Hello everyone. I was looking for some advice regarding my ability to do small work with my current visa.
I’m currently doing my Masters degree at a university here in Dubai. I’m on a residence visa sponsored by my dad, and when he took the visa he took it on the basis of my education. So on the visa it has mentioned, ‘Residence Visa’ with the note ‘Student - Not allowed to Work’ on it.
Recently I started doing some random online tasks on my own schedule for a US based site called Outlier. It’s just small tasks such as AI model training and stuff like that, not a real proper job with hours and contract. I make maybe around $200 max a month just for some pocket money.
Outlier basically transfers any payout on a weekly basis to my PayPal account in USD, and from the PayPal account it auto transfers in AED to my local digital bank account.
My main questions are:
Will this get me in any trouble because of the ‘Not allowed to work’ thing on my visa? I know there are work permits like freelance permits, but that costs around 7500 minimum for a year, which is around the same amount I’ll be making from the freelance.
Also will my local bank care about me transferring 700-800 AED a month from PayPal? Can they or the government actually see that the money originally came from a company payout on PayPal?
Just want to make sure that I’m not accidentally breaking any big rules or anything, just to get a small pocket money. If yes, I would like to stop this immediately, as the freelance permit method won’t be worth it.
Thank you!