A new labour ministry visa is required for any change to the contract: pay, term, conditions or employer.
medium confidenceMorocco lets foreigners work with no salary threshold, but the door is opened by the employer, not the applicant: the employer must prove to the state that no suitable Moroccan is available. There are no shortage lists or recruitment programmes, and exemptions from the test are based on nationality and position, not on skills shortages.
The main pain is the tie to the contract. A new Labour Ministry visa is needed for any change to the contract: salary, term, conditions or employer. There is no grace period after losing a job: the card lasts until it expires, usually a year at most, but you cannot work without a newly approved contract. You can sort things out from inside the country if a new employer starts the procedure or you have another ground, such as study or family.
There are no deadlines the state is bound to meet, neither for the card nor for family reunification. Applications are in person only, at a prefecture or police station, with no national online booking, weeks of queues and no published refusal statistics. A foreign worker's spouse cannot work on family status: they need their own Labour Ministry visa on general terms.
Pressure in 2025-2026 targets irregular transit migrants: forced relocations from Casablanca on 12 September 2025 and raids in the east of the country. We found no evidence that legal foreign residents were affected over the past year, but a practice of detaining people by appearance without checking their status is documented. No retroactive revocations of issued cards are recorded, and a draft of a new foreigners law has never been tabled.
Day to day: proof of housing is required to apply; a convertible dirham account opens on a passport, and a full resident account with the card, but with several visits and currency controls. There are no integration courses or language tests for the card; Arabic matters only for citizenship.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free entry: the US is on the Moroccan Foreign Ministry's list. After that, the same labour market test route.
Exempt from the ANAPEC labour market test under bilateral agreements.
Family members of French citizens and young French professionals are exempt from the labour market test under a 2001 agreement.
Ukraine is not on the Moroccan Foreign Ministry's visa-free list, so you need a visa to enter. After that, the same procedure as for everyone.
Visa-free entry: Russia is on the Moroccan Foreign Ministry's list. When we checked, we found no residence routes closed by nationality; the labour market test route is the same.
Belarus is not on the Moroccan Foreign Ministry's visa-free list, so you need a visa to enter. When we checked, we found no residence routes closed by nationality.
The place interval 43-62 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.
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: 78 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 37 against 48.7. 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 law sets no deadline for the card. Only the Labour Ministry's contract approval is capped, at 10 days; people wait months for the card, living on a receipt for the filed application.
There is no visa for freelancers or remote workers. Self-employment works through your own company: managers and partners are exempt from the labour market test.
You need a new Labour Ministry visa, and the new employer goes through the labour market test again. A new visa is also needed for any change to your current contract: salary, term or conditions.
There is no grace period after losing a job: the card stays valid until it expires, but you cannot work without a new contract. We found no retroactive revocations of cards already issued.
A 10-year resident card may be issued after 4 years of lawful residence, but it is not guaranteed. Citizenship after 5 years, without giving up your previous one, by decree and at the state's discretion; adequate Arabic is required.
The state is neutral towards legal workers: we found no pressure on them in the past year and no retroactive rule changes. But entry and job changes depend on the labour market test, agencies have no binding deadlines, and a spouse needs their own work visa.
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.