Your first day at work may consist of filling in a number of forms with your personnel department.
To complete the visa process you will need:
Original passport
Original employment visa (the pink piece of paper you get at the airport upon arrival)
Two passport photos
Visa medical results
Copy of health insurance card
A salary certificate (which your employer should provide)
Your company's HR department should take care of the necessary paperwork and hand back your original passport, which should now include a residence visa stuck to one of the pages.
Under UAE law it is illegal for your employer to hold your passport. If you have any queries about this contact the Ministry of Labour.
If, for any reason, you leave the UAE for more than six months, your residency status will become invalid and you will have to start the process again.
Family visas
A new resident must first get their own residence visa before their family can get theirs. The resident then becomes the "sponsor" of their family.
In the UAE, it is easy for a husband to sponsor his wife, but more difficult for a wife to sponsor her husband.
The UAE does not recognise common-law marriages or same-sex partnerships. To apply for a visa for his wife, a man must earn a salary of at least Dh10,000 per month.
Expatriate women who, according to the Abu Dhabi Government, work in a "rare or important specialisation, such as medicine, engineering, or education", can apply for visas for family members, providing sponsorship requirements are met.
The paperwork includes:
The original long form of marriage certificate (for spouse) or birth certificate (for child) attested by the issuing country. It is recommended that you get the document attested before arriving as several embassies don't provide this service, in which case you would have to have it couriered back to your home country.
The marriage/birth certificate must be stamped by the UAE Immigration Department (near the Abu Dhabi Country Club)
The certificate must be officially translated into Arabic. This can be done at:
GOSB Legal Translation, Hamdan Street, Alain Ahlia Insurance Building, 02 627 1062
or Alrayan Legal Translation, Passport Road, Near the Ministry of Education, 02 634 6684
A salary certificate for the resident who is acting as sponsor. You will require a separate letter of no objection for each visa you are applying for
A photocopy of the sponsor's passport picture page and residence visa
A photocopy of the applicant's passport picture page and visit visa stamp
Four passport photos of the applicant
Address and phone number in home country
Spouses (but not children) are required to go to Sheikh Khalifa Medical City for a HIV test and X-ray.
Newborns
Parents of newborns born in the UAE are given 120 days to apply for their child's residency visa. Before applying for the visa, a passport must be obtained for the child via your country's embassy or consulate.
Once the passport is obtained, an application form is available at the Naturalisation and Residency Department.
Changing jobs
If you decide to change your job after less than a year or your employment is terminated, then you can be "banned" from working for another company for 12 months – although this only happens in extreme cases. If the employee has been with the company for more than 12 months then the ban is reduced to six months. In all cases, a ban can be avoided with a letter of no objection.
Free zones have been set up around the UAE that circumvent the normal rules laid down by the Ministry of Labour.
A ban obtained outside a free zone has no jurisdiction inside it.
Futher information is available here.
Visa runs
Some visitors to the UAE get around the visa laws by leaving the country once every 30 days and having their visitor's visa renewed upon their return. The authorities are aware some people do this, and may take action if you are discovered.
