Not a single pressure event against newcomers, 100 out of 100. Yet residence takes longer than three months against the one to three promised, and agency processing collapses to 45.
On paper Paraguay is one of the cheapest and simplest entries in our sample: no income threshold, two years to permanent residency, no tie to an employer, and a spouse gets their own residency with the right to work at once. There are no mandatory integration courses or language tests for residency, and children attend state school free of charge. The 2022 reform made temporary residency a mandatory first step: only investors get permanent status straight away, since April 2026 through the Investor Pass from $70,000.
The weak spot is delivery. Since late 2025 a wave of applicants, staff shortages and new direct Interpol checks with the country of origin have stretched processing: a decision takes over three months and the ID card as long again. Applications are filed in person, in a walk-in queue in Asunción. The migration authority publishes no data on refusals or actual processing times.
We found no pressure on legal foreign residents: no revocations and no campaigns against newcomers, which the US State Department's 2024 report also confirms. There is one sign of strictness: on 8 April 2026 the migration authority reminded residents that residency is cancelled after unjustified absence of more than a year for temporary and more than three consecutive years for permanent status. It targets paper residents, not people who live in the country.
Losing your job does not touch your status: the law does not list it among grounds for cancellation, temporary residency runs its full term, and you may change employers freely. If you file a renewal or the switch to permanent status on time, you can stay and work until the decision.
Day to day the bottleneck is the ID card: without it you can hardly open a bank account or get a tax number, so newcomers live for months without local banking. Address registration is not a condition of status.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free tourist entry for up to 90 days; the visa waiver law runs until 13 August 2027. After that, the same residency procedure as for everyone.
Get residency under the Mercosur agreement on the basis of citizenship.
Visa-free tourist entry for up to 90 days under a 2019 law. Paraguay is not in the EU, so the EU's temporary protection does not apply; residency follows the general rules.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions on temporary residency. Visa-free tourist entry for up to 90 days under a 2014 law.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct restrictions on temporary residency. But a visa is needed even for tourist entry: there is no visa waiver agreement.
The place interval 8-16 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 Pressure on newcomers: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 45 against 48.7. Above the world average: 6 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 usual guide is 1-3 months, but in 2026 a decision takes longer than three, and the ID card another 3 months or more. From filing to card in hand usually takes 16-32 weeks.
Yes. Temporary residency is the same for employees and the self-employed, no job offer is needed and there is no fixed income threshold: proof of means is enough.
The temporary residency fee is 2,926,925 guaraní (≈$400) as of 1 October 2026. Apostilles, translations and certificates are extra; we have not verified the permanent residency fee.
Not for losing your job. It can be cancelled for false documents, breaking migration rules, or unjustified absence of more than a year (temporary) or three consecutive years (permanent).
Permanent residency after two years of temporary, since July 2026 with proof of real income. Citizenship 3 years after permanent; the Supreme Court checks real ties to the country and basic Spanish or Guaraní, and the law does not require giving up your passport.
The state is open: we found no pressure on legal residents, status does not depend on an employer, and families get full rights. The problems are slow bureaucracy and the long wait for the ID card, without which you cannot open an account.
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.