The work permit belongs to the employer, not the worker: when the contract is terminated it is annulled, and the grounds for being in the country disappear.
Entering Kazakhstan for work is simple: no salary threshold, the family comes in on the same work visa at the same time and with no income test, and registered foreign children attend state schools. But the state protects its labour market: foreign labour quotas are small, and 70% of a company's managers and 90% of its specialists must be Kazakhstani.
The main weakness is how secure your status is. The work permit belongs to the employer: when the job ends it is revoked, the employer must report this within 2 working days, and the residence permit, issued for the term of the work permit, falls with it. The rules give no time to find a new job, and the police set the deadline to leave. Changing employer means the full process again: quota, vacancy posting, a new permit. A spouse gets no right to work, and an employer must go through the same procedure for them.
Since 13 February 2026 the road to permanent residence runs through a pilot: a mandatory year in a resettlement region, the KAZTEST exam at A1 with a 70% pass mark in each part, a points score of at least 600 and a balance of 1,320 MCI. Holders of 51 in-demand professions (IT, engineers, some medical specialties) are exempt from the language test. In April 2026 the Labour Ministry clarified that residence requires elementary Kazakh, not B2.
Pressure on residents is targeted: in 2026 checks that people actually live at their registered address were tightened, with fines of 10-30 MCI and expulsion for a repeat offence. The host registers you within 3 days through eGov. Banks bring friction: since 19 January 2025 cards for non-residents are issued for one year at most, the tax number (IIN) is issued only in person, and some banks paused cards for non-residents; with a residence permit there are no problems. The state does not publish refusal statistics.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free for up to 30 days per visit and no more than 90 days in six months; you may not work visa-free. Work follows the same employer route.
Kyrgyzstan and Armenia are in the Eurasian Economic Union, so their citizens have the same work rights as described below for that bloc; Kyrgyz citizens can also acquire citizenship in a simplified way. Ethnic Kazakhs (kandas) get a separate status with easier access to permanent residence and citizenship.
Visa-free for up to 90 days within 180 of first entry. For work you need a work visa and an employer permit, like everyone else.
As Eurasian Economic Union citizens they work without a foreign labour permit and outside quotas, live up to 90 days without registration, and have diplomas recognised without nostrification, except in teaching, law, medicine and pharmacy. A 1999 agreement gives them simplified access to citizenship. The 2026 residence pilot gives them no exemptions: the standard procedure applies.
The place interval 45-62 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.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Access to entry: 80 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.7. The weakest is Status security: 25 against 57.9. Above the world average: 4 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 permit to hire foreign labour takes 19 working days, but the vacancy must first be posted on enbek.kz for 15 calendar days. The work visa takes 5 working days (up to 30 with extra checks); there are no official statistics on real timelines.
Not through the usual route: the employer files the permit. The self-employed are left with the Neo Nomad visa with $3,000 a month of foreign income (no work in Kazakhstan on it) or business immigration.
865 tenge for the residence card and 17,300 tenge for permanent residence; the employer pays the work permit fee. The real burden is not the fees but the condition for permanent residence: a balance of 5,709,000 tenge confirmed every year for five years.
Yes, easily: when you leave your job the work permit is revoked, the residence permit falls with it, and there is no time to find new work. Not living at your registered address brings a fine, and a repeat brings expulsion.
Under the 2026 pilot, permanent residence comes after a year living in one of seven resettlement regions, with a 45-day decision. Citizenship 5 years after permanent residence, with tests in elementary Kazakh, the constitution and history; dual citizenship is not allowed.
Entry is open and cheap, but the state protects its labour market and your status depends on your employer. The road to permanent residence is short, but it comes with a mandatory year in a region and a financial threshold.
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.