Family rights are 100 out of 100. But there is no window to find new work: when the contract ends your stay stops being lawful, and you have thirty days to report it.
On paper Peru is easy and cheap to enter: no income threshold for workers, token fees, permanent residence after three years and no language test for a residence permit. Its strongest side is family rights: a resident's spouse gets a status that by itself allows both employment and self-employment, there is no income threshold for reunification, the rule is 30 working days, and children go to school whatever their status.
The weak spot is how secure the work status is. It is tied to a contract approved by the Labour Ministry: you must report its end to Migraciones within 30 days, the law gives no separate period to find a new job, and you may not work until a new contract is approved. You can change employer from inside the country through the online agency, which takes 30-45 working days. Employers face caps on foreign hires: no more than 20% of staff and 30% of the payroll. Migraciones does not publish refusal statistics.
Pressure on foreigners as a group is visible. Law 32192 of 15 December 2024 lets police check a foreigner's identity without a warrant, including by biometrics, and added a new ground for expulsion for failing to identify yourself. In 2025 there were 7,161 operations checking more than 114,000 foreigners; on 17 January 2026 a single raid in Lima checked over 600 people, and a fast-track procedure allows expulsion within 24 hours. We found no campaign against legal statuses as such, but a resident caught without the ID card faces the same checks.
Rules change without transitional provisions. Besides the identity-check law, Law 32421 was passed in August 2025: the path to citizenship will grow from 2 to 5 years of continuous residence with income of at least 10 UIT a year. It takes effect the day after its regulation is published; the deadline for that has passed and there was still no regulation in August 2026, so the rule could change any month.
In daily life everything hinges on the foreigner ID card: without it banks offer a limited set of products and some refuse outright. There is no address registration tied to status, and recognising a degree through SUNEDU takes months.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
No visa for tourism for up to 90 days; a business trip needs a visa. After that, the same residency procedure as for everyone.
Under Andean Community Decision 545 they register in the national register of Andean migrant workers and work without the general procedure. Mercosur nationals are covered by the Mercosur residence agreement, in which Peru takes part as an associate member.
No visa for tourism for up to 90 days within 180; the passport must be valid for at least six months from entry. A business trip needs a visa. Peru is not in the EU, so EU temporary protection does not apply; residency is on the general terms.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions on the work status. Peru's Foreign Ministry table lists no visa for tourism, up to 90 days within 180; a business trip needs a visa.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions. Peru's Foreign Ministry table lists no visa for tourism; a business trip needs a visa.
The place interval 19-33 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 Family rights: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 72.2. The weakest is Status security: 50 against 57.9. Above the world average: 5 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 rule for a change of immigration status is 30 working days. In practice it takes 15-25 working days with a complete file and 30-45 if issues are raised; the ID card is issued 72 hours after approval, but biometrics appointments can be weeks away.
Yes, through the independent contractor status. The rentista status needs a pension or steady passive income of $1,000 a month and bans work in Peru, and the digital nomad visa had still not launched by August 2026.
S/24 for the status change, S/24 for the ID card and S/20.20 per renewal. About $19 per adult over five years and about $57 for a family of three, the lowest state fees in our sample.
The work status rests on your contract: you must report its end to Migraciones within 30 days, and the law gives no period to find a new job. Residence status lapses automatically after more than 183 days in a row abroad within a year, or more than a year in a row within two years, without permission.
Permanent residence after 3 years of legal residence, with no criminal record or Interpol entries. Citizenship currently after 2 years of continuous residence plus an oral and written exam in Spanish, dual citizenship allowed; the new 5-year law is waiting for its regulation.
Entry is easy and cheap and family rights are complete. But the state actively checks foreigners on the street, can expel within 24 hours, and rules on citizenship and checks change without transitional provisions. Carry your ID card at all times.
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.