Overview of new immigration law
(primapanama.blogs.com) Eric Jackson did a brief write up on the immigration law and its components that are important to those considering living here. I post it with permission. You can go to Eric's Panama News for a lot of other interesting information about Panama. The one thing he neglected to put in this piece is that if you want to stay in Panama and spend your money past the regular 30 days it will cost you a cool $250 extra.
On August 8, many months after a new immigration law was passed by way of a February 22 decree, another decree set forth the regulations that are the heart of that law. As early as March draft versions of the decree were circulated among lawyers and passed on by them to other interested parties, and it appears that some of the concerns raised were addressed.
Foreigners who already have their legal residency here are "grandfathered in," but in many respects the requirements to live here have become more expensive.
Whereas it used to be that one could become a pensionado by proving an pension income of $500 per month (or $750 for a couple), now that has gone up to $1000. However, a retiree who owns property worth at least $100,000 in Panama only has to prove a pension of $750 per month. A person who comes in as a pensionado with dependents will have to pay $250 for each dependent.
One who owns sufficient assets but has an insufficient pension may get residency by depositing enough money in the Banco Nacional de Panama or Caja de Ahorros to yield at least $2000 per month in interest.
In general residency visas for investors require higher investments than before. For example, it will now require an investment of $60,000 to get a visa as an agricultural or reforestation investor, rather than the previous $40,000.
The costs of visas, permits and fees for filing various documents have been raised.
The argument for making tourist visas extendable to six months as they used to be fell on deaf ears. Tourist visas are for a maximum of 90 days, but there appears to be no ban on the common practice of leaving the country for a few days and coming back to get another three-month tourist visa. There is the possibility of a 60-day extension of a tourist visa while applying to get another immigration status, this being a concession to the pleas of real estate interests who argued that 90 days was not enough time for somebody to come here, find and buy a home and go through the motions of becoming a resident.
Pleas for provisions to allow immigration to unify families elicited a limited response. As before, spouses get in, as can unmarried dependent children under 25 years of age on a temporary basis. Citizens and legal residents will be allowed to bring their parents in, provided that they can prove that they can support them. There will also be a possibility of non-extendable 9-month visas for other relatives with two degrees of consanguinity, but such visas don't allow such relatives to legally work here.
Every foreigner will have to register with a central registry and update his or her registration by informing Migracion of any change in address, any alteration in economic status that may affect eligibility for a particular sort of visa and any change in marital status. Failure to register or repeated failure to properly update will be grounds to have a visa revoked.
All foreigners will be issued an identity card. The process of getting these was to have begun August 26, but the government didn't make adequate plans to implement that, so look for further notice about when, where and how to get these ID cards.
People who get residency visas after August 26 will have their status reviewed after two years.
Historically Migracion has been one of the most corrupt parts of the Panamanian government. There is no particular reason to believe that this new law or these new regulations will do anything to change that. One change that has been recently implemented (not as part of the law or regulations) reduces transparency: whereas one could check any foreigner's residency status on the Migracion website, now these records are unavailable to the public.
