On July 18, the President of Ukraine approved new changes to Ukrainian immigration law that is the biggest game-changer for receiving Ukrainian permanent residence in the history of our nation. With these new changes, it has never been so easy, financially affordable and fast to become a permanent resident in Ukraine. At the same time the new rules make it more difficult to obtain permanent residence through shady illegal schemes, as well as making life much harder for immigration scammers.

Major Changes to Obtaining Ukrainian Permanent Residency

As always, we will explain the new Ukrainian immigration procedures in simple words so everyone can understand them. In the article below we categorize four different reasons why this novel changes to Ukrainian immigration law are significant.

Permanent residence for everyone living over 5 years in Ukraine

This is the biggest icebreaker. Now you don’t need to get married, adopt a child, or invest 100 000 USD to obtain a Ukrainian permanent residence permit. The only thing you need now to become a Ukrainian permanent resident is merely to live here for more than 5 years under a temporary residence permit. A temporary residence permit can virtually be obtained by anyone, in a matter of weeks and is relatively inexpensive.

Six months maximum for processing an immigration permit

Anyone who wanted to obtain Ukrainian permanent residence had to obtain an immigration permit first which could take even more than a year. Now an immigration permit in Ukraine should be issued (or rejected) within 6 months maximum.

No more quotas

Previously, some categories of foreigners, e.g. IT specialists, could have been granted an immigration permit but only within some limited number of candidates per year (aka the “quota”). If a quota for a certain year had been used already, then candidates could have sought their luck next year. In practice, this was always a problem and it was not rare when either a quota was taken out or the process was not finished the same year and a foreigner had to reapply next year again from scratch. Now the quotas are assigned only if the total number of immigrants exceeds 10% of Ukrainian citizens. This basically opens immigration gates to Ukraine that is willing to accept as many highly skilled foreign professionals as possible.

No more fake marriages

Fake marriages have always been a popular immigration route not only in Ukraine but in other countries as well. Honestly, a fake marriage for the immigration purpose is the stupidest idea ever (contact us if you want to know why). Thus, we are very glad that this route becomes harder to sell to the Migration Service of Ukraine. Migration officers now can (and will) hold personal interviews with a “just married” couple and will deny an immigration permit if the couple doesn’t speak any mutual language, doesn’t live together, isn’t aware of certain information about each other, etc. These reasons for rejection are quite easy to spot out and so a fake couple will need to be professional spies to pass such interviews.

Additional Changes to Ukrainian Immigration Law for Obtaining Permanent Residency

There are also some other amendments, but they are more important for immigration lawyers or those who are interested in every detail. The above main changes are the ones to keep in mind when contemplating relocation to Ukraine permanently.

And the very last note is that this draft law had been introduced before Russia attacked Ukraine. It is a good sign that these changes were not caused by the war. It is a sign of deliberate and strategic developments in Ukrainian immigration policy towards welcoming more immigrants to Ukraine for a long and perpetual time.

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Article Image Credit: kjpargeter @ freepix