Table of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an immigration services business do?
An immigration services business handles and processes immigration applications on behalf of clients, including preparing and submitting visa and residency applications and managing the procedures involved.
What is included in immigration services?
It covers visa and residency application processing, documentation and attestation, tracking applications through official channels, and managing renewals and status updates for existing visa holders.
How is immigration services different from immigration consultancy?
Immigration services include the practical handling of applications and procedures. Immigration consultancy, which advises clients on which route to choose, is a separate, separately classified activity.
What is documentation and attestation in immigration services?
It is the gathering, preparing, translating, and attesting of the documents an immigration application requires, ensuring each submission meets official documentation standards.
Who uses immigration services providers?
Individuals and families applying for visas and residency, and businesses processing visas in bulk for relocating or newly hired staff, use immigration services providers.
How to Start an Immigration Services Business with Meydan Free Zone
A job offer, a family relocation, an investor moving household and capital to the UAE: none of it is real until a visa is stamped. In between sit weeks of applications, attestations, medicals, translations and government submissions that have to be done in the right order.
Immigration services is the business of carrying clients across that gap, and the UAE generates more of that work than almost anywhere on earth. This guide covers what activity code 7490.92 permits, where the volume comes from, and how to set up.
Key Stats at a Glance
What This License Covers
Under code 7490.92 you are licensed to provide professional immigration services, meaning the practical handling and processing of immigration applications and the procedures around them on behalf of clients.
- Visa and residency application processing: preparing, compiling and submitting applications through the official channels
- Documentation and attestation: gathering, preparing, translating and attesting the documents an application needs, to official standards
- Application tracking and liaison: following submissions, answering authority queries and managing status updates
- Renewal and status maintenance: renewals, amendments and ongoing status work for individuals and corporate staff
The boundary is precise. If your business prepares, submits and manages applications for clients, you are inside the code. If you advise clients on which immigration route to choose, that is consultancy and it is classified separately. Keep the two apart on your license and in your marketing.
Who Your Clients Will Be
Three groups. Individuals and families applying for visas and residency. Businesses processing visas in bulk for relocating or newly hired staff. And existing residents who need renewals, amendments or a change of status.
The corporate side is where the volume sits, because one client relationship produces applications every month rather than once. What all of them are buying is the same thing: accuracy, speed and a process handled correctly first time. Nobody is paying you for a shortcut around the system, because there is not one. Everything runs through the same official channels either way.
Mainland or Free Zone
Meydan Free Zone gives you full foreign ownership, 0% corporate tax on qualifying income, full profit repatriation and a licensing process that runs entirely online. For a business whose work is paperwork, that combination is hard to argue with.
A mainland license through the Department of Economy and Tourism makes more sense if you want a public-facing office taking walk-in clients off the street. Let your clients decide it, not the price.
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Step by Step Setup Guide
- Step 1, confirm your activity code: Check that code 7490.92 sits on the approved activity list where you are applying, and that it covers every service line you plan to sell.
- Step 2, keep consultancy off the license unless you add it properly: If you also want to advise on route selection, that is a separate activity and it has to be added, not assumed.
- Step 3, book your trade name: Pick something that reads as a professional service and does not clash with an existing registration.
- Step 4, send in your setup documents: Passport copies for every shareholder and director, and a No Objection Certificate if you are on a UAE residence visa sponsored by someone else.
- Step 5, collect your trade license: The Meydan Free Zone process is fully digital, so shareholders outside the UAE can get through it without flying in.
- Step 6, open a corporate bank account and apply for visas: Your quota sets how many investor and employee visas you can take.
One point in your favour on the paperwork: no third-party approval is needed for this activity, and it is exempt from anti-money laundering compliance duties. That is a lighter load than most licensed services carry.
Compliance and What You Need in Place
Scope discipline
The line between processing and consultancy is the one thing to watch. Handling applications is inside 7490.92. Recommending which route a client should take is management consultancy and sits outside it. Drifting across that line without adding the activity is the easiest way to create a problem.
Official channels only
Applications run through the digitised systems operated by the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security and the emirate residency directorates. Those bodies set the documentation standards and process every submission, so your value is accuracy inside their system rather than access around it.
Documentation standards
Attestation and translation work has to meet official standards or the submission fails. Build a checking step into your own process, because a fast government system punishes incomplete paperwork rather than forgiving it.
Client data
You will hold passports, salary papers and family documents. Handle and store them properly and set out in your client agreement what you keep, for how long, and who sees it.
Staff
Once you hire, normal UAE employment rules apply: proper contracts, work permits and Emiratisation duties once your headcount reaches the relevant level.
Market Opportunity
The numbers here are unusually blunt. The UAE issued approximately 158,000 Golden Visas in 2023, up from 47,150 in 2021, and that is one programme among several. Employment visas, family sponsorships and student routes are processed continuously for a resident population that reached 11.3 million in 2024 and is overwhelmingly expatriate.
The volume does not pause. People arrive, renew, change employers, sponsor family and upgrade their status every day of the year. Add the companies processing visas in bulk for staff and the workload runs well beyond what current providers handle smoothly.
Speed is the other thing working in your favour. Golden Visa applications are often completed in under a month, which raises the bar rather than lowering it: a quick process punishes paperwork that is wrong or incomplete, and that is precisely what clients pay a provider to avoid.
Conclusion
Immigration services under code 7490.92 is a high-volume processing business in one of the busiest residency markets in the world. The licensing load is light, there is no third-party approval to chase, and Meydan Free Zone gives you full ownership and a digital setup.
Three things decide how smoothly this goes: staying inside the processing scope rather than drifting into consultancy, a checking step that catches document errors before submission, and corporate accounts that turn one client into monthly volume. Sort those and the rest is routine.
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