Bahamas or Cuba
Two countries side by side across the same rows as the full comparison. A dash means the value is missing: fields are not filled with guesses. about the data
| Bahamas | Cuba | |
|---|---|---|
| Salary in IT | — | — |
| Citizenship | 10 years | — |
| Partner can work | yes | — |
| Parents | — | — |
| Pets | difficult | no trouble |
| Pet limit | no limit | no limit |
| Quarantine | no | no |
| Residence permit fee | — | — |
| Rent, 2 bedrooms | $ 1 826 · estimate | $ 399 · estimate |
| Basket | $ 58,0 | $ 42,4 |
| Life expectancy | 74.71 | 78.26 |
| Homicides/100k | 29.9 | 4.46 |
| Natural hazards, 0–10 | 3.5 | 4.8 |
How the two sets of routes differ
Long-stay routes in this reference: Bahamas — 17, Cuba — 25. Types present in both: work, study, family, investment and repatriation. Bahamas adds: retirement. Cuba adds: talent.
Fees, thresholds and deadlines
Bahamas: fees range from 200 to 25,000 BSD. Routes with a published decision deadline: 17; the shortest is 28 days. Cuba: the fee is 1,000 USD wherever it is published. Routes with a published decision deadline: 24; the shortest is 10 days.
Beyond the first permit
Permanent status: Bahamas with no residence period, Cuba after 5 years. Citizenship: Bahamas after 10 years; the other country publishes no term.
Bahamas in brief
The Bahamas is an archipelago of more than 700 islands and cays southeast of Florida; the economy rests on tourism and the offshore financial sector. There is no personal income tax — the main budget revenue comes from VAT and customs duties (Department of Inland Revenue, inlandrevenue.finance.gov.bs). Permanent residence is available through the Economic Permanent Residence Certificate for an investment of $1.0 million or more in real estate or Central Bank of The Bahamas bonds, with no requirement for time resident in the country (Section 17A of the Immigration Act), or through long-term retention of a work permit (10–20 years depending on category). The cost of living is among the highest in the Caribbean: renting a one-bedroom flat in central Nassau exceeds $1,380 a month (livingcost.org, 2026). The country lies in an active tropical cyclone zone (season June–November, INFORM risk 7.4 out of 10, 2026): Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 nearly destroyed Marsh Harbour on Abaco and caused serious damage to Freeport on Grand Bahama.
Cuba in brief
Cuba combines things rarely found together in this set: high life expectancy and clean air alongside expensive communications and utilities. Life expectancy is 78.26 years and mean PM2.5 concentration just 9.45 micrograms per cubic metre — one of the best figures in this guide; basic access to water reaches 95.15 per cent of the population. Road deaths at 5.4 per 100,000 are likewise among the lowest. On the World Bank scale from −2.5 to +2.5, political stability stands at +0.32 (a positive value is rare here), control of corruption at −0.23, government effectiveness at −0.27 and rule of law at −0.62. Overall natural risk is 4.8 out of 10 on INFORM and almost entirely weather-driven: cyclones 8.0, coastal risks 5.7, earthquakes 5.0, against floods at just 0.5. Prices are distributed unusually: internet at 68.65 dollars a month and utilities at 94.11, against a transport pass at 41.6 and fuel at 1.37. The immigration framework was rewritten wholesale by the 2024 laws — on Migration (171), Citizenship (172) and Foreigners (173) — and published together with their regulations in the official gazette. It rests on one principle: a foreigner holds exactly one migratory classification at any time, and everything else follows from it, including the right to work. A work permit is required of temporary residents and real-estate residents, but not at all of provisional and permanent residents. The route to permanent status necessarily passes through the provisional resident stage, granted for up to a year precisely to verify social integration; a refusal at that stage bars a further attempt for two years. Permanent residence is granted after five years of residence under a resident classification, or with no qualifying period on grounds of marriage to a citizen, kinship with a citizen by birth, high qualification or substantial assets; it is approved for five years and renewed until the age of sixty, after which it runs indefinitely. The authority publishes concrete standards: up to 180 working days to consider a permanent residence file and up to 60 days for the decision, three working days for the real-estate resident classification, 15 calendar days for the applicant to remedy deficiencies and 10 days after entry to register. What this data does not contain: the population of Havana is not given, as no official source separating city from province could be found; the country's second city is not included in this guide because the price source reports a one-bedroom flat there at three times the cost of a three-bedroom one, so that data is plainly corrupted.
Other comparisons
Bahamas or… Panama · Costa Rica · Peru · Ecuador · Trinidad and Tobago · El Salvador · Guyana · Honduras
Cuba or… Nicaragua · Belize · Bolivia · Colombia · Greenland · Jamaica · Guatemala · Dominican Republic
More on each: Bahamas · Cuba. Build your own comparison — up to four countries
This material is for reference and is not legal, tax or immigration advice. Visa rules, tax thresholds and prices change. Before deciding anything, check the official sources and consult a licensed professional in the relevant country.