Lawyers describe permanent status as a category unavailable in practice, though formally it exists. The rules give no grace period after losing a job either.
red flagmedium confidenceLegal foreign residents in Fiji face no pressure. Freedom House upgraded the country to "Free" in 2026, the US State Department records no actions against legal foreigners, and we found no retroactive revocations. There is no mandatory address registration and no integration requirement, and English is enough for citizenship.
The problem lies elsewhere: the status depends almost entirely on the employer. A permit is issued for a specific job with a specific employer, the rules give no grace period after a contract ends, and changing employer means a new permit under the full procedure, proving again that no Fijian candidates are available. The rules do not say what happens to your status while a renewal is pending.
The reforms of 28 May 2026 made settling harder. The naturalisation term rose from 5 to 8 of the last 10 years with no transition period, from 2035 citizenship will also require permanent residence, and lawyers call permanent residence itself a category unavailable in practice. Naturalisation applications have been suspended since October 2025. The same package widened the powers of immigration officers: searches without a warrant and access to devices and medical data. How this will be used is not yet clear.
Delivery is slow. The standard is 21 working days, but applications are processed by hand; in July 2026 local press reported $30 million construction projects stalled because imported workers had waited months for permits. The state does not publish refusal statistics.
Families get a residence permit without the right to work: a spouse needs their own permit on general terms. There is no numeric income threshold for families, and the standard is again 21 working days. Banks open accounts for permit holders, but Reserve Bank currency controls apply. Watch out for clone sites of the ministry: the only official address is immigration.gov.fj.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
The US is on the official list of countries whose citizens need no visa. After that, the same employer route as for everyone.
Ukraine is on the official list of countries whose citizens need no visa. After that, the same employer route as for everyone.
Russia is on the official list of countries whose citizens need no visa. When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no nationality restrictions in the list of permits.
Belarus is not on the official visa-exempt list, so a visa has to be arranged in advance. We found no nationality restrictions in the list of permits.
The place interval 74-79 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.
Medium confidenceSome scores rest on second-class sources. The score and the place stand, but read them with that caveat.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Pressure on newcomers: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.2. The weakest is Status security: 17 against 57.9. Above the world average: 3 out of 7.
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.
The official standard is 21 working days. In practice plan for 1-2 months, and in 2026 local press reported waits of several months.
Hardly: there is no visa for self-employed or remote workers. What remains is investment from FJD 300,000 or, from age 45, residence on assured income with a F$100,000 deposit and no right to work.
A long-term work permit costs FJD 664.50 (application and issue) and runs up to 3 years. The family permit costs FJD 650.05 per person.
Yes. The permit is tied to the job and the employer, there is no grace period after a contract ends, and changing employer needs a new permit under the full procedure.
Permanent residence exists formally but is unavailable in practice. Since May 2026 citizenship takes 8 of the last 10 years, with dual nationality allowed, but applications have been suspended since October 2025.
Legal residents face no pressure, and the country is rated free. But entry is gated by a labour market test, the status hangs on one employer, and the 2026 reform pushed citizenship further away.
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.