RIYADH, Dec 26 Family visas to expatriates living and working in Saudi Arabia will now be issued on the basis of salary, and not on the basis of the profession mentioned on the visa and iqama (residence permit), newspapers here said on Saturday.

Until now family visas were the prerogative of white collar professionals.

The news is a relief for many of the seven million expatriate workers, including Pakistanis, who until now were unable to bring their families on resident visas due to their profession.

A large number of even white collar expatriates, whose visa categorised them as labourer or who fell in blue collar category, were until now not allowed to bring in their families to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi foreign ministry and the recruitment office issues permanent resident and visit visas to those in white-collar jobs such as engineers, doctors and executives.

Hence many expatriates often resort to underhand means to obtain family visas.

Local daily Al Yaum report said the ministry would only look at the financial status of the applicant.

“The family visa is no more linked with profession,” a governmental source was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

As per the new system, the salary of a person would be taken into account for issuing visas rather than the profession mentioned on the iqama.

“This is great news for thousands of professionals like me who are unable to bring their wives and children to the kingdom because of the profession in iqama,” said Shabeer Ali, a computer engineer based in Jeddah, whose iqama said he was an electrician.

Ali said he has been trying to bring his family to the kingdom ever since his marriage. “Until now I could not, because they look at the profession on my iqama, which is an electrician. I had presented my Masters Degree in computer science attested by the Saudi Embassy, as well as my salary certificate, but they rejected my application,” he said.

Over the past three weeks, the ministry's Riyadh office was issuing visit visas to all expatriate workers for their families without considering their profession.

However, the ministry's branches in Jeddah and Dammam have not implemented the new system as yet as they have not been informed about the changed criteria.