For obvious reasons, I was looking at the ten nations at the top of the Freedom House Freedom in the World ranking to see if there’s a retirement visa available. (I’m almost retired, so I’m not looking at moving to another country to work.)
- Finland doesn’t have a passive income visa.
- New Zealand does have a residency by investment visa, but the minimum investment is NZD$10 million. That’s a bit high for me.
- Norway has an Elective Residency Visa with a minimum passive income of €32,000. It appears that you can apply for citizenship with that visa, but unless you’re old like me, you need to know the language. Norway is cold and expensive, so that might be a minus.
- Sweden does not have a passive income visa, but passive income might, in some cases, be used to fulfill their maintenance requirement. I couldn’t find specific maintenance requirements.
- Canada doesn’t have a residency by investment option, but Quebec has an investor visa program with a minimum investment of $1.2 million. A bit pricy for me
- Denmark does not have a passive income visa program.
- Ireland has an independent means visa if you can demonstrate income of €50,000 per person.
- Luxemburg has a passive income visa which requires income of €27,000. After twenty years you can apply for citizenship, although there are cases in which it can be done in five. One requirement for citizenship is learning the language.
- Netherlands doesn’t have a passive income visa, although it appears that if you hold a long term residence visa from some other EU country you may be able to gain permanent residency in Netherlands.
- San Marino doesn’t have a passive income visa.
If I limited my search to the ten most free countries according to Freedom House, the only realistic option would be Norway (score 99) if my ultimate objective included citizenship. If I look a little further down the list to number fourteen, Portugal offers a passive income visa with a minimum income of €870 / month and a pathway to citizenship. With a freedom score of 96, that’s not a bad option. In comparison, the United States has a score of 84 when it was calculated prior to the Trump Administration taking power.
A couple caveats. First, I’m specifically looking at countries for retirees. If you are younger and skilled, you may find that many of these countries will work fine for you. (Expect to learn the local language.) Second, this was a relatively quick look at each country’s entry requirements. It is possible that there are edge cases I missed. Third, laws change all the time. Always dig deeper before committing to a course of action.
But hopefully you’ll find this information useful.
