An employee’s or an expat resident’s sponsor for the residency is their employer. The company may be situated in Freezones or outside the Freezones. The residency length has been reduced to 2 years recently from 3 years which used to be, which could be renewed.
The laws of UAE require all the expatriates to be sponsored by a UAE based company or a UAE national. The UAE national could be a direct sponsor while applying for a domestic servant or indirect sponsor while he is a majority partner in the business or the organisation. In most of the cases the UAE national is a sleeping partner meaning that he is not involved in the day to day running of the business.
This is not the case in Freezones where the respective authority acts as the sponsor. There is no requirement for a UAE national partner in the Freezones.
Expatriate residents also could sponsor a domestic servant provided they fit into certain pre-requisites.