Job Discussion Forums

eclectic · Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 1122

out of sheer necessity:

you have 1 month left of your Chinese contract, say, and have no further sick days to take. you are being told to fly 21 hours back to DC, get a med exam, pick up your visa, and fly 21 hours back to China, in time for your Monday classes. This is impossible----literally. The time between your last day in class in China and your start date in Riyadh is 6 days, and not all are business days.

What are anybody's tales/recountings of being successful in getting your Saudi visa transferred to the country youre in? The logistics/effort of the thing, otherwise, precludes going ahead with the job.

rigel · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Posts: 308

I was dealing with an agency last January that tried to get me to do exactly that. Pull a runner in my last months at my job in Korea, fly to the USA, get a visa, and report for classes in about 2-1/2 weeks' time.

That would have cost me:

1 month's salary (at least)
A completion bonus (equivalent to one month's salary)
A plane ticket back to the USA
A plane ticket to the KSA from Dulles, the airport outside D.C.

All for an unknown quantity that I know a lot more about these days.

I didn't do it. I know now I made a wise move.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

I would leave at least three weeks for the Washington trip. I've known somebody do it in ten days but he was lucky.

It would take three or four months to get the visa transferred from the Saudi Consulate in your own country to the Saudi Consulate in China, so I'd start looking for another job.

eclectic · Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 1122

rigel and stephen jones have strengthened my suddenly-congealing conviction that this is a lot of hoopla and effor tof r a salary that upon arrival will vanish like a mirage in the Rub al Khali.

thx guys for that. I will not pull a runner and lose a bonus month and airfare perq. Also I will not stay in DC for days on end waiting for Godot. Imagine the hotel bill.

It has become laborious and bogged-down to the umpteenth degree. Imagine being told your wife cannot come with you since she's not a citizen of your country. Icing on the baklava, so to speak.

lucreziaborgia · Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 177

I feel the same Eclectic! Why would you do it without absolute confidence that you would have a job at the end of it; and all the other inducements that are described as part of the deal!
I thought I was working in La La Land until I became a reader of and subscriber to this forum.

eclectic · Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 1122

Yes how this forum KSA has really helped in the ins and outs of the various nefarious irritable charitable landmines that can quickly coil and pounce like a lion or a dunce.

If it werent for Johnslat and R. and Tilly and StephenJones, etc...Id be flying high on a magic carpet ride getting ready to touch down in the Rub al Khali, in a world or a whirl or a whorl of TROUBLE.