The rules contain no mechanism for changing employer: when a contract ends the status is not transferred, it is obtained again from scratch.
medium confidenceIndonesia is cheap to enter: there is no salary threshold, and the only financial condition for the visa is a three-month bank statement of $2,000, which may be in a guarantor's name. The family applies in parallel with the worker, with no income test and no waiting period. There are no mandatory language or integration requirements for residence.
Inside, the country is tough. The labour market is closed by lists: 10 HR positions are barred to foreigners, and the employer must assign an Indonesian understudy and train them. Only the sponsoring company can apply; the individual has no access to the procedure. A worker's spouse gets no right to work and must go through the whole process to take a job. The state does not publish refusal statistics.
Your status sits entirely with your employer. When you leave a job, the company cancels the KITAS and arranges an Exit Permit Only, after which you have 3-7 days to leave, and the worker is not told in advance that cancellation has started. Changing employer means the full process from scratch. Law 63/2024 of 17 October 2024 allows foreigners to be held in immigration detention for up to 10 years and barred from entry for up to 10 years with extensions; an objection does not suspend enforcement.
The high-profile raids on Bali mostly target people working on visit visas or overstaying. But in 2024-2025 dozens of valid investor KITAS were revoked on Bali in a campaign against "fake investors". Since 29 May 2025 every renewal requires an in-person visit with a photo and interview. Day to day, a bank account is possible with a KITAS but comes with friction; a domicile certificate (SKTT) and an address report to immigration are mandatory. Foreign children attend state school only with a separate study permit and after six months of language preparation.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
The US is on the official visa-on-arrival list for short trips. For living and working, the standard work KITAS route.
They fall under the calling visa regime: any visa, work and family visas included, needs separate inter-agency clearance on top of the usual procedure.
Ukraine is on the official visa-on-arrival list for short trips. For living and working, the standard work KITAS route.
Both countries are on the official visa-on-arrival list for short trips. We found no specific nationality restrictions on the work KITAS: the standard procedure applies.
The place interval 67-82 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.
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 Path to citizenship: 77 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 57.1. The weakest is Status security: 31 against 57.9. Above the world average: 2 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.
On paper the manpower plan is approved in 2 working days and the visa issued in 5. In practice the whole route, with the Manpower Ministry notification and biometrics after arrival, takes 4-8 weeks, sometimes 8-12.
On an ordinary income, practically not. The remote worker visa needs $60,000 a year and an employment contract with a foreign company, and your own foreign-owned company needs at least 10 billion rupiah.
The main payment is the $100 monthly levy per foreign role, formally paid by the employer. Add $150 for the visa and 1 million rupiah a year for the re-entry permit per family member, plus ITAS and renewal fees.
Yes. When you leave a job the KITAS is cancelled and you have 3-7 days to leave; there is no grace period to find work. Dozens of valid investor KITAS were revoked on Bali in 2024-2025.
A KITAP is possible after 3 years of continuous residence on a work ITAS. Citizenship after 5 consecutive or 10 total years, with Indonesian, acceptance of the state's founding principles and giving up your previous citizenship; the president decides.
Entry is cheap and families move easily, but the labour market is protected and your status depends on your employer. Mistakes are costly: a few days to leave, detention and entry bans of up to 10 years.
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.