Permanent status does not exist in the country: even a ten-year visa is annulled the moment the grounds for it disappear. Access to entry scores 90, path to citizenship 7.
Getting into the UAE is easy. Applications are digital, the Work Bundle combines job offer, permit, entry visa and Emirates ID, and the law sets no minimum salary for a work permit. There are many routes: employment, remote work, freelancing, the Green Visa, study. You can sponsor your family on AED 4,000 a month (or AED 3,000 plus housing). There are no language or integration tests.
Pressure on residents is systematic and runs through the employer. Human Rights Watch's 2026 report says employers can file false absconding charges, exposing workers to detention and deportation, and that changing jobs is still hard. The US State Department's 2024 report adds passport confiscation and deductions from wages to cover visa costs. In February-March 2026 there were reports of valid residence and Golden visas held by citizens of one country being cancelled, often without notice and while the holder was abroad; this has been neither officially confirmed nor denied.
Your status is only as secure as your job. After a visa is cancelled there is a grace period of 30 to 180 days depending on your category, 90 days for workers with a university degree, but you may not work during it. The no-objection certificate was abolished in 2022, yet moving to a new employer still needs a separate MOHRE permit, and you cannot work until it is granted. Since July 2025 residence renewal has been tied to paying off accumulated fines.
There is no path to putting down roots. Permanent residence does not exist as an institution, and citizenship after 30 years is almost never granted. A spouse needs a separate work permit. State schools charge foreign children AED 6,000 a year and set strict conditions, so nearly all go private. Emiratisation is growing: companies with 50 or more staff must bring citizens to 10% of skilled positions by the end of 2026.
Day to day, banks open accounts once you have a residence visa and Emirates ID, with closer checks on nationality and source of income. Family sponsorship in Dubai requires registering your lease with Ejari.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Entry without a prior visa, per the UAE Foreign Ministry's list. Working requires the same route through a MOHRE permit.
A separate preferential category of MOHRE work permit, and no residence visa needed.
Entry without a prior visa, per the UAE Foreign Ministry's list. Living and working follow the same employer route.
Entry without a prior visa, per the UAE Foreign Ministry's list. ICP does not publish a full list of nationality restrictions, and we found no direct bans on these passports in official sources. Banks check a client's nationality more closely than usual. You cannot work without a MOHRE permit.
The place interval 57-70 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Access to entry: 90 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.7. The weakest is Path to citizenship: 7 against 57.1. Above the world average: 4 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
The law sets no deadline for the authority; MOHRE promises 5 working days through the Work Bundle. In practice the path from job offer to Emirates ID takes 2-4 weeks, and a family visa about the same.
Yes: a freelance permit (GoFreelance from AED 4,600, Talent Pass AED 9,500) or a remote work visa with income of $3,500 a month. The remote work visa does not let you work for UAE employers.
The MOHRE work permit fee is AED 250-3,450 depending on the company's category, and by law the employer pays it. We found no official table of family costs over five years.
Yes, and that is the main risk. The visa rests on your job: after cancellation you have 30 to 180 days depending on your category and may not work meanwhile. An employer can file an absconding report, which brings a risk of detention and deportation.
There is no permanent residence: the 10-year Golden Visa is renewable but cancelled if you lose its basis. Citizenship requires 30 years of residence, Arabic and giving up your previous citizenship, and is almost never granted.
The door is wide open: many routes, a low bar for families, no income tax. But your status depends entirely on your employer and the authorities, and there is no path to permanent status.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.