Citizenship for Male Permanent Residents who Complete National Service

9 Mr Darryl David asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether all male Permanent Residents who complete their National Service get to be offered Singaporean Citizenship automatically and, if so, how soon after completing NS are they offered it; and (b) how many such cases are there every year.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Home Affairs (Mr Amrin Amin) (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Singapore Citizenship (SC) is not granted automatically to Permanent Residents (PRs) who have completed National Service (NS). PRs who are interested in taking up citizenship would have to apply and will be assessed accordingly.

Each application is evaluated holistically on a range of criteria, to assess how committed an applicant is to sinking roots and also how well the applicant is able to contribute and integrate into our society. The fact that the PR has completed National Service and has performed well during NS will be a plus factor in the evaluation.

For the period from 2011 to 2015, ICA received about 4,000 applications for citizenship from PRs who had completed full-time NS. About 98% of the applications were approved.