Working in Saudi and Living in Bahrain

Hi AvinIndia and welcome to the forum.

Firstly, I'm not sure exactly what the requirements for Indians are, however, if you have an iqama (Saudi residency permit) you can apply for a CPR (Bahraini residency permit) number and stay legally in Bahrain. As an Indian, I don't know how long you can stay in Bahrain on this CPR number. If you are commuting to Khobar though, you will not overstay as the lmit is usually 14 or 21 days.

I believe that Indian citizens have to renew their CPR number every six months. Note that this is not a full CPR, but just a number as your residency will officially remain with your Saudi sponsor.

The problem might be your family. As far as I know, unless you are sponsored in Bahrain, you cannot sponsor your family as dependents. They can only enter on tourist visas and I have no idea how long an Indian citizen can stay in Bahrain or whether they can get a visa on entry.

Hopefully others here will have more experience of this.

Your family will have to go to Saudi and get Iqama and multi entry/exit visa's then you could live in Bahrain. Hard without CPR and your nationality doesn't help. If your company says it's ok for you to live in Bahrain then their HR will help you with the proceedings

Josnuggles wrote:

Your family will have to go to Saudi and get Iqama and multi entry/exit visa's then you could live in Bahrain.

It's quite possible that AvinIndia's company are only offering him a bachelor status contract which means they will not help him to bring his family over to Saudi. Although technically it's still possible to do this, you do need your own sponsor's permission (even if they're not going to help) and it's difficult, time consuming and expensive to do, esp. if there are children involved who may need schooling.

Josnuggles wrote:

Hard without CPR and your nationality doesn't help. If your company says it's ok for you to live in Bahrain then their HR will help you with the proceedings

I had to laugh at that Josnuggles. If AvinIndia does need permission from his employer (not all require it) to live in Bahrain, there is virtually no chance that anyone at his employer will help him with Bahraini formalities. Even lofty employers like Saudi Aramco won't help you with the red tape in Bahrain.