Work Visa

What a work visa is

A work visa (تأشيرة العمل) is permission to enter Saudi Arabia, granted to a person who is not a Saudi national for the purpose of working there. It comes before entry: the visa is the document on which the worker arrives in the Kingdom, not the document under which they later work.

That timing is what separates a work visa from a work permit (رخصة العمل). The visa allows entry; the permit allows the worker to practise their profession in the Saudi labour market once they have entered. The two documents are successive stages, not synonyms.

In the sources we reviewed, we found nothing setting out the official names and categories of work visa, the fee and the validity period of each, or the procedure and conditions for final exit. The rules below are therefore the ones those sources do state: who may be granted visas, who bears the costs around them, which conditions the Implementing Regulation places on recruitment, and what a visa does not decide once the worker is in employment.

How the Nitaqat band limits the issuing of work visas

The procedural guide to the Nitaqat programme (نطاقات), published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, sets out which labour market services are granted or withheld according to the band in which an establishment is classified. The issuing of visas is among the services the guide lists by band:

• Platinum, High Green and Medium Green. Recruitment requests are accepted for the occupations available to the establishment.
• Low Green. New visa requests are no longer accepted.
• Red. New visas may not be requested, and work permits may be neither issued nor renewed.

So the band sets the ceiling on the issuing of work visas, and the intake of new visa requests stops altogether in two bands, Red and Low Green. What else the band controls, including changes of occupation and transfers, is set out in our guide to Nitaqat band classification and what it controls.

The number of visas available to an establishment in each band is not stated in the Nitaqat guide we reviewed, and no figure is given for it in the definition of a work visa. The word band here means the classification of the entity in that programme, and it is not to be confused with a pay band.

Who pays for a work visa under Article 40 of the Labor Law

Article 40 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) allocates the costs that surround the recruitment and employment of a worker who is not Saudi. It has four paragraphs, and between them they divide the costs among the employer, the worker and the employer receiving a transfer.

• Paragraph 1 of Article 40 of the Labor Law, on the employer. It places on the employer the fees for recruiting the worker, the fees for the residence permit (iqama) and the work permit and their renewal, the fines for delay in these that the employer has caused, the fees for a change of profession, exit and return (الخروج والعودة), and the worker’s ticket home once the relationship between the parties has ended. The qualifier on causation attaches to the fines alone. It may not be dropped, and it does not extend to the other items.
• Paragraph 2 of Article 40 of the Labor Law, on the worker. It makes the worker liable for the cost of returning home where they are unfit for the work, or where they wish to return without a legitimate reason. These are the only two cases named, and they are not widened beyond what the text states.
• Paragraph 3 of Article 40 of the Labor Law, on the receiving employer. It assigns the fees for a transfer of services to the employer to which the worker wishes to have their services transferred.
• Paragraph 4 of Article 40 of the Labor Law, on the employer. It obliges the employer to meet the cost of preparing the body of a deceased worker and of transporting it to the place where the contract was concluded or from which the worker was recruited, unless the worker is buried in the Kingdom with the consent of their family. The employer is released from this where the General Organization for Social Insurance undertakes it. Preparation and transport are two separate expenses, not one.

Paragraph 1 of Article 40 of the Labor Law names exit and return, which is a different thing from final exit (الخروج النهائي). A reading that applies the paragraph to final exit adds an item the list does not contain. In the sources we reviewed, we found no provision stating whether the list in paragraph 1 is exhaustive or illustrative, so no rule is drawn from it in either direction: the text names exit and return, it does not name final exit, and that is as far as the statement goes.

The difference between paragraphs 1 and 3 of Article 40 of the Labor Law is the point at which the article can be shortened, wrongly, to “the employer pays the fees”. The fee for a change of profession falls on the current employer, and the fee for a transfer falls on the employer to which the services move. They are two charges on two establishments, and folding them into one phrase loads one establishment with a cost that belongs to the other.

Conditions on recruitment through a work visa in the Implementing Regulation

Article 41 of the Labor Law leaves it to the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) to set the conditions for recruitment, transfer of services and change of profession, together with their controls and procedures. Anyone who stops at the Labor Law on this subject has reached the delegation without reaching the rule. Part One of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation has sixteen clauses, among them the following:

• Age. A person under eighteen or over sixty may not be recruited for work. Experts and doctors are excepted from the upper age limit. The exception applies to the upper limit only, not to the lower one.
• Actual work. A worker may not be recruited, or have their services transferred, unless the employer has actual work for them. The clause covers both routes, so it does not apply to recruitment alone.
• Incorrect data. It is a ground for refusing a request, and it leads to the suspension of all recruitment procedures for the establishment for a period not exceeding five years, and to the cancellation of the visas issued to the establishment on the basis of that data.
• Selling visas. Where it is proven that an establishment has sold work visas issued to it, all recruitment procedures for that establishment are suspended for five years.

The last two cases differ in the form of the period rather than in its length. The first is a ceiling, so the suspension may be set at any length up to five years. The second is a fixed period. Treating them as the same moves a discretion into a place where the period is fixed, or the other way round.

When a new work visa is not needed: transfer of services

Where the worker is already inside the Kingdom, the route is not a new visa but a transfer of their services to the new employer. Paragraph 3 of Article 40 of the Labor Law, as set out above, places the transfer fees on the receiving establishment, not on the employer that recruited the worker. The service itself, and the conditions it places on the receiving establishment, are covered in our guide to transferring an expat worker’s services.

Clause 21 of Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation opens by making the right it grants subject to the provisions of Article 77 of the Labor Law, and that opening is part of the clause, not a preface to it. Article 77 of the Labor Law deals with compensation where a contract is ended for a reason that is not legitimate. Unless the contract fixes its own compensation, the injured party is due 15 days’ wage for each year of the worker’s service under a contract of indefinite duration, or the wage for the remaining period under a fixed term contract, and in either case not less than two months’ wage. The measures are set out under unlawful termination compensation. The right to move is therefore not separated from the effect of ending the contract, and dropping the opening words makes the clause wider than it is.

Clause 21 of Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation then gives a worker who is not Saudi the right to move to another employer without the current employer’s consent where two conditions are met:

• the worker has completed twelve months from the date of their entry into the Kingdom; and
• the worker has notified the current employer at least ninety days before the contractual relationship ends, unless the parties agree otherwise. That proviso attaches to the notice.

Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation adds two further rules. Under clause 14 of Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, the former employer and the new employer must each keep the worker’s written consent to the transfer, obtained before the transfer procedures begin. Under clause 15 of Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, the employer’s electronic approval of a transfer may not be made subject to any condition. The Implementing Regulation lists further cases in which a transfer may proceed without consent; they concern the transfer rather than the visa, and they are not set out in the definition of a work visa.

Ajeer (أجير), the programme for outsourcing the services of expatriate workers between establishments, is a separate arrangement with rules of its own, distinct from both a new visa and a transfer.

Why the title of a work visa does not decide the contract

Article 1 of the Implementing Regulation provides that where the parties to a temporary contract or a casual contract continue working for a period exceeding ninety days, the contract becomes one subject to all the provisions of the Labor Law. Article 1 of the Implementing Regulation applies that conversion regardless of the title of the work visa on which the worker arrived, if they came from abroad, and regardless of the period of residence granted under it. How that conversion works is covered under temp to perm.

This is where the entry document and the contractual relationship part company. The visa describes the reason the worker came; the contract is described by the work actually done and how long it lasts.

What a work visa does not change

Whatever the document on which the worker entered, the Implementing Regulation settles two further points independently of it:

• The type of contract. Article 12 of the Implementing Regulation provides that the employment contract of a worker who is not Saudi is a fixed term contract, however long its term or its renewals, and that it does not become a contract of indefinite duration even if the parties agree that it should.
• The worker’s documents. Article 6 of the Implementing Regulation requires the employer not to keep the passport, the residence permit or the medical insurance card of a worker who is not Saudi. It is a standalone rule, and it does not depend on the worker’s consent or on any internal arrangement.

The sources behind the work visa rules

The statutory provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, namely Article 40 (who bears the costs around recruitment, transfer and return), Article 41 (the delegation of recruitment conditions to the Implementing Regulation) and Article 77 (compensation for ending a contract without a legitimate reason, cited because clause 21 of Part Two of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation is made subject to it). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 40 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Article 77 of the Labor Law. The regulatory provisions relied on are those of the Implementing Regulation issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 of 1446H, namely Article 1 (conversion of a temporary or casual contract), Article 6 (the worker’s documents), Article 12 (the fixed term of the contract), Part One of Article 14 (recruitment) and clauses 14, 15 and 21 of Part Two of Article 14 (transfer of services). The band rules are taken from the procedural guide to the Nitaqat programme.

Keeping a work visa apart from what follows it

The definition of a work visa stays narrow because the steps that follow entry are dealt with by separate rules. Entry, the right to practise a profession, the cost of each step, the form of the contract and the move to a new employer are each a separate question, and a statement made about the visa settles none of them.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.