Paraguay

Paraguay admits visitors as an estadia transitoria for up to 90 consecutive days, extendable once and for no longer than the period already granted. The number is per admission and the law sets no annual pool, which makes Paraguay more forgiving than Peru or Colombia, where days accumulate inside a 365-day window. The catch is in the second column of the migration directorate's own visa table: for most nationalities the waiver covers the visit only, and extending the stay, applying for residency or taking up any paid activity requires a consular visa obtained before you travel. Overstaying is a fine, currently six jornales, rather than a ban.

Paraguay has no rentista visa, no investor-income category and no published income threshold. Since Ley 6984/2022 there is one route for almost everybody: temporary residency for up to two years, then a change of category to permanent. Temporary residency is granted on documents - identity, birth, civil status, police and Interpol certificates, two sworn declarations - and the migration directorate's own 2026 resolution states in terms that proof of economic solvency applies exclusively to permanent applications. When the money question does arrive, two years later, it is answered with evidence rather than an amount: a remote worker shows an employment certificate stating the income and how it is paid, a property owner shows a title registered at least two years earlier.

There is no separate work visa. A foreigner who wants to work applies for the same temporary residency as everybody else, and may already work while the application is pending: the precarious residency card issued on filing expressly allows its holder to work and to study for ninety days. The law protects the job rather than licensing it - an authorised resident may not be discriminated against for being one, and the employer must notify the migration directorate and meet every labour obligation whatever the worker's status. Employment shows up again two years later as the easiest way to prove solvency for permanent residency, because a certificate of insurance with the social security institute is enough on its own.

Paraguay does not decide individual tax residence by counting days. The regulation that defines the term says a natural person is resident for tax purposes if they hold permanent residency - a migration status, not a presence test - and it still does so by reference to Ley 978/1996, the migration law repealed by Ley 6984 in 2022. What follows from being resident is narrower than in most countries: personal income tax reaches Paraguayan-source income only, at 8, 9 or 10 per cent, and there is no charge at all on personal-service income below G 80,000,000 of gross receipts in the year. Non-residents are taxed at 15 per cent, withheld at source, on Paraguayan-source income.

Two systems sit side by side and you reach them differently. The public network run by the health ministry is free by statute - consultations, procedures and the medicines on the national essential list - and the migration law forbids refusing care to any foreigner because their migration status is irregular. The contributory system run by the social security institute is reached through employment: the employer registers the worker, and for a foreign worker the institute asks for the migration card alongside the home-country identity document. Contributions are 9 per cent from the worker and 14 per cent from the employer, and family members are enrolled by the insured person rather than by themselves.

Nationals of eight South American countries can use the Mercosur Residence Agreement, which Paraguay approved as Ley N° 3565/08, instead of the general route. It is a shorter list of documents - no consular visa, no Interpol certificate, no declaration of profession - and a lower fee. The trade-off is a deadline: the Mercosur temporary residency lasts two years and is expressly not renewable, and the application to convert it into permanent residency has to be filed in the ninety days before it expires, on pain of losing the right to continue under the Agreement at all. Economic solvency is tested at the permanent stage here exactly as it is on the general route.

There is no pensionado visa. A pensioner applies for the same temporary residency as everyone else and, two years later, proves economic solvency as a jubilado o pensionado when converting to permanent residency. The evidence is one document - a certificate of the pension stating the amount received and the financial channel it is paid through, legalised or apostilled. No minimum is published, in the resolution or on the directorate's pages, and nothing requires the pension to be remitted to Paraguay.

Investors are the only people the migration law exempts from serving two years of temporary residency first. Article 46 lets a foreigner who can demonstrate an investment in Paraguay under the SUACE one-stop business regime go straight to permanent residency, and the migration directorate runs a dedicated procedure for it. What the directorate does not publish is an amount: the document that opens the route is a certificate of investor status issued by the Viceministerio de Industria y Comercio, and the conditions for getting that certificate are set by that ministry rather than by the migration directorate. The law also lets an investor prove the investment with a bank deposit or an investment project approved by the competent bodies, but again without naming a sum.

There is no student visa either. A student takes the ordinary temporary residency and, at the permanent stage, proves solvency as a student - and the directorate says in bold that being a student is not by itself proof of solvency. Enrolment has to be shown for the whole two years of the temporary residency, by receipts for fees or school records, and on top of that the applicant must show either income of their own or documented support from a relative within defined degrees of kinship. Distance and online study count, including at an institution abroad, provided the certificate says so.

Marriage to a resident does not produce a residency of its own. A spouse applies for the same temporary residency as anyone else and, at the permanent stage, answers the solvency question as a dependant: the marriage certificate, legalised or apostilled, and a copy of the other spouse's Paraguayan identity card or residency card. The only marriage-based shortcut in the law is narrower than it first looks - it runs through a returning Paraguayan national, not through any Paraguayan spouse. Both spouses signing, and both holding or applying for residency at the same time, is also what the directorate asks when children are involved.

Paraguay has no ancestry visa in the sense Italy or Spain mean it. What the migration law has is a route for the foreign family of a Paraguayan who emigrated and has come back: their spouse, children and grandchildren up to eighteen, and the spouse of their child, go directly to permanent residency with no temporary stage and no fee. The condition is the repatriation certificate, which means the route belongs to a returning emigrant rather than to any Paraguayan relative. Separately and more widely, the constitution treats children born abroad to a Paraguayan parent as Paraguayan by birth once they settle permanently in the country - a nationality question rather than a residency one.

The constitution asks for three years of settled residence, majority, the regular exercise of a profession, trade, science, art or industry in the country, and good conduct as defined by law. The Supreme Court, which grants the naturalisation letter, reads the three years as three years of permanent residency counted from the date of the decision granting it - not from arrival. Since permanent residency normally follows two years of temporary residency, the realistic minimum from first arriving is around five years. Naturalised Paraguayans lose the nationality after three years of unjustified absence declared by a court, and exercise citizenship, including the vote, only two years after obtaining it.

Driving licences in Paraguay are municipal, not national, so the answer depends on the municipality you live in - Asunción's rules are the ones set out here. A foreigner applies with a passport, a migration admission card, a certificate of life and residence, a blood group certificate and by passing the psychophysical, theory and practical tests; the applicant brings their own vehicle for the practical. A licence from your own country is asked for if you have one, and the municipality says the theory and practical tests are what you take if you do not. The only formal recognition arrangement we found is with Spain, under an agreement approved as Ley N° 3285/07, administered by the intermunicipal body OPACI rather than by any ministry.

Two separate regimes, and only one of them is fully published. The traveller's baggage regime exempts clothing and personal objects outright and gives a further allowance of US$ 500 arriving by air or river and US$ 300 at a land border; motor vehicles of every kind are excluded from it and can enter only under temporary admission, which requires proving residence in another country. The migration law separately gives admitted residents the right to bring in personal effects, family household goods and one family means of transport, with the import duties to be set by the customs authority - and we did not find those duties published.

Paraguay's regulator permits a basic savings account to be opened on the sole presentation of an identity document, under the simplified due diligence regime, and says in terms that the whole procedure may be carried out remotely. No minimum to open, no minimum balance. That is the opposite of what the relocation guides say, which repeat that physical presence is compulsory and that no Paraguayan bank opens an account remotely; the reglamento permits what they call impossible. Two limits keep it honest. The account is in guaraníes only, and monthly credits are capped at whatever SEPRELAD sets for simplified due diligence - a figure the reglamento defers to rather than states, so we do not state it either. Above that ceiling you are sent to a conventional account and the full due diligence that goes with it.