One package. Two very different numbers.
Take a typical AED 35,000 package. What you are paid and what the route reads are not the same figure. The route discounts the part holding the headline up.
What you are paid
AED 35,000 total. Reads like a comfortable pass.
What the route reads
Counts the basic alone. AED 5,000 short of the AED 30,000 line.
Three things decide it, all on your own paperwork.
Enough to locate yourself, not a step-by-step application.
The mistake is always the same.
Rarely a close call on the basic itself. A confident package, read against the wrong line.
What people assume
My package is well over AED 30,000, so the salary route is covered.
What the route does
It assesses the basic on your contract. A AED 35,000 package built on a AED 25,000 basic reads as a miss, and the file comes back rejected with the time and government charges already spent.
The costliest version is not the lost fee. It is schooling, family timing, and travel planned around a visa that was never secured, then unwound when the basic does not hold. The gap rarely closes in a week: it means renegotiating how a contract splits basic and allowances, or waiting for a real rise in basic pay. Read the figure first.
We start with the basic figure on your contract, not the headline on your offer letter, and tell you plainly where you stand.
- Where the basic clears AED 30,000 and your role and qualification fit the skilled-professional basis, we prepare the file to give it its best chance.
- Where it falls short, we say so and explain what would change it, including whether a standard investor or employment visa is the sensible step for now.
- We will not encourage a filing we can see does not hold, and the approval is the immigration authorities' to give, not ours to promise.
Our Golden Visa page covers the salary route, and the residency overview places the routes side by side.