Professional or Engineer Visa

Hello Claude Ignacio and welcome on board!

Do not hesitate to check out other threads that may have covered the topic and check out the section Visa in our Living in Qatar Guide for further informations.

Regards

Kenjee

Because engineer is main group and quite privilege, they classify working visa in 3-4 classes and your work trade will appear on the visa & ID card (in Arabic). And that is the first stage of segregation (discriminate), when you contact any gov & commercial offices, they will ask what your visa is (trade), and evaluate you from the trade appeared on ID card.

Type of visa, e.g.

- professional (sophisticated for other trades which are non-engineer e.g. commercial, banking, medical, accounting, project manager)
- engineers 
- manual workers
- other mid-career trades (sale, cashier, artist, etc)

However, the trade on visa can be modified by employers (it can be made / not exact with your real career) because employer will get specific quota of visa (and per nationality ), for example, many female staff get engineer visa because it's approved easily.

The case is, we want to bring 50 engineers, and our quota is not enough, so some employees are put in manual worker visa (carpenter, steel fixer, etc) just because we want them to arrive Doha ASAP. We need to start the works, and the unpredictable visa process is killing.

And all engineering visa quotas are given to female employees (20-30 persons) whose trade are not engineers. So, whatever visa that they have balance quota, and can bring you to the country, they will issue first, then many male employees who are engineers are brought to Doha by manual working visa.  But this will not affect your daily life, when you need letter or employment certificate (which I am sure you will need it), company will state your right trade & position on the letter.

But it depends on company, how they are able to deal with gov. agency.

This is from my experience.

Regards,


However, there is a change since 2013, Gov is more strict with engineering visa - you must have your attested academic certificates, to obtain engineering visa.

Is a professional visa in a higher grade than engineer visa?
I came to Qatar last month and I'm a Software engineer. Currently I'm on Business visa, and the process for work visa is going on. What designation should I expect to have on the visa?

Hi admin,

I'm about to be deployed in qatar doha, and they got my visa processed, im quite worri about my appeared visa which is a labourer visa but on my contract is a detailer for a consultancy engineering firm. I am an autocad operator/structural detailer. Can you pls help me to understand whats the difference and grounds if I have that kind of visa the labourer one, to an engineer visa, are there any discrimination about it?

Ninja_cool,

One of the crucial is that you will not be allowed to enroll to a driving school because of your visa designation.

If you fancy travelling, you won't be eligible for visa on arrival in some Gulf countries.

Hi sir,

Tnx for the response, I have a follow up question. Since my contract is for about two years with that kind of visa, how am I going to marry the girl if shes from dubai if im not able to travell bcoz of that visa? Are there any chance to get her from dubai up to here and get married  here in phillipine embassy?
And is it possible for me to change my status of visa??

Tnx for your kind and consideration

Ninja..

You will be able to travel, but not visa on arrival. Anyway, starting October 1, everyone has to secure a visa prior to departure for Dubai but the most of GCC such as Bahrain, Oman etc you still can just go and just get the visa upon arrival

Yes you can change the visa designation but you will need to go through a lot of procedures