Colombia

By default this route does not exist for a given applicant: it is open only to nationals of the states party to the Mercosur Residence Agreement, plus Bolivia and Chile. If that is you, the requirements are among the lightest Colombia offers - but the visa is granted once and once only.

Colombia's route for people living on a pension asks for three monthly minimum wages, from a state pension or a private fund. It is unusually specific about what counts: this is a pension visa, not a passive-income visa, and the certificate must show a lifetime monthly payment. Proof of health cover in Colombia is part of the application rather than something to arrange later.

Colombia puts the weight of this application on the employer, and heavily. Beyond a contract, the company must show average monthly income of a hundred minimum wages over the preceding four months, and must explain in writing why the role is not being filled by a Colombian. It is the most demanding employer test of the three countries covered here.

For a foreigner the test is a day count and essentially nothing else: more than 183 days, continuous or not, in any rolling 365-day period. The further tests about where your family lives and where your income comes from look alarming but apply only to Colombian nationals. There is one timing quirk worth knowing: if the days straddle two tax years, residency starts from the second one.

Ninety days, extendable by ninety, and then a hard stop: 180 days in any 365 is the ceiling and it cannot be extended past it. The days need not be consecutive, so the limit follows you across separate trips. Two things are required that travellers often do not expect - a health policy covering the whole stay, and a return ticket you must be able to show at the border.

Two thresholds, depending on what you buy. Direct foreign investment registered with the central bank takes 650 monthly minimum wages; property held in your own name takes 350. Property is the cheaper door by a wide margin, and the investment has to be maintained for as long as the visa lasts.

Marriage to a Colombian opens a route, but the application is built around proving you actually live together rather than around the certificate. The Colombian spouse writes the request themselves, gives their address and phone number, and the authority can demand further proof or call either of you to an interview. The marriage certificate must have been issued within the three months before you apply.

Colombia publishes exactly how long each route takes to reach permanent residency, and the spread is wide: two years on a treaty or parent visa, three as the spouse of a Colombian, five for everything else including work, pensions and investment. The table is the most useful single thing in the visa regime, because it lets you compare routes by their real length rather than by their entry requirements.

Enrolment in Colombia's health system is compulsory for everyone resident in the country, foreigners included - it is framed as an obligation rather than an entitlement. Which side of the system you land on depends on whether you can pay: the contributory regime if you have capacity, the subsidised one if you qualify. Separately and before any of that, most visas require you to hold a private policy covering your whole stay.

Banking here runs through the cédula de extranjería, the identity card Migración Colombia issues to anyone holding a visa valid for more than three months. The trap is what happens while you wait for it: the receipt you are given when the card is being printed is expressly not accepted for opening accounts, so there is a gap between arriving and being bankable that nothing on the immigration side warns you about.

Colombia will recognise a foreign licence and issue a Colombian one in exchange, but only for people born in a country with which it has an agreement. Note the wording: born in, not merely a national of - which excludes someone who naturalised into an agreement country. And as with banking, the cédula de extranjería is required, so the immigration document gates this too.

Colombia's household goods regime is not duty-free and, as published, is not written for foreigners. Menaje is declared under its own tariff heading and taxed at a flat fifteen per cent, and the eligibility conditions DIAN states are framed around Colombians returning after at least twenty-four months abroad. Whether and on what terms a foreign newcomer qualifies is not answered on this page.

Colombia's route for living on income that is not a pension asks for ten monthly minimum wages - more than three times what it asks of a retiree. The income must be periodic and variable from a demonstrable lawful source, which is a looser test than Argentina's requirement that it come from assets in your own estate, and the assets producing it may be in Colombia rather than abroad.

The category is wide - it covers trades and arts, school at every level, vocational training and higher education, and it explicitly includes online and distance study. And there is a carve-out worth knowing before applying for anything: holders of passports from visa-exempt countries need no student visa at all if the stay stays under 180 days.

A child of a Colombian parent born abroad is a Colombian national by birth - but not automatically. The constitution attaches a condition: you must either take up domicile in Colombia or register at a Colombian consulate. Do one of those and the question of residency disappears entirely, because you are not a foreigner. Colombia also does not take nationality away for acquiring another one.