Working in Honduras
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.
At a glance
- What you get
- A special permanence permit, not residence
- Maximum length
- 5 years
- Minimum contract length
- Longer than 3 months
A contract of three months or less is handled as a temporary migrant worker rather than under this category.
- Permit fee
- USD 100 per year
Article 127 of the regulation prints its item numbers in one column and its amounts in another, and the extraction flattens them into separate blocks, so the amount cannot be quoted beside the line it belongs to. The figure is read off the schedule as published and has not been traced to any other instrument.
- Employer quota
- 90% of staff and 85% of payroll Honduran
- Lost by absence
- 6 consecutive months abroad
Without permission from the migration directorate. Residents, by contrast, have twelve months.
- Employer must report the end of the job
- Within 5 working days
- Route to residence
- 2 years of continuous lawful residenceas of 2025-07-29
Under the 2025 ministerial instrument, and discretionary.
Requirements
- A contract with an employer established in Honduras, for a period longer than three months
- A certificate from the employer taking responsibility for the worker's subsistence, their departure when the permit ends, and notifying the end of the employment relationship
- A labour ministry certificate that the employer meets the ninety per cent and eighty-five per cent quotas of article 137 of the Constitution and article 11 of the Labour Code
- Evidence of the qualifications for the job, authenticated
- The employer's incorporation deed, operating permit, tax-authority certificate of trading, and accountant-certified financial statements
- A work card from the Secretaría de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, separately from the migration permit
In detail
The quota is the real gate
Article 137 of the Constitution forbids an employer to have fewer than ninety per cent Honduran staff or to pay them less than eighty-five per cent of total wages. The migration regulation does not merely mention this; it makes a labour ministry certificate of compliance a document in the file. An applicant with the right qualifications and a signed contract can still fail because the hiring company is at its limit, and nothing in the process gives the applicant a way to fix that. The Constitution allows both proportions to be modified in exceptional cases the law determines, and we have not read which cases those are.
A permit, not a residence, and the difference is six months
Working puts you in the special-permanence column rather than the residence column, and the law treats the two differently in one way that catches people out. A resident loses status after twelve consecutive months outside Honduras without permission; a special-permanence holder loses it after six. The permit is also tied to the job: the employer has five working days to tell the migration directorate that the relationship has ended, and the regulation makes failing to do so a punishable infraction. Changing employer is a change of category, with its own fee.
Two years in, a door opens
The ministerial instrument of 29 July 2025 added a route that did not previously exist in writing. Someone who works in Honduras and bases their application on that fact may apply for the discretionary residence of article 21 numeral 8 if they have at least two years of continuous lawful residence, a work authorisation from the labour ministry or the migration institute, and the employer's certificate of compliance with the ninety and eighty-five per cent quotas. The instrument is careful that this creates no entitlement: the ministry may accept, refuse or shelve the application, and nothing about it is an acquired right.
Country-level policy
The currency of Honduras is the lempira, and almost nothing in its migration law is stated in lempiras. The income thresholds are in United States dollars, the investment threshold is in dollars, the guarantee deposit is in dollars, and the whole fee schedule of the regulation - residences, naturalisations, permits, passports, extensions, the land entry fee - is in dollars with a single lempira line at the end for certificates. The law allows payment in the equivalent in national currency, so the dollar is the unit of account rather than the means of payment. The practical effect is that these figures do not quietly erode with the exchange rate, which is why thresholds set in 2003 are still the thresholds today.
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.
Whatever route you take, the same file is assembled. Thirteen general requirements apply to every residence application and eleven to every special permanence permit, and the heaviest of them are the criminal-record certificate from your country of origin and of last residence, a Honduran criminal investigation certificate, and a medical certificate no more than six months old. Everything from abroad must be legalised and anything in another language officially translated. After the decision you have thirty days to register in the National Registry of Foreigners, and the ministry will not release the certified decision until you have. The card runs for up to five years, nobody may hold two statuses at once, and the status dies after twelve consecutive months out of the country - six, if what you hold is a permit rather than a residence.
Article 21 of the migration law ends with a numeral that lets the ministry authorise residence in duly justified cases, without saying what a justification is. On 29 July 2025 the ministry published what it now asks for, and the reasoning it gives is candid: the open numeral had attracted an excessive pattern of distortion, and leaving it without requirements put the properly specified categories at a disadvantage. Four routes are now written down. Someone who falls short of the rentista, pensioner or investor figures may apply with at least half of them. Someone who has used up five years of permits, or broken their continuity, may apply. Someone who works in Honduras may apply after two years of continuous lawful residence with a work authorisation and the employer's labour-quota certificate. And anyone else may apply after a hundred and twenty days on humanitarian, public-interest or special family grounds, including being the child of Honduran parents born abroad. None of it is a right: the instrument says the ministry may accept, refuse or shelve the application without liability and without creating any acquired right.
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«La Dirección General de Migración y Extranjeria podrá conceder permisos especiales de permanencia en el país hasta por un máximo de cinco (5) años»Our translation - not official
The Directorate General of Migration and Alien Affairs may grant special permanence permits in the country for up to a maximum of five (5) years
The thirteen grounds that follow include students, migrant workers, contracted employees, scientists and specialists, and company directors.
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
«La Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería autorizará permiso especial de permanencia en la categoría de extranjeros por contrato, a los extranjeros contratados por la empresa privada como empleados por un período superior a los tres (3) meses»Our translation - not official
The Directorate General of Migration and Alien Affairs shall authorise a special permanence permit in the foreigners-by-contract category to foreigners contracted by private enterprise as employees for a period longer than three (3) months
About this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«Constancia extendida por la Secretaría de Estado en los Despachos de Trabajo y Seguridad Social que acredite que el patrono cumple con lo establecido en el artículo 137 de la Constitución de la República y en el artículo 11 del Código del Trabajo respecto de trabajadores extranjeros;»Our translation - not official
A certificate issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security attesting that the employer complies with article 137 of the Constitution of the Republic and article 11 of the Labour Code in respect of foreign workers;
The gatekeeper. It is a test of the employer, not of the applicant.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«Se prohíbe a los patronos emplear menos de un noventa por ciento de trabajadores hondureños y pagar a éstos menos del ochenta y cinco por ciento del total de los salarios que se devenguen en sus respectivas empresas.»Our translation - not official
Employers are forbidden to employ fewer than ninety per cent Honduran workers and to pay them less than eighty-five per cent of the total wages earned in their respective undertakings.
The article adds that both proportions may be modified in the exceptional cases the law determines.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«Todo extranjero con residencia legal en el país está obligado a portarel carné de residencia. Asimismo, si se encuentra al servicio de un patronoo con oferta de trabajo, estará obligado a obtener el carné de trabajoantela Secretaría de Estado en los Despachos de Trabajo y Seguridad Social.»Our translation - not official
Every foreigner lawfully resident in the country is obliged to carry the residence card. Likewise, if they are in the service of an employer or hold a job offer, they are obliged to obtain the work card from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.
Two documents, two ministries. The missing spaces are in the published text.
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
«7. Permiso especial de permanencia por cada año»Our translation - not official
7. Special permanence permit, per year
The amount against this line in the schedule is USD 100.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«3) Por permanecer fuera del país más de seis (6) meses consecutivos sin el permiso correspondiente, en el caso de los extranjeros con permiso especial de permanencia; y,»Our translation - not official
3) For remaining outside the country more than six (6) consecutive months without the corresponding permission, in the case of foreigners with a special permanence permit; and,
This is a continuous-absence rule, not a presence quota: two absences of five months each do not trigger it.
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
«Tener al menos 2 años de residir de forma continua y legal en el país;»Our translation - not official
To have at least 2 years of continuous and lawful residence in the country;
The first of three conditions for the work-based route into the discretionary residence of article 21 numeral 8; the others are a work authorisation and the employer's certificate of compliance with the labour quota.
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
Practical notes
The work card issued by the labour ministry is a separate document with its own procedure, which we have not read. Article 15 of the migration law establishes the obligation; what the labour ministry asks for is outside what we have opened.
There is no published point system, salary floor or shortage-occupation list in the migration law or its regulation. The tests are the contract, the applicant's qualifications and the employer's compliance.
The USD 100 annual permit fee and the USD 20 registration fee come from article 127 of the regulation, which is the schedule in force as published. We have not found a later tariff instrument, and the migration institute publishes none.
- reportsReglamento de la Ley de Migración y Extranjería
Tribunal Superior de Cuentas de Honduras - biblioteca de leyes
About this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
- reportsLey de Migración y Extranjería, Decreto No. 208-2003, La Gaceta
Observatorio de las Migraciones Internacionales en Honduras (OMIH), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras
About 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
- reportsConstitución de la República de Honduras
Tribunal Superior de Cuentas de Honduras - biblioteca de leyes
About this source
The state audit body's reference shelf, which carries the Constitution, the migration regulation, the tax code and the traffic law as PDFs. It is where several Honduran instruments are reachable at all.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency. It is an audit body's shelf, not a gazette and not a consolidator: no document on it carries a consolidation date or an amendment history, so it cannot establish that a text is the text in force, and it is not the issuing authority for anything it holds. Its directory index returns 403, so what it holds cannot be enumerated.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
- reportsAcuerdo Ministerial No. 374-2025, La Gaceta No. 36,924 de 23 de agosto de 2025
Observatorio de las Migraciones Internacionales en Honduras (OMIH), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras
About 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