King Charlie

Hello,

I moved over to AD in August, and before I flew out, I contacted my new employers asking what documents I would need for my wife's visa. They reliably informed me that copies of passport, attested marriage certificate etc would suffice.
After settling in over here, I set off to the Marina Mall to get our marriage cert attested then translated into Arabic, as required for her entry permit. So far so good.
On arrival, I was informed that a copy was no good, it must be the original - despite what my new employers had told me!
Frustrated, I went to see them to explain, and I suggested why couldn't she simply come over here as if "on holiday", bring the original marriage cert with her, and sort everything out while she's here?
They seemed to think that this would be ok? Which causes me to think....why doesn't everyone, from countries that are issued with free entry visa's, simply do this?
The Government site states that all of this should be in place before arrival, but does it make any difference? She will be allowed in regardless, and we can get her visa at our leisure.
On average, it's taken anywhere between 7-10 weeks for employee's families to arrive, mainly due to the lengthy paperwork process and "laid back" employer; but doing it this way, our families could have arrived with us on a 60 day visa and sorted out the necessary paperwork as soon as we (the employee) had all of our paperwork sorted out? Or arrived once we had our visa's, either way, there wouldn't be weeks of waiting.
Have I missed something?

mariamalm1980

This depends which country you are from. If you are westerners, you shouldn't have this problems with your wife entering Gulf Dubai (Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Ras Al Khaimah), Qatar, Bahrain, Oman (except Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) your wife can come over and have the visa upon arrival and then change it to spouse visa later on. But if you are from different countries, visa for the spouse need to be processed first before travelling. And this normally do take a month or so depends on the company's Mandoob (PRO).
In our case, we only submitted authenticated copy of marriage certificate not the original (This was scanned, print in colored and look like original) perhaps they can't tell the different. And the processing only took a couple of weeks.

King Charlie

Hey Maria,

Thank you for your reply. Yes my wife will be travelling from Ireland, so I really can't see the problem? I'm just annoyed we didn't do this earlier! So if she arrives, and assuming all of our paperwork is present and correct, do you think it will take approximately one month to get her a visa?

mariamalm1980

That is depend on your employer's PRO processing speed. but you shouldn't have a problem bringing her over now, as an Irish/UK passport holder has 30 days right to stay visa given upon entering Abu Dhabi. http://www.abudhabi.com/v/visa_requirements/

And this should be enough for them to process her spouse visa. If needed to exit to change the visa from visit to spouse, enter Bahrain and come back the same day! its just an hour trip!

Mogs

If it takes longer than 30 days (which is likely) then you can pay something like 100 AED to extend visa for an additional 30 days.

If still not processed after the 60 days from arrival, she will have to leave the country (a 2 hour drive to the Oman border and back again).

No reason why she couldn't have come out the same time as you in the first place.

mariamalm1980

There you go! I guessed 90 days would be plenty of time for your employers to process your wife's visa!

mariamalm1980

What are you waiting for? get her a ticket ASAP so you can spend time with your wife together! Life is boring without your spouse around you! my husband misses my nagging and find life boring without me!

Patsy Stoned

610dhs 1 time only ..after that just do a visa run to Hatta Fort, or the nearest Omani border to you.

King Charlie

Cheers all, I was just getting slightly concerned at how long my employers were taking, because my wife is 5 months pregnant and I assume she'll have to be a resident to use my company medical care?
But hopefully they'll just book the flights now and we can sort out the visa once she arrives? Thanks again.

Mogs

If it costs that much, just do the visa run after the initial 30 days visa runs out

busybee2

its a different price in auh compared to dxb (yeh i know)

archie159

Check that medical care carefully... Some policies won't cover people for pregnancy if they are already pregnant when the policy is issued. I'm fairly sure ours, which is a pretty good policy from a good provider, says that.