Thinking of moving to UAE ?

With a population that’s grown by 50% to 1.5 million in the past five years and predictions suggesting that around 4 million people could call the emirate home by 2010, Dubai is without doubt the hottest boomtown on the planet right now.

If you’ve decided that you want to get in on the action and make the move, then there’s a few things to consider in the cold light of day before you can enjoy Arabian nights.

First and foremost, unless you’re from another GCC country, you’ll need a visa. Visitor’s visas – valid for a maximum of 60 days but cheaply renewed for an extra 30 days – are fairly easy to obtain for most westerners; if you’re planning an initial fact-finding mission, then these should more that suffice. Brits, always on the look out for easier alternatives, will be happy to know that, as long as they have onward or return tickets, their entry into Dubai comes with a complementary 30-day stay.

For a more permanent move, you’ll require a residency visa which, in truth, is not too much harder to come by. For minimum hassle and maximum style, there are many Emirates-based companies continually looking to employ skilled staff from abroad. A large percentage interview in Europe and, once you receive a firm offer, they will sponsor your visa. In Dubai, it’s quite common for firms to pay for a couple of weeks’ accommodation in a hotel and even provide a chauffeur to help you with the relocating process.

Alternatively, you can obtain a residency visa by being sponsored by a family member, so it’s in this way that partners and children can follow – or indeed that tormented spouses with offers of employment can make sure that the ball and chain stays far behind.

The final way of obtaining a residency visa is, unsurprisingly, through property. In March 2006, the long-mooted law allowing foreigners the right to own freehold property (previous property had been sold on a 99-year leasehold) in Dubai was introduced. The amazing, adventurous and often downright sublime property market of Dubai is already one of its major attractions – barely enough completed developments to house the rapidly swelling population means that rentals can be fairly expensive, making buying an appealing alternative – but homes now come with an added bonus: a free residence visa!

Those are currently the only ways of obtaining a visa for Dubai, short of becoming pally with a member of the royal family. Although, with the ruling Al Maktoum family numbering so many and quite a few of them regularly popping over for horse races or window shopping for football clubs, maybe even that wouldn’t be so difficult.