New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Ok boys and girls - Here's the latest: It took my husband 7 months to get his visa; add another 2 or 3 weeks for his labour card (this having lived in AD for 2.5 years and then transferring to Dubai 11 months ago!!).

Now he has his labour card, we can finally apply for my visa which we wanted to do asap (my poor maid has been waiting in the Philippines for 9 months now and is very hungry :mad:). So we told the company to pay the extra whatever it is to get an emergency visa for me - they said they couldn't process it UNTIL MY DH HAS AN E GATE CARD :confused:

Does anyone know if this is right or not?? Is it anything new?? I am so cheesed off, I really and truly feel like packing it all in right now :curse:

Help:ohmy:

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Pretty sure it's true, my husband had to go get his when our visas were being processed. It's relatively quick and painless and a couple of hundred dirham.

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

I don't know about that - but it'll take 10 minutes to get an egate card...

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Isn't it just weird that he didn't need it for his own and now needs it for mine :blink: I'm flummoxed with the way they like to make money out of every bit of paper we need to process - tax-free country indeed :curse:

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Welcome to Dubai - an administration nightmare!

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

the Egate card is one of the best things to have though, and like others said, it doesn't take long to get one...

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Oh I know the egate card is good to have (we had it in AD); it's just so odd that he needs to have one before he can sponsor me. A little bit like apples and oranges is what I think ....... so I guess it's just for the extra 200 dhs or so that it will cost !! :eek:

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Is it just me or WTF is a egate card and what does it do for me?

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

It's great - it means that you can skip the passport control queue. You go straight through a small gate by scanning your card in front of it. It then scans your fingerprint and you can go. You can use it at any of the UAE airports. Loads of countries have been using fingerprint and and retina scanning for a while now. The UK hasn't quite got there...

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Yes but other than another money making racket/tax as the OP says what the hell has a husbands e gate card got to do with getting his wifes visa?

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Diddly!

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

It's pointless arguing with the "system" - just get it done lol

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

My point exactly Diddly - just another scam and another lot of waste of time especially since my dude is currently working 20/7 for the next 7 weeks - aaaaargh!:mad:

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

although I don't know the reason for the Egate coupled with the visa, I'd hardly call the card a scam as it is something a lot of people have any way and you do actually benifit from having one, so it's not like it's a waste of money as such, merely an inconvenience if you don't have one.
As for the taxfree argument...that applies only to the salary. Nowhere does the UAE government say that all their services are free...in fact I am sure that when you need a license or a permit of some sort in Europe you also have to pay for these services, and that is on top of the tax they take off your salary...

Re: New thing needed for wife's visa
 

Whether you have an e card or whether you want one or whether its useful doesnt come into needing one for something totally unconnected with it. An alcohol license is useful but not everyone bothers to get one and you dont need one to get a visa