Peru

Peru's route for living on income you do not work for is the rentista status, and it is the only one in the region whose permission is indefinite from the first grant - no annual renewal, no three-year wait. The published threshold is US$ 1,000 net a month where the income comes from abroad, and Migraciones requires a sworn declaration that the money enters Peru through a supervised bank. The awkward part is in the regulation: the law speaks of a pension or a permanent income, while the regulation asks the applicant to prove a lifetime pension, which is narrower than the law it implements.

Peru's migration law allows a tourist up to 183 calendar days, and the number is cumulative rather than per trip: the 365-day window inside which those days are counted starts at your first regular entry, so leaving and coming back does not reset it. Two things are widely misreported. The 183 days are a ceiling, not an entitlement - the officer grants a period set by your nationality, commonly 90 days. And since 2023 a shorter grant is extendable up to the 183-day ceiling, reversing the old rule that tourist stays could not be extended at all.

One year of renewable residency for a foreigner with a job in Peru. What gates the application is the contract: it must already be approved by the labour authority, be for a year or more, and be no more than 30 days old when you file. A contract with a probation period or a shorter term does not fail - it is redirected to the temporary worker status instead. Unusually for the region, the same category covers the self-employed: a services contract plus an active tax registration is enough, with no employer at all.

For a foreigner the test is a single day count: more than 183 calendar days in the country in any rolling twelve months. What makes Peru different is when it bites. Status is fixed at the start of each tax year and changes only take effect from the following one, so someone who crosses 183 days in, say, August becomes domiciled from 1 January - a built-in delay that only Colombia comes near, and only where the days straddle a year boundary. Until then only Peruvian-source income is taxed.

Peru's position is the most open of the four countries covered here. Since 2019 the state insurer SIS has been authorised to enrol any person resident in the national territory who holds no health insurance, regardless of their economic classification, and enrolment is free with no monthly payment. In practice the gate is documentary rather than legal: enrolment is done with a national identity document or a carné de extranjería, so it follows residency rather than arrival. EsSalud runs a separate paid scheme open to residents, nationals and foreigners alike.

Peru has no separate pensioner visa. A retirement pension is one of the two things the rentista status accepts, alongside a permanent income, and the two are handled by the same procedure with the same US$ 1,000 monthly threshold for foreign income. For a pensioner the route is unusually clean: the regulation asks for proof of a lifetime pension, which is precisely what a pension certificate is, and the permission granted is indefinite rather than renewable.

A year of renewable residency for study at a recognised institution, and the category is wide: school, technical and vocational training, undergraduate and postgraduate university study, work-based training schemes and student exchanges all sit inside it. The condition that catches people is duration - whatever you enrol on must be documented as running a year or more. Study does not permit work, but Peru answers that with an instrument the other countries here do not have: an extraordinary work permit that, for students, runs for the whole residence period and allows half-time work.

Peru names a figure - 500,000 soles - and then restricts what you may do with the position it buys: the holder may act only as manager or director of their own company. Two conditions do more work than the amount. The investment may not be evidenced by a transfer of existing shares, which rules out simply buying into a going concern. And the post created for the foreigner sits outside the foreign-worker quotas, which is the practical reason companies use this route rather than the worker one.

Family of a Peruvian or of a foreign resident get a residence status that permits work from the outset, dependent or independent, with no separate permit. How long it lasts depends on whose family you are: up to two years for the family of a Peruvian, one year for the family of a foreign resident. Since 2023 Migraciones has an express power to assess how solid a marriage or civil partnership is before granting the status, and the amended law ties the family member's permission to the resident's own.

By default this route does not exist for a given applicant: it is open only to nationals of countries with which Peru has an agreement providing for residence. For South Americans that agreement is the Mercosur residence agreement, and it is by a distance the lightest way into Peru - identity, a clean record and, at the permanent stage, proof of lawful means. Two years of temporary residence come first, and the application for the indefinite stage has to be made in the ninety days before it expires. See the origin-specific entries below for who qualifies.

Two consecutive years of legal residence is the shortest naturalisation clock of the four countries covered here, and Peru pairs it with an examination and a money test: gross annual income of at least ten tax units, currently 55,000 soles. The awkward part is procedural. Peru's competition authority has repeatedly declared some of Migraciones' requirements illegal barriers, and a court has suspended those rulings - so what you must actually file has changed twice in three years and is currently the longer list.

Until June 2025 a foreigner needed a carné de extranjería to open even a basic account, which tied banking to having completed a residence procedure. The banking regulator changed that: since 16 June 2025 an identity card, a passport or any document legally recognised for identifying foreigners is accepted for a basic account or a simplified electronic-money account. A basic account is a restricted product with daily and monthly caps on deposits and withdrawals - the gate has moved, not disappeared.

Peru exchanges a foreign licence for a Peruvian one rather than recognising it indefinitely, and the exchange is not a formality: a medical and psychological assessment and a written rules test are both part of it. Three nationalities are excused the written test - Spain, Korea and Chile, on reciprocal recognition agreements. Your foreign licence must still be valid on the day you apply, which catches people who let it lapse while abroad.

Peru does not let household goods in free. Menaje de casa carries a single flat tax of 12 per cent of the customs value, and the benefit is conditional on a fact about you rather than about the goods: thirteen consecutive months abroad before you arrive. Short trips back do not break that period, up to thirty days a year. The shipment has to land in a window running from one month before your arrival to six months after, and the benefit cannot be used twice in two years.

Peru has no residence category based on descent from a Peruvian. The eighteen residence categories listed in article 80 of the Reglamento do not include one, and the nearest thing, Familiar Residente, takes its scope from article 38 of Decreto Legislativo 1350, which defines a family nucleus rather than a line of descent. The asymmetry is the finding: the parent of a Peruvian qualifies as a first-degree ascendant, while the adult child of a Peruvian does not unless they are under 28, unmarried and still studying, and a grandchild never qualifies at all. Guides that place Peru alongside Argentina or Italy as a country reachable through a grandparent are describing a route that is not in either instrument.