HE MARRIED a China woman just two weeks after meeting her in 2005. Earlier this week, he divorced her.

Not because of infidelity or a falling out, but because the woman was expelled from Singapore for previous immigration offences and can no longer come back.

The woman had pleaded with him not to divorce her. But Singaporean taxi driver Vincent Ng, 45, doesn’t think that he’s being heartless.

After all, when his ex-wifeMadamGuan was deported in 2007, he had spent nearly two years appealing to the authorities to let her back in.

He did not wish to migrate to be with her.

So, he believes he is just being practical – he has a new girlfriend now and wants to move on with his life.

The saga began in June 2005, when the two got married within a fortnight after being introduced by a mutual friend.

Mr Ng said he needed a wife because his mother was unwell. As they hit it off, he didn’t want to waste time. This is despite Madam Guan, 39, telling him that she had previously been jailed for about a month and deported for immigration offences in 2001.

She had not declared that fact in her visa application, he said. “I told her to surrender,” said Mr Ng and he claimed that the two of them went to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) where she admitted she had a criminal record.

“The officer said she was very honest and so gave her a chance,” he claimed. He said she was given a one-month extension for her stay.

He said he later applied for and got a long-term social visit pass for six months.

For 11/2 years, he lived with her and her young son from a previous marriage in a four-room flat in Toa Payoh.

But in January 2007, he said his wife was detained by police in a raid at a massage parlour. She was allegedly working without a work permit. He said she was referred to ICA.

Barred from coming here

Immigration officers told them that Madam Guan could not remain in Singapore as she had previously been barred from coming here.

Madam Guan returned home to Nanping, in the Fujian province of China,on 28 Jan 2007, he said.

He also claimed that his wife had previously worked as a prostitute – an allegation that she has denied.

Mr Ng said he appealed for a visa for her, but when he realised there was no chance of getting a reprieve, he asked for a divorce earlier this year.

For nine months, Madam Guan refused to agree to a divorce as she still had hopes of saving her marriage. He claimed he had spent $6,000 on legal fees to try and get a divorce – which is close to his four months’ salary.

It was only this week that Madam Guan signed on the dotted line, “I was angry she made me waste a lot of money,” he said.

Madam Guan told The New Paper on Sunday that from 2000 to 2001, she stayed in Singapore illegally and worked without a permit. She claimed she did so to avoid an abusive, alcoholic husband in China –whom she divorced in 2001 – and to pay off debts.

As for whether she was a prostitute, she exclaimed: “Definitely not. That guy is too much. I think he thinks all China girls are like that.” She did odd jobs, like helping in hawker stalls and giving out flyers, she claimed.

She was eventually caught by the authorities. At the time, she could not produce her passport in court because she had left it with a “friend” who did not give it back to her, she claimed.

She was eventually deported.

Madam Guan changed her passport in 2005 and returned to Singapore that year.

She claimed that the only reason she changed her passport in 2005 was that the law in China required her to do so every five years.

She alleged that she had not mentioned her first conviction when she returned because her cousin had helped her fill up the visa application, and she did not tell her cousin about it.

She still hopes to return to Singapore and start a family with Mr Ng.

“I like Singapore a lot and I have a lot friends here, and I love the environment,” she said.

This article was first published in The New Paper.