A 2024 Step-By-Step Guide To Relocating And Living In The United Arab Emirates – Abu Dhabi.
The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place to live.
A Global Village.
It is not uncommon for people to move from one country to the other and establish a home in a country that’s not their birth country in their lifetime.
Faster travel, social media, population growth, migration, and many other factors have opened the world to its citizens. This means we are no longer as confined to our countries of origin because other countries are welcoming of foreigners and supportive of them settling down.
We are an itinerant family, having moved to 3 countries in a span of 7 years.
We’re currently living in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and have UAE Residency Visas, which enables us to live here as foreign nationals but legal residents. Our kids can therefore attend school, we can work either in self or formal employment or even purchase property as long as our residency, which is valid and renewable every 2 years, remains current.
Our intention is to make this our home base, until at least our youngest who is 10 and in Year 5 in a British Curriculum school finishes her last year of school, Year 13, in 8 years.
While we expect to stay for the duration of her schooling, with her older siblings having preceded her to further studies from Abu Dhabi, I’m not one to cast my plans in stone! As someone said, ‘Man plans, God laughs!’. Who knows where our next adventure will lead us to but for now, this is it.
Proverbial crystal ball aside, the point to this post is how we made the move here, and the practicalities of it.
PATH TO UAE RESIDENCY
In comparison to Australia, the UAE has fewer pathways to obtaining legal residency. Even though they are not as extensive as Australia’s, it’s good news that at least a couple of options are made available in a country that offers a high standard of living and was quite recently closed off to these options.
To that end, I will share our experience of how we went about our UAE residency through company formation. There are other pathways, one of which is through investment in the UAE.
INVESTMENT PATHWAY
You’d need to purchase and own one or more pieces of property such as a house or apartment. Unfortunately, this pathway is not open to most of us because of:
- The relatively high cost of real estate in the UAE and probably most importantly,
2. The minimum value of the property (or properties) must not be less than 1 million AED (dirhams) per person! (at least at the time of writing this)
In essence, your investment club of 5 besties cannot decide to jointly purchase a property in the UAE for purposes of meeting the 1M minimum investment threshold and subsequently obtaining residencies for all 5 of you.
Smart, but err no!
Sadly, we were not sitting on 1M AED in the bank (approximately 274,000 USD) at the time we decided to move to the UAE and thus opted for the ‘cheaper’ option.
Fortunately, you do not need to be as cashed up with this other option, but you will need to have a little more than spare change in the bank to get through the process to its legal conclusion.
STEP 1: FREE ZONE VISA SELECTION
The UAE government created Free Trade Zones in their respective Emirates where you can register your company and as a shareholder of said company, apply to be a legal resident of the UAE once this is granted. These visas are typically valid for 2 years and renewable.
It’s important to pay careful consideration to the type of business activity you want to venture into and the free zone best suited to that as each come with pros and cons you would need to consider at length before starting the visa process.
STEP 2: COMPANY REGISTRATION
In our case, we registered a company in a Dubai Free Zone, as much as we live in Abu Dhabi, which is a separate Emirate all together from the well-known Dubai.
There are many other jurisdictions you can register a company and obtain a business license. There are also several companies that can assist with navigating obtaining your license and offering these services and the licenses at various price points, eliminating the need to go it alone.
Costs vary and are dependent on the specific economic zone or jurisdiction you settle upon, the nature and requirements of your business. Luckily there are guidelines provided by the government so that there is little guesswork and plenty of transparency through this whole process.
FUN FACT
To save you a trip to Google, I’ll digress here briefly to highlight what the United Arab Emirates is made up of.
There are 7 Emirates, or States, which make up the federation that is the UAE. Each are ruled by their own ruler or Emir and are:
- Abu Dhabi (largest of the 7)
- Ajman (smallest of the 7)
- Dubai (arguably most renown)
- Fujairah
- Ras Al Khaimah
- Sharjah
- Umm Al Quwain
As an example, I am a resident of Abu Dhabi but issued with a UAE driver’s license not an Abu Dhabi one. However, because I live in Abu Dhabi, I am subject to Abu Dhabi laws and regulations which may vary slightly from those of Dubai or other Emirates.
A simple example is the speed limits. In Dubai, where the speed limit is indicated as 100 km/h, you are allowed to go an extra 20km/h without penalty, meaning you won’t be fined for driving at 120 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. However, in Abu Dhabi, where the limit is 100 km/h, that’s it.. 100 is 100. I once received 195 AED/dirham fine (discounted from 300 dirhams) for driving 83 km/h on an 80km/h road! No wiggle room.
STEP 3: FREE ZONE LICENSE
Next step after registering your company would be to submit an application to the Free Zone Authority for a free zone license that corresponds to your business activity. Once the license is issued typically within a few days, you’re free to proceed to the next step.
STEP 4: ESTABLISHMENT CARD
At this stage, you are required to apply for an establishment card which will enable your company, as a registered and licensed entity, to sponsor residence visas for you as the owner and your employees, if any.
The fees will vary based on the number of visas you’re applying for and guided by the rules and regulations of the Zone and Emirate you established your company within.
STEP 5: ENTRY PERMIT
Once your company’s establishment card is issued, you have the green light to apply for the entry permit to enter the UAE legally as your physical presence will be required for the next steps. You will need to enter the UAE with the necessary paperwork, being the company license and of course valid passport to facilitate the last crucial steps.
STEP 6: MEDICAL EXAMS AND EMIRATES ID (EID)
The UAE is strict about maintaining a healthy population and one of the ways they do this is by establishing the health status of those that seek to reside in the UAE.
You’ll need to avail yourself to a pre-approved medical facility for a checkup which includes a chest x-ray and blood work, to establish that you have no communicable diseases. Of course, the Emirates ID is subject to your results and if you fail the checkup, the Emirates ID will not be issued unfortunately.
Once the results to the medical checkup are issue and are favourable, you may proceed with the next step of applying for the mandatory identification document that is issued to all UAE residents, the EID.
STEP 7: RINSE AND REPEAT
The above steps apply to a single individual who would be the single shareholder of a registered company. If sponsoring a family, as was our case with my husband sponsoring myself and our 3 kids, we would start the process from STEP 5, where we’re granted entry permits, conduct medical exams (only for adults and children above 16 years of age) and then issued with Emirates IDs, thus granting us legal status.
CONCLUSION
In our experience, the above process as detailed above is straight forward, efficient and especially when using a professional company to guide you through it. In my view, the benefits of living in the UAE far outweigh the initial expenses you’d need to incur to make it possible.
As a family, we settled quite quickly and have now made Abu Dhabi, UAE home. Was it worth it? I would say it is.
