Family visas for Saudi Arabia now linked with salary

Family visas for Saudi Arabia now linked with salary

The Foreign Ministry will issue permanent resident visas for wives and children of expatriate workers in the Kingdom without…

December 26, 2009 7:27 by kippreport

The Foreign Ministry will issue permanent resident visas for wives and children of expatriate workers in the Kingdom without considering their profession, Al-Yaum Arabic daily reported.

“The ministry’s office in Riyadh issued such recruitment visas for three days last week and stopped it temporarily. It is expected that the ministry would resume the service next month,” a ministry source told the paper.

The news is a relief for many of the seven million expatriate workers, who are unable to bring their families on resident visas due to their profession written on their iqamas.

The Foreign Ministry and the Recruitment Office only issued permanent resident and visit visas to those in white-collar jobs such as engineers, doctors and executives. The Al-Yaum report said the ministry would only look at the financial status of the applicant. “The family visa is no [longer] linked with profession,” the source said. He said the ministry stopped processing applications in order to implement the new criteria.

“This is great news for thousands of professionals like me who are unable to bring their wives and children to the Kingdom because of the profession in iqama,” said Shabeer Ali, a computer engineer based in Jeddah.

Arab News