When an office tells you "one month for every nationality", it is selling you a number, not a commitment. The real timeline is the sum of five stages — three of which are entirely outside the office's control.
The five stages
- 1. Verification and eligibility — usually same day; it stalls if there is a violation on record or missing data.
- 2. Selecting a candidate and signing — one to three days, driven by how quickly you decide.
- 3. Visa and government processing — one to three weeks, varying by country.
- 4. Medical clearance and attestations — the stage that delays most often, dependent on medical centre appointments and attestation queues in the source country.
- 5. Booking and travel — days to two weeks depending on flight availability and season.
Where do delays actually happen?
Contrary to common belief, the local office is rarely the bottleneck. The most frequent causes are:
- Medical appointment slots in the source country — these can stretch to weeks in peak season.
- Attestations with the official bodies there.
- Travel seasons and holidays — flights fill and fares rise.
- Sudden regulatory changes in the source country, which do happen.
- A missing document from you — the only one you can fix immediately.
What actually shortens the timeline?
The rule: every day you delay a document or a decision usually becomes more than a day in the next queue.
- Prepare your documents before you start, not when they are requested.
- Choose a candidate quickly — each day of hesitation pushes back the visa.
- Ask which nationalities are fastest right now, not historically; conditions shift monthly.
- Consider transfer of services if speed is your priority — the worker is already in the Kingdom.
How to tell a normal delay from a problem
Ask the office to name the current stage, not to say "soon". If the answer is "medical clearance, appointment on such-and-such date", that is a documented, normal delay. If they cannot name the stage, the problem is in the follow-up, not the procedure.