How to get residency in Argentina

Argentina is growing as an investment and Plan B destination as it attempts to turn the page on decades of socialism and fraught economic policy under the new Milei administration. There are a handful of viable paths to obtaining residency in Argentina, which can lead to citizenship after a short period provided certain conditions are met and that you have the right partners assisting you through the bureaucratic tangles.

Video: How to get residency in Argentina in 2024

Why get residency in Argentina

• Live in an energy and agriculture independent and bountiful nation
• Enjoy a relaxed pace of life with lower crime and higher development than most Latin American countries
• Reside in a country that is undergoing potentially transformative economic reform, offering an opportunity to be a part of the story
• Apply for citizenship after 2 years living in the country as a genuine resident and enjoy visa-free travel to over 130 countries

Documents needed to apply for residency in Argentina

1. Proof of passive, pension or regular income
2. Birth and marriage certificates, if applicable
3. Criminal background check from your country
4. Proof of residential address in Argentina
5. Proof of funds entering Argentina (for rentista visa)
6. Passport photo and copies of passport, entry stamps
7. Proof of valid health insurance

How to apply for residency in Argentina

Argentina offers three categories of residency: permanent, temporary and transitory. Time spent in the country using any of these residency options allows you to apply for citizenship after two years provided other requirements are met. Get in touch with my immigration lawyer in Argentina.

How to apply for citizenship in Argentina

The law requires uninterrupted residency in Argentina, but there is some leniency as far as leaving the country for holidays. Nevertheless, you are expected to demonstrate a good faith effort to reside in Argentina by living a considerable majority of the year there (think 10+ months).

Once you apply there is a three-part process that begins with a formal review of your documents to verify that you meet the basic requirements.

In the following phases, the Argentine state will request information from various agencies such as the police and immigration to shed light on your activities and time in Argentina. This information will be reviewed by a judge who will greenlight or reject your application.

From the time of application to receiving the citizenship can be between 12-24 months, and you are expected to remain in Argentina while it is being processed. There will be at least four to five occasions where you will be expected to present yourself in court as part of your citizenship proceedings. So realistically you may have to spend up to four years in the country before receiving the passport.

Renouncing citizenship in Argentina

As a general rule, renouncing citizenship in Argentina is not possible. It is among the very few countries in the world where there is no legal mechanism for renunciation.

Transcript of “How to get Residency in Argentina”

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello, everyone. Ladislas Maurice from thewanderinginvestor.com. Today, I’m in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, with my immigration lawyer, Martin, and we’ll be discussing how to obtain residency in Argentina. Martin, how are you?

MARTIN: Hey, Ladislas. Thank you for having me. I’m all good and looking forward to sharing some information with everyone.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Fantastic. What are the different ways to obtain residency in Argentina? Because when you look online, there’s so much information on Argentina, so much of it is contradictory, it’s all over the show. So what’s really the case, how to obtain residency here?

MARTIN: Well, my first advice for everyone is to ignore everything that you’re reading online, you go to a trusted source. I mean, we’re going to be online, of course, but we are qualified to do so. Now, we have three types of residency. We have permanent residency, temporary residency, and transitory residency. That being said, if you are looking for citizenship down the road, it doesn’t matter which residency you choose, you just will need two years in a row to apply for citizenship, unless, of course, you have a child or an Argentinian spouse. But let’s just dive into each kind of residency and how we can break it down to make it easier for people, right?

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, perfect. We were talking a bit earlier, and you said there are four main ways to obtain residency here in Argentina.

MARTIN: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What’s the first one?

MARTIN: There are more than four, actually, but they are not really used. You can be a cleric, you can be a medical patient, but we are going to dive into the four main types. Yes, if there’s a specific case, of course, everyone’s free to ask. 

Permanent residency in Argentina

MARTIN: We have having a relative, like, you have an Argentinian child, you’re married to an Argentinian citizenship, maybe you’re married to an Argentinian permanent resident. If that’s the case, you can apply for permanent residency. The main thing here is to prepare properly every single document that you will need to show your bond, your family bond, to the Immigration Department. We are speaking maybe of a birth certificate or a marriage certificate from Argentina or from abroad.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so get married here to an Argentine or Argentine permanent resident, or have a kid here.

MARTIN: Maybe you can get married abroad, it also works, to an Argentine. If you live in the US, you meet the Argentine love of your life, you marry in New York, you bring the apostilled birth certificate and show it to the Immigration Department. Yes.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So can you then apply for citizenship from New York without living here, or do they want you to be living here?

MARTIN: One of the requirements for citizenship is to live here. Even if you’ve been married or have a child, you cannot apply for naturalization from abroad.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. Let’s say, I have a child here. After how long can I apply for citizenship?

MARTIN: You will need probably three to six months to get everything in order. We just need to remind everyone that requirements for citizenship are being free of criminal records, mostly, having the two years of residency, unless you have a kid or an Argentinian spouse, and having verifiable income. We usually take some time to prepare paperwork. It’s not just submitting application from scratch. It’s probably going to make the application slower, messier. We prefer to do it neatly.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s not an administrative process, right, you go through the court for citizenship?

MARTIN: Exactly. It’s important for people to know that we have two different branches in our immigration law. We have residency administered by the Immigration Department, which depends on the executive power, and we have citizenship, which comes directly from the Constitution and is handled by the federal court.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, cool. So having a kid or being married, after a few months, you can apply. We’ll go into the timelines a bit later.

MARTIN: Yeah.

Argentina passive income residency

LADISLAS MAURICE: Tell us about the next way to obtain residency here.

MARTIN: We just discussed permanent residency, and then we have the rentista residency. It roughly translates to a passive income holder. Careful with passive income. You cannot be a digital nomad working from home and apply for this. This is a common misconception. Now, the Argentine legislation considers passive income financial instruments, maybe a house, or stock, a portfolio. And there are more ways. And even the law allows for more creative ways of proving that you’re the owner of passive income. But you also need the actual benefit of the passive income.

If you, let’s just say, you have portfolio. You keep investing, investing, and you do not withdraw money from this portfolio, well, you will have to, and to transfer this money into Argentina to apply for a rentista, passive income holder residency.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And what’s the threshold?

MARTIN: Well, you need to prove $1,500 per month per person. And you have to transfer all this money into Argentina. Like, if you’re going to apply for one year, for example, you have to apply, times 12, $1,500 per month per person. So it’s, you know–

LADISLAS MAURICE: It can add up.

MARTIN: It can add up if we are speaking for a big family, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. So $1,500 per person, including children?

MARTIN: Yes, including children. We do not get discounts for children.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Can the parents also be included?

MARTIN: Well, in fact, the parents, we don’t have that many cases, it’s mostly being sought for kids, but we could try. It’s not against the law, definitely.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, cool. All right, interesting. Let’s go into the next one.

Argentina pensioner residency

MARTIN: Yeah, we have a residency, it’s very similar, but for pensionists. Instead of transferring and bringing all your money here before applying, you will show that you have, in a private or public fund, a monthly stable pension, monthly source of income that will be above $1,500 per month per person. It’s important to say that this amount is in our law, and it’s expressed in minimum salaries. It’s five minimum salaries per month per person. We live with the Argentine peso here, so the amount, $1,500, is an estimate. It can change, always taking into consideration the fluctuation of the exchange rate against the dollar.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, things change a lot in Argentina.

MARTIN: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. And the last one?

Argentina student residency

MARTIN: And then we have student residencies. We have two kinds of student residency. We have the transitory student residency or the temporary student residency. If you enroll in a university for a degree or masters, of course, you have to go to class more, right? But you will get a temporary residency with a DNI, an ID card. If you go to some Spanish school, an art school, something which is not under the scope of what we call official education, you will probably get a transitory residency. So you will not get an ID card, but you will have virtually all the same rights.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And you can still apply for citizenship?

MARTIN: You can still apply for citizenship, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Are you expected to actually attend classes?

MARTIN: You are expected to attend class.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Is it enforced?

MARTIN: In fact, this is enforced very easily because, you know, student visas are approved pretty fast in comparison to maybe rentista or pensionist, because these institutions work as agents of control of the Immigration Department. They will give you an enrollment certificate. It’s a digital enrollment certificate. Not all institutions can do it. They have to be previously registered within the scope of the Immigration Department. And you know, if you fail to attend class, they will report you to the Immigration Department. They have the obligation to do so. And the Immigration Department will probably just not renew your residency, and you need it to apply for citizenship down the road.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so if you’re a bit lost in life, you don’t know what you’re doing, you can just come here and study Spanish. And you were telling me about this really cool wine course as well?

MARTIN: Yeah. I mean, we are currently mapping the education system for cool courses for experts and nomads. We have tango, we have Spanish, we have wine, we have photography. And it’s all been designed for people to work first. So you can go at night or in the afternoon. It’s not every day.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So you could just come here and take one year of Spanish–

MARTIN: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: actually attend classes–

MARTIN: Yes, of course.

LADISLAS MAURICE: then one semester of wine, actually attend classes, then one semester of tango, and then–

MARTIN: Well, it’s not that easy. You cannot just take one semester of each thing. Every school will probably try to take you in for a full degree. We recommend taking one-year courses, at least, not six months things.

Applying for citizenship in Argentina

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] All right, cool. So for people who are looking for something new in life, this is an option. Okay, this is clear. Those are the four options with a clear path to citizenship. Now, what are the minimum physical presence requirements to be able to apply for citizenship? How long should you have actually stayed in Argentina?

MARTIN: Well, that’s an interesting question. Our citizenship law goes back to 1864. And we don’t have a 90-day rule like we have with the tourist visas and everything. The law requires for uninterrupted residency, but that’s a subjective approach. If you’re living in Argentina, you have the house, you have the dog, someone’s watering your plants and taking care of your goldfish, then you can leave for holidays and get citizenship anyway. That’s not a problem. And if you’re under a student visa, you’re probably going to comply with the holidays that the institutions give you, and you can maybe take a trip or two, but you have attendance quotas, you know.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s nine, ten months. I mean, it’s not fixed, but nine, ten months, so really living here.

MARTIN: Yeah, you have to live here. There’s a common misconception online, you can read that you can spend seven months here per year. That’s true, and you probably get money-based residencies do not impose a minimum time, but that’s just for residency. If you’re looking to get citizenship, you may have your rentista residency, the passive income one, renewed and renewed forever. You can even maybe apply for permanent, but when the time comes to apply for citizenship, Immigration Department will show the amount of time that you were actually living here, and you probably have a problem or a discussion with the judge. We do not advise them.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. Because we were discussing, essentially, there’s a very big difference between immigration, right, and residencies, and then the court process to obtain citizenship. The two are not very much linked, and the requirements for the two are often quite different.

MARTIN: Yes, indeed. The Immigration Department depends on the executive power. They will take care of the residency process. It’s an administrative process. It’s done online. It looks easier and faster. It actually isn’t. It’s definitely shorter, though. Now, when we’re talking about citizenship–

LADISLAS MAURICE: Nothing’s easy in Argentina.

MARTIN: No, no, definitely not. Now, when we’re talking about citizenship, we are looking at a federal court lawsuit. It’s not a lawsuit against anyone. It’s not even against the state. It’s like a voluntary proceeding, but there is a control of the state. It’s a three-part proceeding. You apply, there’s a formal control of your documents to see if you meet the requirements. We are going there just in a second. But then you have two more stages. In the second stage, very important one, the court will request many different offices of the state, like, the Federal Police, Interpol, the Immigration Department, to issue information about you. They will see how much time you actually spent in the country, if there’s a red alert upon your head, and if you have criminal records in Argentina before granting you citizenship.

Once all of these offices have given the response, the judge will send the application to the district attorney, the lawyer of all of us, to put it somehow. And only after the district attorney has given the green light, then the judge will declare us citizens.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so let’s say, I move here and I apply for citizenship, whether after a few months, if I have a kid or married, or two years through the other ways, how long does it take to actually obtain the citizenship from the application time, roughly?

MARTIN: From the application time, we are speaking of a 12 to 24-month process. It’s a huge variation, it’s a huge gap. Why would you have 100% difference? It’s because courts are randomly assigned, and some courts were just slower than others.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Can I be out of the country, just do my two years, properly live here, do my 10 months a year here, have a life, I apply, leave?

MARTIN: No, the Immigration Department response to the judge will show that you are not here, and the requirement for citizenship is that you live here. You have to live here. In fact, you have to go get fingerprinted, you have to go say, “Hey, it’s me. I am the holder of this identity document.” I mean, you have to go four to five times to court in-between the process. And we really advise clients. And they can travel. And even after the Immigration Department responds, they could even travel a little more without so much risk. But yeah, it’s you have to live here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Essentially, the true timeline to obtain citizenship in Argentina is more like three to four years of actually living here.

MARTIN: Exactly.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And if you have a kid or you’re married, it’s actually around two years.

MARTIN: Yes, exactly, the whole time. And there’s something important we should say. It’s not getting residency for two years and then applying straight for citizenship. As we just discussed, the immigration branch goes one way, and the citizenship branch goes the other way. To the eyes of the Immigration Department, if you do not keep renewing your residency, either a student or a passive income holder, you will probably be illegal to the eyes of the Immigration Department. We always advise our clients that, simultaneously, when applying for citizenship, they renew at least one more year within the scope of the Immigration Department.

Renouncing citizenship in Argentina

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, cool. Clear. Let’s discuss renouncing citizenship in Argentina. Is it possible?

MARTIN: That’s a tricky question. As a general rule, it’s not possible. Everything’s becoming a bit more flexible. It’s been a precedent from a local court in 2019, that a guy had a criminal record here. He wanted to be expelled of the country so not to pay the price off of his crime. And the court here in the Buenos Aires province allowed him to renounce citizenship. But this is very fresh, and we have to be looking for the changes in this matter.

Get in touch with Martin

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. Thank you, Martin. If you’re interested in obtaining residency or citizenship here in Argentina, there’s a link below with more information, and you can also get in touch with Martin this way.

MARTIN: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Martin, thank you.