Citizenship for PRs with Singaporean Children and Grandchildren

Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether citizenship can be granted to parents/grandparents of Singapore citizens above the age of 60 who have been PRs and lived in Singapore for more than 20 years to look after their Singaporean children/grandchildren; and (b) whether foreign spouses of Singapore citizens who have three or more Singaporean children can be given priority to be granted citizenship.

Elderly parents of Singapore Citizens (SCs) may be granted Singapore Citizenship under the sponsorship of their SC children. The applications will be assessed on a range of criteria, which include the length of time the adult child/children has been an SC (for naturalised SCs) and the elderly person’s length of residence in Singapore, whether all their adult children are SCs, the contributions of the adult SC children to Singapore and the financial ability of the SC child/children to support the elderly parents. SCs can sponsor only their immediate family members, namely, parents, spouse and children for SC. They are not able to sponsor their grandparents for SC.

Foreign spouses of SCs may be granted Permanent Residence (PR) or Singapore Citizenship under the Family Ties Scheme (FTS). Each PR or SC application for a foreign spouse is evaluated holistically on a range of criteria, which include the ability of the SC sponsor to support the family, the length of marriage and whether the couple have any

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children from the marriage. If the couple have children from their marriage, this will be a plus factor although having more children does not necessarily mean that the applicant has higher priority as applications are assessed holistically.