Chile

Chile admits visitors on a permiso de permanencia transitoria of up to 90 days, extendable once by a further 90 for a flat USD 100. The permit is a statement about intention as much as about time: it is granted to people who arrive with no intention of settling, and Chile enforces that reading by refusing, as a rule, to let anyone convert it into residency from inside the country. Residence applications are filed from abroad. Most nationalities need no visa in advance; some do, and the list is held by the foreign ministry rather than by the migration service.

Chile's passive-income route is narrower than most and, at the same time, has no published number. It is open only to income from two named sources - real estate or financial assets - which leaves out royalties, business distributions and remote salary. There is no fixed threshold: the test is that the income covers at least basic needs as measured by the social development ministry's indicators, assessed case by case. The permit runs up to two years, allows any lawful paid work, and counts towards permanent residency.

Chile puts pensioners and rentistas in the same subcategory but gives them different proofs. A pensioner needs a pension obtained under the rules of their country of residence, big enough to cover at least basic needs, evidenced by a certificate stating the amount and duration plus the most recent payment slip. Uniquely among the routes here, it has a back door: someone already holding the paid-activity permit can switch into the pensioner permit from inside Chile, and only has to produce the pension certificate to do it.

Chile's work permit rests on a contract of at least three months, signed by the employer before a Chilean notary and by you before the competent Chilean consulate - so the paperwork is split across two countries before you ever board a plane. What makes it unusually forgiving once granted is article 19 of the decree: the end of the contract that founded the permit is not on its own a reason to revoke it, and you may change employer without telling the migration service. Self-employment is covered too, on a separate track with a civil or commercial contract.

Chile runs two separate concepts and most planning errors come from collapsing them. Residencia is purely mechanical: 184 days of physical presence inside any rolling 12 months, with no test of intention at all. Domicilio is about where your economic life sits, it can attach from your very first day in the country, and a signed declaration is enough to create it. Both lead to the same place - Chilean tax on worldwide income - but a new arrival gets three years in which only Chilean-source income is taxed, and that clock starts at entry, not at the day residency is acquired.

Chile's migration law grants access to health care on equal terms with nationals to every foreigner resident in the country - and, unusually, says the same for people whose migration status is irregular. What equal terms means in practice is the ordinary Chilean system: you join FONASA, the public insurer, or an Isapre. FONASA publishes document lists for people who are not yet in the system - a residence application in progress, a contract but no Chilean ID number, a foreign pension, no papers at all - which is a fair map of how thin the entry requirements really are. The restriction to watch is elsewhere: non-contributory cash benefits need 24 months of residence first.

By default this route does not exist for a given applicant: Chile's migration service opens it to nationals of five countries only - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. If you hold one of those nationalities, see the origin-specific entry below; the requirements are the lightest of any Chilean residence permit. If you do not, the fact that your country is an associated state of Mercosur does not help here, which is where Chile parts company with Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia.

Naturalisation in Chile is governed by a 1960 decree that the 2021 migration law left largely in place, and it asks for two things the neighbours do not: you must already hold permanent residency, and the consolidated text still requires you to renounce your existing nationality. The ordinary wait is five years of residence plus permanent residency; a family tie to a Chilean cuts it to two years of continuous residence. The decision is the President's, by decree countersigned by the Interior Minister - it is a grant, not an entitlement.

The student permit is built around a formalised enrolment at a state-recognised institution plus proof that you can pay for the stay. Its distinguishing feature is the work allowance written straight into the decree: up to 30 hours a week of any lawful paid work, for any employer, with no separate authorisation - and doing it cannot be used against your student status, unless you go over the 30 hours. The permit runs up to two years and leads on to permanent residency.

The practical gate in Chile is the cédula de identidad. The state-owned bank's mass-market account, the CuentaRUT, is numbered with your Chilean ID number and is open to any Chilean or foreigner holding a current cédula, from age 12, with no income test and no credit check. That makes the residence permit, not the bank, the real requirement: the cédula follows the permit. The migration law meanwhile obliges public and private bodies to obtain a Rol Único Nacional for a foreigner who needs one to receive their services, and guarantees the right to move money in and out of the country.

Chile exchanges or recognises foreign licences only where a treaty with the issuing country is in force, and the transport ministry names nine: Spain, South Korea, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Japan, Paraguay and Bolivia. An agreement with Brazil has been signed and is not yet in force. The process is centralised online with the ministry, which verifies the licence with the issuing authority and then issues a certificate; the actual exchange happens at the traffic department of the municipality where you live. Several of the treaties require a Chilean identity card showing your nationality, so this is a resident's procedure, not a visitor's.

Chilean customs lets a foreigner arriving with a residence visa or a work contract bring in household goods up to USD 6,750 and work tools up to USD 2,025 free of customs duty and of VAT. The shipment does not have to travel with you: 120 days either side of your arrival is allowed. The allowance is published in dollars, which means it does not silently erode with the peso, and it is substantially more generous than what a returning Chilean gets for a comparable time abroad.

Chile has an investor residence permit, and it is expensive: five hundred thousand US dollars, put into producing goods or services, and sponsored by the state investment promotion agency before the migration service will look at the file. A second door in the same paragraph costs the applicant nothing personally - senior managers and specialist technical staff hired by a Chilean company that a foreign investor controls through at least 10% of the voting shares come in the same way. Neither door exists in the migration statute: the investor category was created by the supreme decree that lists the subcategories, which means it can be changed without going back to Congress.

Marriage to a Chilean, or to a foreigner who already holds permanent residency, opens the family reunification permit - one of the few Chilean residence permits that can be applied for from inside the country rather than from abroad. Two features set it apart from every other route. The application is not yours to file: the Chilean spouse or permanent resident lodges it in their own name with their Chilean digital identity. And the route does not exist if your spouse holds only temporary residency - in that case you come in as their dependant, which is a weaker permit tied to theirs.

Chile has no residence permit based on having a Chilean parent, grandparent or great-grandparent. The migration law lists thirteen situations the subcategory decree must cover and the decree lists sixteen subcategories; descent appears in neither. Where Chilean ancestry does count is one step further on, in nationality: a relative of a Chilean by blood to the second degree - which reaches grandparents and grandchildren - can apply for naturalisation after two years as a permanent resident instead of five. The ancestry itself buys no entry; it shortens the wait once you are already settled.