Panama set to introduce new immigration law
sduford on Jul 03 2008 at 12:41 pm | Filed under: Panama
If you are planning to get a visa for residency in Panama, you may want to start the proceedings real soon. A new draft law is being circulated for comments and the plan is to make it official on August 26th, 2008. There are several changes that will make it more difficult, and more expansive for foreigners to gain residency, Here are some of the main points:
- The Immigration Consultive Commission will be authorized to impose nationality quotas for residency,
- Tourists deemed “persona non grata” may be denied entry on a non-discriminatory basis,
- Tourists may remain in the country for 90 days, renewable for 60 days when justified,
- Monthly pension revenue requirements to apply for a Pensionada visa is doubling to $1000
- Foreign workers must have a salary between US$1,000 and US$1,500 monthly to apply for
residency and work permit, up from US$500,
- Investor visas may only be requested by one applicant per company,
- Forestry visa minimum investment is doubled to US$80,000,
- Small-business investor visa is eliminated,
- Macro-business investor visa minimum investment is doubled to US$200,000,
- Self-solvency investor visa minimum investment is increased to US$350,000 left in deposit for 4 years.
- Application fees will double
So hurry up, get down there, and apply for your visa.
what a shame that this article wasn’t published all over the internet. I looked all over Google to see what changes were coming, and I could not find anything anywhere on the changes to the Pensionado Visa. Other changes were well covered, but not the pension visa.
I was given 8 days notice that the laws were changing, and the amounts required more than doubling! My friends and I were all desperately trying to get our documents in order, but it was impossible to get it done in 9 days!!
We all tried so hard, it was going on for months and months, then suddenly a deadline of a few days.
Our Lawyers didn’t know anything about the Pension Visa changing, how did the writer of this article know????
I would love to know the answer!
Lizanne
Hi Lizanne, sorry to hear about your troubles. If your lawyer didn’t know about this than I’d say you need to find another lawyer. I have personally known about this for at least 4 months and the proposed changes were circulated widely by the government for comments about 3 months ago.