Immigration Card and Establishment Card in the UAE: The Complete A to Z

Almost every company in the UAE holds two cards with confusingly similar names, issued by two different authorities, obtained in a fixed order, renewed on different cycles — and most owners could not tell you which is which.

That is not carelessness. It is a genuine naming problem, and it produces expensive mistakes: renewals missed because the wrong expiry date was diarised, visa applications refused for reasons nobody can explain, and a great deal of money paid to people who could not name the service they were charging for.

This guide takes both cards apart from A to Z — what each one is, which authority issues it, the exact published fees, every required document, the order they must be done in, how to check the status of each, and what stops working when one lapses.

One name, two cards

Start here, because everything else follows from it.

What the immigration card actually is

GDRFA Dubai describes the service plainly: it allows private sector businesses or free zone entities to obtain an establishment card carrying information about the business.

Functionally, it is your company’s identity at the immigration authority. It links the trade licence to a file the residency system recognises, names the owners and the people permitted to sign, and is the object every visa transaction is attached to.

Without it, your company does not exist as far as residence and visas are concerned. It can trade, invoice and bank — and it cannot bring in a single employee.

The labour equivalent — work permits, contracts and what MoHRE calls the labour card — is covered separately in our MoHRE labour card guide, and the whole compliance picture for a UAE company in why companies in the UAE need PRO services.

Three types, not one

GDRFA publishes the issuance service in three variants, and knowing which you fall under determines your document list:

How to get an immigration card in Dubai

GDRFA publishes both routes. The digital one is open around the clock; the counter route runs during centre hours.

Through the digital channels

• Log in to the smart services system using UAE Pass or a username.
• Search for the service you want to apply for.
• Fill in the application data, where applicable.
• Pay the service fee.

Through a Customer Happiness Centre

• Visit the nearest Customer Happiness Centre.
• Take the automated turn ticket and wait.
• Submit the application, with all conditions and documents met, to the customer service employee.
• Pay the service fee.

The documents — private sector and free zone

GDRFA publishes three, and they are fewer than most people expect:

• A copy of the appendix of the names of the partners.
• Passport copies of the authorised signatories.
• A copy of the authorisation certified by the notary public for the authorised persons, in the case of a manager.

The third item is where applications stall. A notarised authorisation is not something you produce on the morning of the application — it requires an appointment, the right parties present, and the correct wording. Start with that document and work forward, rather than discovering it at the counter.

The official fees, itemised

This is where most published guidance quotes a single round number and gets it wrong. GDRFA publishes the fee as a stack of components, and the total depends on how you lodge it and how fast you need it.

What that comes to

Worked from the published components, with VAT applied at 5% to the AED 200 card fee. Your invoice may differ slightly depending on how the centre applies collection charges, and a typing centre’s own fee sits on top of all of it — which is a private charge, not a government one.

The MoHRE side of the bill

Worth putting beside it, because the two cards are priced on completely different logic.

The word free is doing real work there. If someone is quoting you a large government fee for the MoHRE establishment card, they are quoting their own fee — which may be perfectly reasonable, but you should know which part is which before agreeing to it.

The document list nobody else publishes

Here is where this guide earns its place. GDRFA attaches an activity-specific document requirement to the establishment card — on both issuance and renewal — and it runs to sixteen categories. If your business is on this list, the standard three documents are not enough.

Immigration card renewal

GDRFA publishes renewal as a single service covering all categories — government sector, private sector and free zones, and national companies under SME support. The fee stack is the same as issuance, the completion time is the same 48 hours, and the digital channel is available 24/7.

What changes is the document list, which is set out by sector:

Plus, for the sixteen activity categories in the table above, the same additional evidence GDRFA requires at issuance. Note in particular that yachts and Quran memorisation centres are asked for the expired establishment card itself — so do not discard the old one when the new is issued.

The MoHRE establishment card, in full

The second card, and the one that governs work permits rather than visas.

MoHRE describes the starting point precisely: the establishment’s details must first be registered with the Ministry, along with the owners and authorised signatories, samples of their signatures, details of the business activity, and the location.

The process

• Log in with a username and password, or use UAE Pass, for the online and smart channels.
• Submit an application through one of the service delivery channels.
• The application is referred electronically to the Ministry for verification of compliance with the requirements and documents.
• Upon compliance with all conditions and documents, the application is approved.

The conditions

Seven of them, published, and several are not widely known:

• Creating an establishment file for a recruitment or mediation agency requires the reference number on which the agency guarantee was entered.
• A valid trade licence.
• It is mandatory for owners, partners, service agents and authorised signatories to obtain a Ministry-issued personal identification number.
• A unified personal identification number must be assigned to all establishments of the licensee or service agent registered with the Ministry.
• A licensee or service agent must be at least 18 years of age. Guardians or trustees may sign on behalf of minors until they reach legal age, and minors may sign if they obtain court approval.
• The authorised signatory at the Ministry must also be authorised to sign at the Federal Authority for Identity, Nationality, Customs and Port Security.
• Citizens of the GCC are treated as UAE nationals.

The documents

• A clear copy of both sides of the Emirates ID, or a copy of the residence visa showing the unified number for expatriates.
• A copy of the valid licence indicating the activity, address, P.O. Box, telephone and fax number. For fishing boats, a boat licence issued by the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment. For “Abra” activity, the licence issued by the Roads and Transport Authority. For public utility establishments, a licence from the Community Development Authority.
• Partners Addendum issued by the Economic Department, where the names of the licensees are not included in the trade licence.
• A clear copy of the establishment card issued by the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship, Customs and Ports Security, indicating the names of the owners and authorised signatories.
• A valid and approved rental contract, with the exception of immediate licences.

The rest of the card

The representative’s card — the third document

Two cards make the company exist. A third decides who can walk into a centre and transact on its behalf, and it sits in the same GDRFA category.

GDRFA also publishes services to renew, amend and cancel a representative’s card. That last one matters: when a PRO leaves your company, cancelling their card is a task somebody must own. A former employee holding a live representative’s card for your establishment is a loose end worth closing the week they go.

Establishment card status check, and immigration card status check

Two cards, two authorities, two places to look. Neither shows you the other.

The MoHRE side

MoHRE runs a public inquiry portal with more than thirty services and no login required. For establishment matters, these are the ones that answer real questions:

MoHRE also publishes follow-up channels: the inquiry service on its website, the smart app, the call centre on 600590000, and a chatbot.

The immigration side

For a Dubai-issued card, the establishment’s position sits with GDRFA. The published routes are the GDRFA smart services system — the same one used to lodge the application, logged in with UAE Pass or a username — the Amer service on 8005111, and the Customer Happiness Centres.

What lapsing actually stops

Here is the practical reason any of this matters. An expired card is not a paperwork problem confined to itself — it is a gate in front of everything downstream.

How the cascade runs

It rarely announces itself. The sequence we see, again and again, goes like this.

A new hire is ready to start. The application is lodged and refused. Nobody says the establishment card has expired — the transaction simply does not go through. Days are spent chasing the wrong thing: the candidate’s documents, the quota, the medical.

Meanwhile an existing employee’s residence comes up for renewal and cannot be processed either. Then a departing employee’s cancellation stalls, so their permit stays live on the file, occupying quota. By the time somebody thinks to check the card, three separate problems are running in parallel, all caused by one lapsed document, and each of them now has its own deadline.

A compliance calendar that prevents all of it

Nothing here is difficult. It is a diary problem, and a diary solves it.

Note that the first four are four different dates. Companies routinely diarise the trade licence and assume everything else follows it. It does not. Each document has its own expiry and its own authority.

Two of those dates have guides of their own on this site: trade licence renewal, process and cost, and company visa quota, and how to increase it — the latter being the step immediately downstream of the two cards.

Where to do this in Dubai

GDRFA publishes two routes and a long list of approved centres.

Digitally, through the GDRFA smart services system, available 24/7 for both issuance and renewal. This is the cheapest route, because it avoids the AED 100 Amer surcharge published on the issuance service.

In person, at a Customer Happiness Centre or through one of the approved Amer and typing centres, which GDRFA lists on each service page. They are spread across the emirate — Al Quoz, Al Garhoud, Karama, DIFC and elsewhere — and any of them can lodge the transaction.

If you are looking for someone to handle it near Al Barsha, that is where we are based, and we cover the surrounding communities directly — our Al Barsha PRO services page sets out what we do locally. But the honest point is that proximity matters less than competence here: the digital channel works from anywhere, and the thing that determines whether your application succeeds is whether the notarised authorisation and the partners’ appendix are correct — not how close the office is to your villa.

Five situations, worked through

New company, licence just issued, first hire waiting

The order is not optional, and doing it out of order wastes weeks.

Sequence: trade licence in hand, and a valid approved tenancy contract. Then the immigration card from GDRFA — partners’ appendix, signatory passports, notarised authorisation, AED 280 digitally, 48 hours. Only then the MoHRE establishment card, which requires a copy of the immigration card as a document. Then quota, then the work permit, then the entry permit. Attempting the MoHRE registration first simply fails, because you cannot supply the document it asks for.

Visa applications failing and nobody can say why

The classic symptom, with a finite list of causes.

Check, in this order: the immigration card’s expiry date, read off the card itself. The MoHRE card’s expiry, which is a different date. GDRFA Establishment Link Status on MoHRE’s free portal. Pending Payments, since unsettled fees block remedies. Then quota. Then whether your signatories match at both authorities — the condition MoHRE publishes and almost nobody checks.

The manager has changed

Small event, disproportionate consequences.

Do: update the authorised signatory at both authorities, not one. MoHRE publishes that its authorised signatory must also be authorised at the federal identity authority. Obtain the new notarised authorisation, amend the immigration card data, and update the MoHRE record. If the outgoing manager held a representative’s card, cancel it.

Card expired three months ago, hiring frozen

Recoverable, and the cost is smaller than the disruption suggests.

Do: renew the card — the published fee stack is the same AED 200 plus supplements, and completion is 48 hours. If it is genuinely urgent, the AED 100 urgent fee is the cheapest hundred dirhams you will spend. Then work through what stalled while it was down: pending cancellations first, because those free quota, and pending renewals next, because those have people attached to them.

You run a hotel, a yacht charter or a farm

Your file is not the standard three documents, and finding that out at the counter costs a trip.

Do: read the activity table above before you go. A hotel needs a Department of Tourism letter with the rating and a letter from the hotel stating room numbers and rating. A yacht needs ownership from the Ministry of Transportation and the expired card. A farm needs the owner’s passport with signature form and ownership from the Department of Lands and Properties. Assemble the activity document first — it comes from a third party and it is the slow one.

What circulates that is not true

What we will and will not do

We will tell you which of the two cards your problem actually concerns, which is the first question and the one most often skipped; establish both expiry dates and the trade licence and tenancy dates alongside them; run the free diagnostic checks — establishment link status, pending payments, quota — before proposing anything; assemble the correct document set for your specific activity, including the third-party letters the sixteen categories require; handle the notarised authorisation properly rather than discovering it is wrong at the counter; keep your signatories aligned across both authorities; and quote the government fee and our fee as two separate numbers.

We will not charge you a government fee for a MoHRE service published as free; quote a single round figure for a fee GDRFA publishes as five components; tell you a card takes weeks when the published completion is 48 hours; or take the work when the honest answer is that your in-house administrator can lodge it digitally this afternoon for AED 280.

What late renewal actually costs

People search for the establishment card late renewal fine expecting a daily rate, the way the Emirates ID carries AED 20 a day. It is worth being precise about what is published and what is not.

The cost is the freeze, not the fine

An expired establishment card does not generate a bill. It stops your immigration file, and everything that depends on it stops with it.

Put a number on that in your own terms. A single delayed hire on a AED 15,000 salary, held up three weeks, is roughly AED 10,000 of unproductive time and recruitment risk — against a renewal that costs AED 280 lodged digitally and completes in a published 48 hours.

That ratio is the real argument. The card is one of the cheapest items in your annual compliance calendar and one of the most expensive to neglect, and the expense never appears as a penalty line you can point at.

It is also why we treat card expiries as a monitoring job rather than a transaction. Our Dubai PRO services team tracks establishment card, trade licence and quota dates together, so the renewal happens on a quiet Tuesday for AED 280 instead of during a hiring freeze.

If it has already expired

Renew it, and renew it now rather than after you have resolved whatever prompted you to look.

The renewal route is unchanged by the card having lapsed: the same digital channels, the same document set for your sector, the same published 48-hour completion. Several of the category-specific requirement lists explicitly contemplate a lapsed card — yachts and Quran memorisation centres are both required to submit the expired establishment card — which tells you renewal after expiry is a normal, anticipated transaction rather than an exception you have to argue for.

What you should not do is wait until the blocked transaction is urgent. The card renewal has its own 48 hours, and that clock only starts when you lodge.

Outside Dubai: the ICP route

Everything above concerns establishments whose immigration file sits with GDRFA Dubai. Entities registered in other emirates deal with the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security instead.

Free zones

A free zone entity still holds an immigration establishment card, and the free zone authority is normally the party that administers or sponsors the file. The practical consequence is that your renewal may run through the zone rather than directly through the immigration authority’s public channels, on the zone’s own timetable and at its own charges.

Confirm the route with your zone before assuming the digital path described here applies to you. What does not change is the dependency: no valid card, no visa transactions.

Both cards, the licence dates behind them and the quota that sits downstream are part of what we handle as PRO services in Dubai.

Both cards sit inside a bigger fee picture, which we set out in full in our guide to PRO services cost in Dubai.