Most articles about the Friendly Nations Visa get the structure wrong in the first paragraph. They present it as a visa for citizens of 50 countries, then list the countries, then stop.
That describes the first gate, and there are two.
Two Gates, Not One
Gate one is your passport. Executive Decree 226 of 20 July 2021 lists exactly 50 countries. If yours is not among them, this category is closed to you regardless of your money, and the other Panamanian routes carry no nationality test at all.
Gate two is economic capacity, and it is where most applications turn. An eligible passport gets you eligible to apply. It doesn't get you residency.
People miss this because the country list is easy to write about and the second gate isn't.
The Three Ways to Meet the Second Gate
Decree 226 gives three options, and the applicant satisfies one of them:
Real estate. Property in Panama worth at least $200,000, free of liens. It may be held through a legal entity or a private interest foundation where the applicant is the final beneficiary.
A fixed-term deposit. At least $200,000 in a general-license Panamanian bank, free of liens, for a minimum three-year term.
An employment relationship with a Panamanian company.
The first two ask for capital. The third asks for something else, and that is the whole reason it exists as an option and the whole reason it gets misdescribed.
What the Employment Tie Requires
Here is the framing our Panamanian counsel uses, and it is worth reading twice because it is more precise than what you will find elsewhere.
The category contemplates that the applicant demonstrate an economic tie to Panama through an employment relationship with a Panamanian company. For that tie to be valid, it has to meet the requirements of the applicable immigration and labor legislation, and it has to be supported by the corresponding documentation before the immigration service at the time of application.
That isn't a formality, and counsel is direct about saying so. Each file is structured so that it complies with the legal requirements and can be substantiated before the competent authorities. It is legal work, done individually, not a product with a template.
What goes in the file. The company's aviso de operaciones, the employment contract, a work letter, and a Public Registry certification for the company. Those go in alongside the personal documents every applicant files on this route: passport, a second home-country identity document, three photographs, an apostilled criminal record, and a marriage certificate where a spouse is included.
One structural point that saves money. The economic tie is the principal applicant's requirement. A dependent spouse rides on it and does not need a second one. So a couple engages this once, not twice.
Social Security and the Work Permit
This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is where the timeline surprises people.
Residency and the right to work are two separate applications in Panama, made to two different authorities. The immigration file goes to the immigration service. The work permit goes to the labor ministry.
Residency and the right to work are two separate authorizations in Panama, granted by two different authorities. Residency comes from the immigration service, and a work permit from the labor ministry, on its own timeline and with its own renewal rules.
The question people ask is whether the second one is compulsory here. Our Panamanian counsel's written answer, on the structure his firm uses, is that during the two provisional years the client doesn't need to register with social security and doesn't need a labor ministry work permit, because those requirements do not form part of the process in this modality.
That is a narrower statement than it looks, and the conditional inside it is doing real work. It holds provided the residency is maintained under that structure. It's his answer for how his firm files, not a general rule of Panamanian law, and it isn't transferable to a different arrangement put together by someone else.
It's also the reason the structure has to be right at the start rather than fixed later, which is the next section.
The Two Years Are the Product
The filing is the easy part. What decides whether you convert to permanent residence is what happens across the two years in between.
The relationship has to stay live. Counsel is explicit that the tie must be maintained through the whole provisional period and up to the permanent application, not merely at the moment of filing. The immigration service re-verifies at conversion that the requirements supporting the original grant are still met.
If the company falls out of compliance, meaning no current aviso de operaciones, an inactive entity, registry problems, the fix is to substitute another company before applying for permanent residence. Done in time, that normally preserves the elapsed period. Left too late, it doesn't.
Who pays for the company. Corporate maintenance costs, the annual franchise tax, the resident agent, the corporate obligations, fall on the entity that owns the company rather than on the applicant, unless something else is expressly agreed. Get that in writing at the start, because it's the item most likely to be assumed rather than stated.
And once permanent residence is granted, the employment relationship has served its purpose. It was the economic tie that supported the application, and the requirement was that it be maintained up to the conversion, not indefinitely afterwards.
Trips and Cards
Phase one is one trip. You travel to file. Once the two-year provisional residence is approved, counsel confirms the card can be collected by the lawyer under a power of attorney, so you don't have to return to Panama purely to collect it. Where the original passport has to be presented for stamping, it can be couriered under the immigration service's instructions with proper security.
There's no cédula in phase one. The cédula is issued to permanent residents. On this route that means it arrives in phase two, not before, and anyone telling you otherwise has confused this category with Pensionado.
Phase two is when counsel recommends travelling. At the two-year mark the permanent residency process is completed and, once the permanent card is issued, the cédula can be requested from the Electoral Tribunal.
Who This Suits
It suits you if you hold one of the 50 passports, you intend to have real economic life in Panama, and you want someone holding the file across the two years rather than filing and moving on.
It doesn't suit you if what you want is a card to hold from abroad with no Panamanian footprint. The two-year re-verification is real. If that is what you are after, the deposit route at $200,000 asks less of you over time, and the categories with no nationality test may suit you better still.
And if your passport is not on the list, this whole conversation is moot and there are four other routes open to you regardless of nationality.
What Happens Next
We don't quote this route from a page. The employment tie is structured against your circumstances, and what it involves depends on facts we don't have yet.
What we will do on a call is check gate one in a minute, walk you through what gate two would look like in your case, and tell you plainly if one of the other routes fits you better. Several of them are cheaper and several ask less of you afterwards.
Primary sources
Last updated: August 2026.
Plan B Expat provides consulting and coordination, not legal or tax advice. Always take counsel from the licensed attorneys, accountants and tax specialists in our vetted network.
Michael L.
Canadian founder of Plan B Expat. Permanent resident of both Panama and Paraguay. MBA in International Business, trilingual (English, French, Spanish), and two decades of real estate brokerage experience in Quebec and Ontario. Writes from direct experience navigating the immigration, banking, and relocation systems of both countries.
