An Indian citizen living in the UAE wanted to route their study/tourist visa application 'through India' hoping for better odds. The thread laid out how residence actually works:
- Declare your true country of residence. The application must state where you actually reside — in this case the UAE. Members were unanimous that you cannot present yourself as an India-based applicant while living in the UAE.
- Biometrics and passport stamping are flexible; the application is not. The useful nuance: while the declared residence must be truthful, you can give biometrics in either your country of residence or citizenship, and once approved, you can get the passport stamped from either country as well. Physical location at application time is not the constraint — honesty about residence is.
- Residence determines the SDS route (historical). One member explained from experience: the application checklist asks your country of residence, and only residents of the (then) 14 SDS-eligible countries could use the SDS study stream — declaring UAE residence routed you to non-SDS. (SDS has since been discontinued; the residence-drives-stream principle is what to retain.)
- Don't over-index on country-level rejection rates. The applicant feared a '100% rejection rate' from the Gulf; another member countered with many friends who got study permits from the UAE, noting the real weak point for Gulf applicants tends to be demonstrating home ties — a file-quality issue, not a geography penalty.
Bottom line: you apply as a resident of where you live; strengthen the file rather than shopping for a filing country.