90 out of 100 for settling in and 8 out of 100 for status security. The absence of taxes does not cure that.
red flagFor anyone moving here to work, the Bahamas is one of the most fragile countries in our sample. The labour market is closed by a citizens-first policy: a permit is issued only if the employer proves no Bahamian can fill the job. The permit is personal and tied to a specific employer and position; changing jobs means starting over, with a new certificate and a new newspaper advert. Approval, refusal and renewal of any status are at the absolute discretion of the Board of Immigration, there is no publicly described appeal procedure, and the state publishes no refusal statistics.
Losing your job means losing your status almost immediately. The employer must notify the Department of Immigration within seven days, after which the permit is deemed cancelled and you must leave unless an extension or change of status is approved. The law gives no time to find a new employer. Official materials say nothing about your status while a renewal is pending.
The state actively removes people who break the rules: according to the Prime Minister's office, there have been more than 13,000 repatriations since 2022, and deportation notices appear weekly. This mostly concerns people without status, and we found no retroactive revocation of valid permits. A separate nationality-based measure applies to citizens of one neighbouring country (see the passport section).
Family life is expensive and comes without earning rights: the spouse and each child file separate applications with their own fee, medical certificate and police certificate, every year. A spouse cannot work except through the same general work permit procedure. A child needs their own residence permit to attend state school. Banks follow the strict rules of an offshore centre: source-of-funds checks, typical minimum deposits from $10,000 to $250,000, and a Permit to Reside holder counts as a non-resident for exchange control. In return there is no income tax, no address registration and no integration exam, and the country is English-speaking.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
No visa as a bona fide visitor for up to eight months, but you may not work in that status. Working requires the same annual permit procedure.
Under a policy announced by the Department of Immigration, new work permit applications from Haitian citizens are not processed at all, and residence permit applications are considered only in the most exceptional circumstances. We found no sign of it being lifted as of 8 August 2026.
A visa is required to enter: Ukraine is on the Bahamas Foreign Ministry's list of countries whose citizens need one.
No visa needed to enter: Russia is on the Bahamas Foreign Ministry's visa-free list. Visitors may not work; to live here, the same employer or residence permit route as everyone else.
A visa is required to enter: Belarus is on the Bahamas Foreign Ministry's list of countries whose citizens need one.
The place interval 85-94 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Red flagOne of the three core categories, how the agencies work, pressure on newcomers or the reliability of status, has fallen below the critical mark. The score is capped: a disaster in the core is not cured by comforts at the edges.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Settling in: 90 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 69.5. The weakest is Status security: 8 against 57.9. Above the world average: 1 out of 7.
The red flag is for status security, 8 points. The work permit is personal and annual, and it is issued after the employer has advertised the vacancy in a newspaper for three days running. The tie to the employer scores zero, the grace period zero.
Separately, about a programme relocation guides still advertise: the BEATS visa for remote work has not existed since February 2022. It is not in the immigration department's list of categories, nor in the official fee schedule, and there is no application portal for it.
Permanent status takes 20 years of continuous legal residence, citizenship around 16 years, and the decision is theirs to make. There is no income tax, no diploma is needed at all, and there are no integration exams. Daily life is beautifully arranged; no future is provided for.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
No deadline is set by law: the department suggests checking on your status 8-12 weeks after filing. In practice about 56-84 days; expedited processing for $400 takes about 14 days.
You can live here but not work. The Annual Residence Permit costs B$3,000 a year and gives no right to work; the BEATS digital nomad visa has been suspended since February 2022.
A work permit costs $500 to $16,275 a year by position, plus a 5% levy and a $200 processing fee. A residence permit is B$3,000 a year plus B$300 per dependant.
Yes, and quickly. On dismissal the employer must report it within seven days, after which the permit is cancelled and you must leave unless a change of status is approved. There is no time to find a new job.
There is no ordinary path to permanent residence: it takes $1,000,000 of investment or 20 years of legal status. Citizenship after 10 years of permanent residence plus 6 years before it, about 16 years; dual citizenship is not recognised.
Living here without working is easier than working: no taxes and no integration requirements. A working foreigner depends entirely on the employer and the Board's discretion, and losing the job almost immediately means losing the status.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.