Obviously there are loads of foreigners here holding Employment Passes who are on a finite period posting / expat contract and have no intention of sticking around. There are also lots of PRs who have been here years and years and consider Singapore a home. This is something that the locals who like to complain about how "expats are valued more than we are by the govt ... they're only here for the money etc etc " conveniently ignore of course.
The government wants (some of) those long term PRs to convert to Singaporean citizenship, to make a really long term commitment to the country, and thinks that differentiating the benefits available to citizens from PRs in the state school and health systems (amongst other things) will encourage them to do so. Personally I think their logic is off - those are nice fringe benefits, and for those of us without full expat allowances, financially quite valuable - but
no way would I decide to give up my existing passport and take a Singaporean passport due to those. It needs to be something
much more substantial in my opinion.
I actually think that if they welcomed dual citizenship a lot of people would be more positive about taking up Singaporean passports. Govt won't do that because they think it would mean we're "not committed to Singapore", which is daft because Singaporeans can travel to most places without any serious visa hassles these days anyway!
Just my two cents worth...
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