Honduras

Ninety days on arrival and one extension of thirty days, which is as far as the regulation lets a visitor go without changing status. The migration law itself is more generous on its face - it grants ninety days "extendable for as long as is necessary" - and the regulation that implements that sentence caps the extension at a single thirty-day grant. The ninety days are not Honduran days: they are counted across Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua together under the CA-4 single-visa arrangement, they begin at the first of the four borders you cross, and they end the moment you leave the region by an outer border. Whether you need a visa at all comes from the country list annexed to the CA-4 manual, not from a Honduran list. Nothing in the entry rules asks a visitor for a police certificate.

Honduras has had a rentista residence since 2003 and it asks for USD 2,500 a month in permanent, lawful and stable income. Two things make it unusual. The income may be generated abroad or inside Honduras - most of the region insists the money come from outside - and the income has to arrive through a Honduran bank, which the holder must prove again at every renewal. In exchange the rentista pays no income tax on that income, brings a household's goods and one car in free of duty, and may invest without limit; what the rentista may not do is take a salary. A 2025 ministerial instrument opened a discretionary door for applicants who reach only half the figure.

The pensionado residence asks for USD 1,500 a month in permanent and stable pension income, a thousand less than the rentista route and the cheapest of the retirement categories in the isthmus. The pension must come from outside Honduras - the law says so in the article after the one that lets rentista income arise at home - and it must be paid in through a Honduran bank, which certifies at every renewal that it still is. The reward is substantial and old: no income tax on the pension, a household's effects and one car imported free of all import, customs and sales tax, and the right to invest without limit while never taking a salary.

Working in Honduras is not a residence; it is a special permanence permit, granted for the length of a contract and capped at five years. It needs two things at once: the migration permit and a work card from the labour ministry. The condition that decides most applications is not about the applicant at all - the employer must produce a labour ministry certificate that it complies with the constitutional quota of ninety per cent Honduran staff and eighty-five per cent of payroll paid to Hondurans. Since July 2025 a worker with two years of continuous lawful residence and a work authorisation can ask to convert that permit into a residence.

USD 50,000 into any lawful branch of the Honduran economy, or into state or national financial-institution securities, buys investor residence. The figure has stood unchanged since 2003. What makes the route distinctive is that the money is not required up front: the applicant lodges a USD 5,000 deposit with the central bank as a guarantee that the investment will be made, files a feasibility study and a timetable, and gets the guarantee back within a year once the investment is proved. At every renewal the economy ministry must certify that the holder is still an investor at the level the law requires.

Students get a special permanence permit rather than a residence, issued for the length of the course or the internship. The permit category is capped at five years like every other, but the law adds that where studies run longer the permit may be extended for as long as it takes to finish them - which makes studying the one ground on which the five-year ceiling bends. The card itself, unusually, is issued for one year at a time rather than the five the law allows for everyone else, and each renewal needs the institution to confirm both that last year's courses were passed and that the student is enrolled for the next.

Honduras has a family residence route and it points the opposite way from the European ancestry schemes people arrive expecting. The grandparents, parents and siblings of a Honduran by birth may apply for residence; the grandchild of a Honduran may not. The eight-item list of who can be a resident contains nothing that reaches a descendant. What Honduran descent does give, where it exists in the right form, is nationality rather than residence: a child born abroad to a Honduran father or mother by birth is Honduran by birth, which is a registry question and not a migration one. Since July 2025 a child born abroad to Honduran parents who cannot make out that claim is named in a ministerial instrument as a case the ministry may consider under its discretionary residence.

Marriage or a recognised de facto union with a Honduran is one of the eight residence categories, and the law attaches no waiting period to it. The regulation does: it says residence may be acquired three years after the marriage was celebrated or the union recognised. That is a condition the law it implements does not contain, and it is the sharpest divergence we found in the Honduran material. The status survives the Honduran spouse's death, and ends on divorce - though the law gives the foreign spouse the right to move to another status, and a route back if there are Honduran children. On the nationality side the Constitution is far more generous than the residence rules: a foreigner married to a Honduran by birth is eligible to naturalise, with no residence period stated at all.

Honduras belongs to the CA-4, the single Central American visa shared with Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Read at the instrument rather than from the traveller folklore around it, CA-4 is a visa and mobility arrangement for people who are not nationals of those four states. It harmonises who needs a visa, lets a visitor's ninety days run across all four territories from the first outer border, and lets a resident of one of the four travel in the others on their passport and residence card. It does not grant residence, it does not grant work, and it says in terms that a resident of one state party may not do paid or commercial work in another. For nationals of the four countries the benefit Honduran law actually states is different and narrower: a shorter road to naturalisation, cheaper settled residence, and no land entry fee.

The waiting period depends entirely on where you were born: one year for a Central American by birth, two consecutive years for a Spaniard or an Ibero-American by birth, three consecutive years for everyone else, and no period at all stated for the foreign spouse of a Honduran by birth. The price is the same in every case - the Constitution requires the applicant to renounce their existing nationality first, unless a dual-nationality treaty says otherwise. There is a written examination on Honduran history, geography and the Constitution, sat four times a year, with one retake six months later. Naturalisation is granted by the President and can be cancelled; nationality by birth cannot be taken away and survives acquiring another.

Honduras has no day count. Its income tax law defines a resident as a person who actually lives in the country and is not a mere transient, and it decides doubtful cases on intention rather than arithmetic - it even says that a foreigner whose stay is limited by immigration law is not a resident, unless other circumstances show an intention to stay longer than was originally asked for. Once you are resident the reach is wide: residents and domiciled persons are taxed on income whether its source is inside the country or outside it. Non-residents are taxed only on Honduran-source income, by a flat withholding of ten per cent on thirteen listed kinds of payment. And the rentista and pensioner residence categories carry a statutory exemption on the very income that qualified them.

The document that opens the door is the tax number, the RTN, and the tax authority says so plainly: one of the reasons to register is to meet the requirement of a procedure such as opening a bank account. A foreigner can get one on a passport or a valid residence card together with proof of an exact address, and the first issue is immediate and free. The banking relationship is not optional for some residents: a rentista or pensioner must show at application that their income will be paid into Honduras through a national financial institution, and must produce a certificate from that institution at every renewal confirming that it still is. Banks themselves are supervised by the national banking and insurance commission, whose own account-opening rules we have not read.

Honduran social security runs on employment. The social security institute is a compulsory public service, and the duty that makes it work sits on the employer: every employer must register every worker who enters its service. The constitutional architecture is the same - the State, employers and workers all contribute, and the system is to be introduced gradually and progressively, by risk covered, by geography and by category of worker. That last phrase is not decorative: the law's own list of people brought in by special and progressive affiliation includes the self-employed, domestic workers, pensioners and students, and makes each one conditional on actuarial studies. A resident who is not employed in Honduras has no route into the institute that we found in writing. The right to health protection is recognised separately in the Constitution and is not the same thing as cover.

A visitor may drive on the valid licence they arrived with - the traffic law says so, subject to reciprocity and to any treaty Honduras has ratified. A resident may not. Article 45 requires Hondurans and foreigners with a residence permit who drive to carry a licence issued by the national traffic directorate, and the law's route to that licence is the first-time route: an identity card or residence permit, literacy, eighteen years of age, a satisfactory medical examination, and passing the theory and practical tests. No article of the traffic law exchanges a foreign licence for a Honduran one. The law does say that treaties complement it on licensing, so an exchange may exist by treaty; we found none in the law itself.

Honduras puts its household-goods concession inside the migration law rather than the customs law, and it attaches it to two residence categories only. A rentista or a pensioner brings in a household's effects - furniture, clothes, jewellery, sporting goods and other personal or family articles - once, free of all import taxes, and may import one motor vehicle free of import, customs and sales tax. Both concessions come with a leash. Pass the household goods on within three years and the exonerated taxes fall due; pass the car on within five and the same, and even after five years the exoneration only travels to a buyer on proof that the holder has paid into the Honduran banking system, over those five years, at least the minimum income the law requires of them. Renounce the status and everything exonerated is repayable.