Iraq or Nepal
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
| Iraq | Nepal | |
|---|---|---|
| Salary in IT | — | — |
| Citizenship | — | 15 years |
| Partner can work | — | — |
| Parents | — | — |
| Pets | no trouble | difficult |
| Pet limit | no limit | no limit |
| Quarantine | no | — |
| Residence permit fee | — | — |
| Rent, 2 bedrooms | $ 608 · estimate | $ 254 · estimate |
| Basket | $ 18,0 | $ 15,8 |
| Life expectancy | 72.42 | 70.64 |
| Homicides/100k | 9.46 | 2.13 |
| Natural hazards, 0–10 | 5.7 | 5.1 |
How the two sets of routes differ
Long-stay routes in this reference: Iraq — 29, Nepal — 22. Types present in both: work, study, family, investment and talent. Nepal adds: repatriation and retirement.
Fees, thresholds and deadlines
Iraq: the fee is 100,000 IQD wherever it is published. Routes with a published decision deadline: 3; the shortest is 1 days. Nepal: fees range from 10 to 700 USD. Routes with no fee: 1. Routes stating an income threshold: 5; the lowest is 3,000 USD a year. Routes with a published decision deadline: 22; the shortest is 1 days.
Beyond the first permit
Citizenship: Nepal after 15 years; the other country publishes no term.
Iraq in brief
Iraq scores very low on governance and very high on water-related hazards. On the World Bank scale, which runs roughly from −2.5 to +2.5, political stability is −2.06 — eighth from the bottom among the 173 countries with data — rule of law is −1.36, control of corruption −1.21, and government effectiveness −1.10. Life expectancy is 72.42 years, health spending 333.29 dollars per person per year, basic water access reaches 98.41 percent of the population, and the mean PM2.5 concentration is 49.47 micrograms per cubic metre. Road deaths run at 21.5 per 100,000. Unemployment is 15.48 percent, and 32.01 percent among young people. Overall natural hazard is 5.7 out of 10 on INFORM: flooding 9.6, drought 7.5, earthquakes 5.1, coastal hazards 4.6, with no cyclone or tsunami exposure at all. The immigration framework is published as Law No. 76 of 2017 and was translated into English by the Ministry of Justice itself. One feature defines it: **there is no permanent status in the country**. An ordinary residence card is issued for no more than one year and renewed year by year as many times as the grounds persist; the maximum is a three-year renewable card, granted only on six enumerated grounds, among them 15 years of continuous residence, six years under a contract with the government, scientific and cultural service, study at a religious seminary, and business or investment. Marriage to a citizen leads to that same three-year card, not to a separate family status. There are eleven visa categories, each with precise periods, and two of them — visiting and tourist — expressly forbid working anywhere in the country, whether paid or unpaid. Duties fall on the receiving side too, on short clocks: an employer notifies the authority within 48 hours of hiring a worker and of that worker's departure, a hotel within two days of arrival and departure, and whoever brings a foreigner in to work must post financial guarantees or a return ticket. What is not in this data: the law sets no standard for deciding an application — it fixes only the appeal periods (15 days to object, 30 to answer) and counts the waiting time as legitimate residence. City populations are not given: no official source separating the city from the governorate could be found.
Nepal in brief
Nepal is a South Asian country outside the EU and outside the Gulf, with a narrow system of long-stay visas: the work visa is issued under the general “non-tourist visa” category and requires a separate permit from the Government of Nepal for paid employment (via the Department of Labour), issued for no more than 1 year at a time; the business visa for investors — up to 5 years; the Non-Resident Nepali (NRN) visa — up to 10 years, but available only to people of Nepali origin or citizens of Nepal who have long lived abroad; the residential visa for investors of USD 100,000 or more, or for persons of international standing, is issued by the Department of Immigration for the first year and then renewed annually, without automatically becoming a permanent status — Nepali law has no permanent residence permit in the European sense. Naturalisation to Nepali citizenship is available in practice almost exclusively to persons with a special contribution to the country's development, requires 15 years of residence, knowledge of Nepali or another language used in Nepal, and renunciation of prior citizenship; dual citizenship is not permitted in any form. An expedited route to citizenship through marriage exists only for foreign wives of Nepali citizens, not for foreign husbands of Nepali female citizens. Seismic hazard here is not a technical detail but a systemic fact: the country lies in the collision zone of the Indian and Eurasian plates, INFORM rates the earthquake component at 9.8 out of 10, and the 25 April 2015 Gorkha earthquake (M7.8) claimed almost 9,000 lives and damaged a significant part of the historic building stock of the Kathmandu Valley. At the same time, the country holds several UNESCO World Heritage sites (the Kathmandu Valley, Lumbini — the birthplace of Buddha, Chitwan National Park), and the cost of rent and living is lower than the regional average.
Other comparisons
Iraq or… Taiwan · South Korea · Japan · Thailand · Kazakhstan · Lebanon · Uzbekistan · Malaysia
Nepal or… Azerbaijan · Philippines · Bangladesh · Kuwait · Mongolia · Oman · People's Republic of China · Sri Lanka
More on each: Iraq · Nepal. 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.