Calling all Internet marketers in Singapore!

On a trip out to Asia, I grew to like Bangkok, but absolutely fell in LOVE with Singapore. It's probably the coolest place I've ever been to.

Maybe I'm weird, I hear most people like Bangkok a lot more.

As an American citizen I'm trying to get in for the intermediate term, maybe long term. There's obviously a way, as about 1/3 of the country are foreigners. But for someone with an online income, it doesn't seem as easy to get in anymore.

- Entrepreneur visa: Based on feedback, nowadays you must have venture capital funding or work in a high desirability tech industry to get the pass. ( http://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-manpower/passes-visas/entrepass/before-you-apply/pages/default.aspx ).

- Global investor visa: Requires a star track record and at least one business with $50 million in annual turnover. Definitely not made with IMers in mind!

- The only real options I see are: 1) Buy a business and then get into the country through an employment pass by employing yourself as an executive/director. 2)bFind someone willing to "employee you" while you figure a way to pay him back for his trouble.

I'm hoping there's something easier than that, like the one year educational visas you can get in Thailand.

Do any foreigners here live in Singapore? What kind of visa did you get?

 

I know some missionary friends who lived in Thailand for 6+ years on educational visas. The husband taught ESL. But they had to all go to Vietnam or something each year to renew their visas. I know they had to cross the border to do that.

 

Isn't Singapore the place that caned an American for spitting gum on the sidewalk? I am all for clean cities, and all, but...

 

It is strict, but not like some Muslim country. The guy you mention did a lot more than spit on the sidewalk, he actually vandalized buildings.

 

Oops. They were two stories from 20 years ago that I seem to have mashed together. The fellow was 18 and got caned four times due to car and street sign vandalism. Caning draws blood and leaves permanent scars. The ban on chewing gum began a couple years before that and was regularly brought up as an example of another unusual (to an American, anyway) law when the story was running about the teenager being caned. That is probably why I melded them together. The memory is the first thing to go...

 

I hope this article is useful to you - http://www.paulhypepage.com/how-can-foreigners-start-a-business-in-singapore/