can check out their website at http://www.contactsingapore.sg/home/ . They have an office in London.

jazzym

Thanks for all your replies. Keep them coming!

So it seems as a freelance photographer I'm kinda stuffed if i want to settle in Singapore. The best bet would be a dependants visa if my wife was lucky enough to find work in Singapore. It's kinda of a gamble between staying here and her trying to find work there OR going there and hoping that in the time we're out there and travelling she manages to find work in Singapore and attend a few interviews, etc. Then stay somewhere cheap outside of Singapore until the work pass is processed.

I appreciate people are being made redundant in Singapore at the moment. They are everywhere really but there's always some jobs available so you never know. Best to stay positive and see what happens.

We're currently checking out the possibility of settling in KL instead. Working visas and of course my predicament.

So i'm currently freelancing in the UK. As i understand I would need a working visa in any country, if i wanted to trade with companies within that country. But i could trade with companies outside of that country. For example if I'm based in Malaysia there's nothing stopping me trading with companies in the UK or neighbouring Thailand or Singapore. The companies would pay me through my UK bank account, i would pay UK tax, etc.

This may be my only option for a while, unless countries like Malaysia and Thailand offer a visa that is applicable to my situation.

How do freelancers work for short periods of time in foreign countries? You see actors, photographers, journalists, etc, etc working abroad for a month or so. How do they achieve this?

Thanks for your continued help. It's very much appreciated!

katongkaren

If your business was based in Malaysia, why would you want to bring money into the UK (the country you have left and high taxes too)? Would your business be registered with UK authorities or Malaysian authorities? What currency would you be invoicing in? Would the companies you are dealing with (in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand) really want to pay you in Sterling? Just a few thoughts.

katongkaren

Are you allowed to keep PR even if you've left Singapore??

Why is it that all those that manage to get PR seem to leave Singapore, and those that want to stay in Singapore cannot get it? No, don't answer that one.

jazzym

Thanks for your reply.

The reason for not registering myself as a company in Malaysia (or Singapore for that matter) is because i would have to have a work visa. Or possibly some sort of "EntrePass".

I would be invoicing clients in their local currency. You can pay any currency into any bank account, the conversion to sterling would be done by the bank and just charge me an admin fee. So that wouldn't pose a problem.

The taxes may no doubt be higher back in England but as we may be moving from one country to another every month or two, possibly with just tourist visas, it's easier to pay tax back home than go through getting work visas for all the countries.

Possibly. I'm only guessing at a lot of the above. I would welcome any comments on any of it.

Kooky.

Yes you can, although as you probably know it does run out. We have left our CPF account intact and are going to ask for an extension on our PR as at the moment we are only Temps in Oz.

No, I won't answer that one but I will say that when we took PR we had no plans to move on, and never say never...

katongkaren

I think technically you may be working illegally that way (in the eyes of the Malaysian authorities or whoever) - that's not to say that a lot of people do it that way. If you wanted to do it legally, you'd need to contact the appropriate government department. You might want to put another posting on the Far East forum rather than this one or do a google for alloexpat malaysia which is another forum.

Before we moved to Singapore, we did something similar - operating out of UK but working in different countries and you always needed to check out with the country you were going to if it was OK to do. Some were easy, some were not, and some changed their rules along the way (eg Singapore where we had a little run in with the tax authorities for a while - we're now good friends though ) Hey maybe that's why we didn't get PR

katongkaren

They have more money than us mere mortals and employ big international accountancy firms with offices in all the countries they work to sort out all the Passes, Tax issues, for them. (For a huge fee of course)

Kooky.

I think (open to correction) that there is a short-term business visa for such circumstances.

ex reg

IIRC once a PR always a PR.

What you need though is a Re entry Permit which nowadays lasts for only 5 years.

It can be renewed from overseas so unlike the UK thingy you don't actually need to use it if you are actually out of Singapore for a period.

Think that's correct, having just renewed, but happy to be corrected.

And unbelievably the re entry permit is now a sheet of A-4 paper to be carried with you.
No longer a chop in the passport

katongkaren

Don't talk to me about bits of paper. Thailand - waaahhhh, I've got all sorts of bits of paper stuffed in, stapled in - departure card, Immigration reminders, Immigration receipts, you name it.