Residence Policy Index · Issue No 1 · August 2026

Egypt

A red flag for status security, 19 points, against the background of a raid campaign running since the end of 2025.

red flagmedium confidence
96place of 97
38out of 100
DLeague
95-96place interval
Place among 97

Egypt on the common scale

383050658090
Each tick is a country, all 97 on one scale. The bands are leagues, the bold tick is Egypt

The place interval 95-96 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.

League DYou are a guest herebelow 50 pointsThe state is not building you a future and, to its credit, usually does not hide it. You can come and work; you cannot count on permanent status, full family rights or protection when you lose your job.

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.

Medium confidenceSome scores rest on second-class sources. The score and the place stand, but read them with that caveat.

What the score is made of

Seven categories

Agency processing37
Pressure on newcomers25
Status security19
Access to entry49
Path to citizenship27
Family rights55
Settling in62

The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries

The strongest category here is Settling in: 62 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 69.5. The weakest is Status security: 19 against 57.9. Above the world average: 0 out of 7.

The close-up

What sits behind the score of Egypt

Since the end of 2025 a campaign has been running in the country: plain-clothes raids on streets and workplaces targeting Syrians, Sudanese, South Sudanese and people from countries south of the Sahara. The UN refugee agency estimates at least 3,000 arrests in two months. This is not a story about people without papers: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented the expulsion of people whose documents were valid.

A work permit is issued for a named employer and only if no suitable Egyptian was found, and within a quota; changing employer means the whole process again. Permanent status does not exist; the most on offer is a five-year renewable card for $200,000 invested in property. A spouse has no right to work, neither on arrival nor after any period.

UpsideThere is no income threshold on any route: you get in either with capital or through an employer.

Where the index stops answering

This score was not calculated about you

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.

Nearby in the table

Neighbours by place

How this is calculated

Method and sources

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.

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.