Country-wide policy
The Instruments Name an Agency That No Longer Exists, and the New One Publishes Nothing
Every procedure in the Honduran migration law and its regulation is addressed to the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería, under the Secretaría de Gobernación y Justicia. Neither name is current: migration control is now exercised through the Instituto Nacional de Migración under the Secretaría de Gobernación, Justicia y Descentralización, as a 2025 ministerial instrument recites. That would be a cosmetic problem if the new institute published requirement sheets. It does not. Its site was relaunched on 30 September 2026 and its alien affairs page lists the kinds of procedure it handles without stating a single requirement for any of them. The 2003 law and its 2004 regulation are therefore the only public statement of what Honduras asks.
Topics it changes
- Visiting as a tourist
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency through marriage
- Residency under a regional treaty
- Becoming a citizen
- When you become a tax resident
- Opening a bank account
- Access to healthcare
- Driving and licence exchange
- Bringing your belongings
What it requires
- Procedures named in the law and the regulation are addressed to bodies that have since been renamed or replaced
- The migration institute publishes no requirement sheet for any procedure
- What is asked at the counter comes from the 2003 law, the 2004 regulation and the 2025 ministerial instrument
- Fees are those in the regulation's schedule; no later tariff is published
At a glance
- Agency named in the instruments
- Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería
- Agency now exercising migration control
- Instituto Nacional de Migración
- Ministry named in the instruments
- Secretaría de Gobernación y Justicia
- Ministry now
- Secretaría de Gobernación, Justicia y Descentralización
- Requirement sheets published by the institute
- None
- Institute's alien affairs page last updated
- 30 September 2026
The date the institute's own page prints at its foot, quoted on this record.
What the law says
«el diseño de las políticas relativas a la población y lo referente a la ciudadanía, la nacionalidad y la extranjería, así como el control migratorio a través del Instituto Nacional de Migración»Our translation - not official
the design of policies relating to population and to citizenship, nationality and alien affairs, as well as migration control through the National Migration Institute
The ministry's own recital of where migration control now sits, in an instrument issued in 2025.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
An academic observatory at the national public university, which hosts facsimiles of La Gaceta and of regional migration instruments - including the CA-4 unified manual, which is held at no other address we have reached.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It hosts, it does not publish. What is held here are facsimiles of La Gaceta and of a regional instrument that carries Guatemalan migration-institute letterhead, so the documents are primary and the body offering them is not their publisher: it must never be cited as the publisher of what it holds, nor as evidence that any text is current, complete or still in force. It is typed government-primary because the taxonomy classifies the document rather than the host, and these documents are official text; the fact that a public university's observatory is the only address we reached for the CA-4 manual is a reason to look for a government one, not a reason to doubt the text.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«Gestionamos y resolvemos trámites de residencia, permanencia y regularización migratoria de personas extranjeras en Honduras.»Our translation - not official
We manage and decide procedures for residence, stay and migration regularisation of foreign persons in Honduras.
The whole of what the institute says about its own procedures. The list below it names ten kinds of application and states no requirement, no fee and no processing time for any of them.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The body that now runs Honduran migration control, replacing the directorate every instrument still names. Its site was relaunched on 30 September 2026.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for requirements, fees or timescales, because it publishes none: its extranjería page lists ten kinds of procedure and states nothing whatever about any of them. Its only evidential value today is as proof of that absence, and that is the only thing resting on it here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Última actualización: 30 de septiembre de 2026»Our translation - not official
Last updated: 30 September 2026
The page is current, not stale. The absence of requirements is a choice rather than neglect.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The body that now runs Honduran migration control, replacing the directorate every instrument still names. Its site was relaunched on 30 September 2026.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for requirements, fees or timescales, because it publishes none: its extranjería page lists ten kinds of procedure and states nothing whatever about any of them. Its only evidential value today is as proof of that absence, and that is the only thing resting on it here.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Nothing here says the institute applies different requirements from those in the regulation. It says that if it does, there is no published way to know.
The instruments also name the Dirección Ejecutiva de Ingresos as the tax authority. That body was replaced by the Servicio de Administración de Rentas, which is the authority whose pages we cite for tax matters.
Because there are no agency pages, every figure and period on this country is taken from an instrument. Where an agency in another country would be the better source for current practice, Honduras simply does not offer one.