How to: Apply Family Visit Visa – Part 2

Now come the 2nd part of the lengthy process of bringing your parents visiting into the Kingdom.

1. Depending on who you want to bring, the documentations needed  may be a bit different. Since I’m bringing my mother and parents in law, so these are the documents needed:

• The Saudi MOFA approval letter (from the 1st part)
• Birth certificate of you (to proof your relationship with your mother/father)
• Birth certificate of your wife (to proof your wife relationship with her mother/father)
• Marriage certificate of your parents and/or parents in law
• Original passport(s) of your parents and/or parents in law
• Bank draft in the name of Saudi Embassy, RM200 for each person (need to pay RM5 for the bank charge, so total is RM205)
• E-number for each person, applied thru www.mofa.gov.sa

Note: The last 2 items can be prepared by agent should you choose (or forced to use ;-)) an agent, see next step for details.

2. Go to one of the agents listed below and with all the necessary documents and let them do it for you.

Note 1: The procedure of the Saudi Embassy in Kuala Lumpur changing continuously, from the needed documentations to the  dealing at the counter. It is good to check if there are any new procedures before dealing with them. Last time I checked, we need to use authorized agents to interface with the Embassy, they will not entertain individual. But, a friend of mine brought his father on November last year dealt with the embassy without any agent.

Note 2: There are 6 or 7 authorized agents that we know as per list above. But the list may already changed. We heard that some of the agent has been blacklisted, and may be some other has been added. So checked yourself with the embassy for the final list if you need.

Tips:Before appointing an agent, please do a quick comparison. The service charge are different from one agent to another. The fees charged by agents ranging from RM180 to RM240 per person, so if you’re bringing 3 person like myself, RM60 different per person or RM180 in total. That's quite an amount of money that you could use for many other thing regardless how much money you’re earning here in Saudi. A quick call to them can give you an idea how much they’re charging, the documentations needed and some gut feeling from the voice (be it sexy or not) whether they’re friendly or otherwise.

Suggestion: We have been dealing with agent no. 6 for 2 times. We chose them because of a few factors, may be the 1st is because of their name, kind of Arabic a bit ;-). Their location is also easy, near to the LRT station and should you go there by car, easy parking space. And, their fees are reasonable with a reasonable service.

• For bringing my family last year, they charged RM650 for 5 persons (RM130 each).
• For bringing my parent/PIL, they charged RM180 per person.
• They do not charged you for the bank draft, some agents charged another RM5 per bank draft even though they already charged you for the fee, i.e. you need to pay RM210 per bank draft instead of RM205.

3. Should the agent accepted your documents (and money of course), you’re almost done. You should be getting the result after 2 or 3 days maximum. So now you can start to book a flight tickets for your parents… Good luck and see your parents in Saudi soon. Don’t forget to invite us for ‘makan-makan’ should you have one when your parents are here ;-P