Residency routes, compared as families

Every destination sells its residency routes under local names — pensionado, rentista, D7, temporary resident — but underneath, the same handful of route families appear almost everywhere. This framework names those families, states what each generally requires, and shows where the official rules for each country actually live. It is a framework, not legal advice: the route that fits you is decided by the destination’s migration authority, on its current text — which is why each of our country pages works from that text directly.

Family 1: Pension and passive income

The retiree door. You prove a stable, recurring income you do not work for locally — a pension, Social Security, an annuity, investment income — above a statutory floor, and the country grants renewable residence, usually without local work rights. Floors vary enormously and are the first number to verify: Costa Rica’s pensionado category is written at US$1,000/month of lifetime pension in Ley 8764 (Art. 81); Portugal’s D7 tests passive income from €920/month for the first adult in 2026, with set add-ons for a spouse (€460) and each child (€276); the Dominican Republic’s pensionado route (Ley 171-07) is built around a US$1,500/month pension plus US$250 per dependent — a figure our research carries with its sourcing labels printed, because it rests on secondary agreement rather than a captured primary text.

Family 2: Solvency-based temporary residence

Not pension-only, and not passive-only: you qualify by showing income or savings above a higher line. Mexico’s temporary-resident route is the clearest example in our files — about US$4,400–4,630/month in income (pension or employment income in the federal guideline wording) or roughly US$74,000–78,000 in savings held for a year, with consulates applying the test differently. Four years of temporary residence then converts to permanent with no fresh income test. The lesson generalises: ask not only “what is the floor?” but “what does this status become in year four?”

Family 3: Work — local employer vs. your own laptop

Two different doors that marketing routinely merges. Working for a local employer almost always runs on a job-offer track sponsored by that employer. Working remotely for a foreign employer is a separate category where it exists at all: Portugal’s D8 prices it at about €3,680/month in 2026 (four times the minimum wage), while Mexico’s federal guidelines contain no digital-nomad category — its solvency route is not a work permit. If a route’s page does not say which kind of work it covers, it has not answered the question.

Family 4: Family unity

Once one spouse qualifies, most systems price the family into the same file at lower marginal cost — set add-on amounts (Portugal’s D7 above), the same qualifying amount covering a spouse and children under 25 (Costa Rica, Ley 8764 Art. 82), or a much lower family-unity income figure after the first qualification (Mexico, about US$1,475/month on the 2026 formula, secondary-sourced in our files and labelled as such). Family rules are where consular practice diverges most from statute; confirm the couples’ treatment in writing at your consulate.

Family 5: Investment — open, changed, and easy to misread

Residence-by-investment still exists in places, but its terms move: Portugal’s programme remains open while its real-estate and capital-transfer routes were removed in October 2023, with qualifying funds reported at €500,000. Any investment-route summary older than the last reform is a historical document. Verify the current category list against the official programme material before relying on any figure.

Not a route: the long tourist stay

A visitor permit — Mexico’s up-to-180 days at the officer’s discretion, the Schengen 90-in-180-days rule, the Dominican Republic’s 30-day tourist card — is a visit, not a residence track. It generally carries no work rights and, in the ordinary case, cannot be converted into residence from inside the country; residence applications start at a consulate abroad. Our Dominican Republic guide walks the 30-day rule and what happens on day 31 in full.

The warning this framework exists for

Routes are repealed as well as created. Nicaragua’s pensionado law (Ley 694) was repealed in 2024; pensionados there now fit — if at all — inside temporary renewable residence under the reformed migration law, and the current thresholds could not be verified against an official post-2024 regulation, so our Nicaragua page prints that as a gap while English-language pages elsewhere still advertise the repealed package. The framework question is never only “which family?” — it is “which family, under the law as it stands this year, verified from the official text?”

Where the official rules live

• The statute and the migration authority — the law’s text and the agency that administers it (in Costa Rica, the Asamblea’s Ley 8764 and the DGME; in Mexico, the federal guidelines and the INM).
• The consulate that will take your file — consulates apply national tests with local practice; their checklist is an operative document, not a courtesy.
• Our country pages — each of the twenty works from those primary sources, dates its checks, and prints what it could not verify as a gap: start at the country grid, and use the free country-match quiz if the destination itself is still open.

More free guides

Free, in full, and held to the same standard as everything on this site:

• How we research
• Banking abroad & the FBAR: the two reports, plainly
• Verify the number before you build a life on it
• Mexico vs. Portugal: the honest comparison