There Is No Philippine Green Card: What Types of Philippine Permanent Residency Actually Exist

There is no Philippine green card, and permanent residency is not one visa

The Philippines issues no green card, and no single visa is named "permanent residency." The phrase is borrowed from the United States and appears nowhere in Philippine immigration law. What you actually receive is an immigrant visa stamped in your passport plus an alien registration document — not a card called a green card. And "permanent residency" functions as an umbrella term, with several separate entrances underneath it.

This is not pedantry. The BI Citizen's Charter, 2026 first edition, lists conversions to the non-quota immigrant visas under 13(A), 13(B), 13(C), 13(E) and 13(G) of CA 613 — the 1940 Immigration Act — plus the Permanent Resident Visa issued under MCL-07-021, all under the Legal Division, classified Highly Technical, transaction type G2C. The charter is organised by section code, one transaction at a time. There is no single counter labelled "permanent residency," because at the level where work actually gets done, no such unified thing exists.

The practical consequence is immediate. Ask "how do I get a Philippine green card" and the answer you get depends entirely on which route the other person silently assumed. One consultant answers on the marriage route, another on the retirement route, a third on property. Three contradictory answers, and all three may be internally correct — each simply filled in a premise you never stated.

So this page does one job: it maps which categories exist and which agency owns each one. Whether you personally qualify for any of them is a different question, handled in the five facts that decide your route. The deep breakdown of the four main paths lives in the Philippine permanent resident visa route guide, and the term itself is dissected in what "Philippine green card" actually refers to.

State your passport nationality, marital status and residence goal before asking whether you qualify — that is what makes the answer single-valued. Ask for an itemised breakdown →

Four groups, sorted by who issues and under what law

Lay out everything that gets called a Philippine green card and sort it by issuing authority, and you get exactly four groups. This table is worth more than any document checklist.

Group one: immigrant visas. Legal basis CA 613, the 1940 Immigration Act; owner, the BI Legal Division. Internally it splits by section code — 13(B), 13(C), 13(E), 13(G), the marriage route under 13(A), the Permanent Resident Visa issued under MCL-07-021, and quota immigrant visas under Section 13. This group is the closest legal equivalent to what people mean by Philippine permanent residency.

Group two: the retirement route, endorsed by the Philippine Retirement Authority and implemented by BI. Group three: the investment route, endorsed from the Board of Investments side and implemented by BI. Both are separate lines with separate entrances and separate ongoing obligations, and neither is interchangeable with an immigrant visa even though BI implements all three at the end. Their thresholds and current rules are whatever the responsible agency publishes now; this page gives no figures, because the published versions have moved and a stale number is worse than no number. For a comparison of long-stay options see the five-route comparison of staying versus immigrating, and for status work handled alongside relocation see our visa and HR service line.

Group four: naturalization. That is citizenship, not residency, and it runs through the courts, not the Bureau of Immigration. Conflating the two is one of the most expensive misunderstandings on this line, because the two are not even filed in the same building — see where naturalization and provincial residency filings actually go.

One boundary must be stated plainly. Whether groups two and three "count as permanent residency" is written inconsistently across official pages. We do not adjudicate between those documents, and you should not take any agency's marketing as settled either. Go by what the responsible authority publishes at the time you file. What you actually need to compare is not the label but the substance: employment rights, dependants, absence limits, and what you must do every year.

Inside the immigrant-visa group, the section code changes who you are

The section codes are not difficulty tiers of the same product. They are separate entrances defined by facts that already happened to you. You do not choose your code; your history chooses it.

13(G) covers former Filipino citizens who naturalised elsewhere and now want to reside permanently in the Philippines again. The charter attaches a hard formal condition to this one: the applicant must be physically inside the Philippines when the application is filed. 13(E) covers returning residents — people who were already lawfully admitted for permanent residence, went abroad for a temporary visit, and did not abandon their Philippine domicile. Note the premise: you already held the status. It is not an entrance for new applicants.

Quota immigrant visas under Section 13 are a narrow door constrained by numerical limits and reciprocity, with a logic unlike any of the above; they get their own page, the Section 13 quota immigrant visa. 13(B) and 13(C) deal mainly with accompanying relatives and unmarried minor children, generally derivative of a principal applicant rather than independent entrances.

The marriage route carries one error worth flagging. Which line a foreign spouse of a Filipino citizen takes depends on the passport held. A spouse holding a mainland Chinese passport goes through the TRV line, commonly called MCL in the trade and issued under MCL-07-021 — not 13(A). This is misstated constantly in Chinese-language material, and getting it wrong means starting down the wrong road at step one. The marriage route itself is covered separately: the marriage-based residence visa explained.

The usable conclusion is one sentence: confirm the section code before you touch a document. Checklists are not interchangeable across codes, the filing venue may differ, and the supporting evidence a hearing officer expects differs with the code as well. A packet assembled for the wrong code is not partially useful; it is simply the wrong packet, and rebuilding it costs you the authentication lead time all over again. For what to assemble, see the four layers you need before filing.

Three side routes people mistake for a green card: retirement, investment, and property

These three get bundled and sold as "the green card." Two of them are real residency routes. The third is not a route at all.

Retirement sits with the Philippine Retirement Authority; investment sits with the Board of Investments side. Both are implemented by BI at the end, but their entrances, review logic and ongoing duties differ from immigrant visas. Each has its own coverage; the investment line is at Philippine investment immigration policy. Their thresholds and current rules are whatever the responsible agency publishes now — different sources have printed different versions in recent years, so do not rely on an undated repost.

The third one simply does not exist: buying property in the Philippines confers no residence status. There is no provision linking the two. "Buy property, get residency" usually stitches together "you may buy this class of property" and "you may stay long term" as though they were one rule. They are two independent bodies of law — see whether buying property gets you residency. Anyone quoting property and status as a package is a reason to stop and verify.

A related misconception: holding a long-term status does not automatically confer the right to work. Employment rights depend on what your specific visa category provides, not on the general fact of being allowed to stay. Getting this wrong creates real compliance exposure after you arrive.

How do you spot a side route dressed up as a green card? Three tests: can they name the issuing authority (PRA, BOI, BI Legal Division and the courts are four different owners); will they state the exact section code you are being filed under; and have they quietly swapped "can stay long term" for "permanent residence." The full vetting method is in how to screen a Philippine green card agency.

Write down the exact sales phrases you were given, then take them to a second firm and compare answers. Ask for an itemised breakdown →

What ASRV under APECO is, and why it is not on this line

ASRV — the APECO Special Resident Visa — is a separate line from both immigrant visas and amnesty, despite a Chinese nickname that suggests otherwise. In Chinese-language forums it is often called the "small amnesty," which misleads readers into treating it as a lightweight version of amnesty. It is not.

Separate the two terms first. Amnesty in the Philippine context refers to a class of alien legalisation programmes with their own legal bases and their own target populations — an umbrella, not a single visa. That line is covered in what Philippine amnesty is and which laws govern it and where amnesty applications are actually received. ASRV belongs to the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone (APECO) framework, and the nickname is pure colloquialism.

On ASRV this page states exactly one verifiable fact, drawn from the BI Updated Subport Directory with Directory of Transactions published on the bureau's own directory page (local archive retrieved 2026-09-04): across all 60 offices in that table, ASRV appears at exactly one entrance — the APECO immigration field office — and that row is marked receiving only, meaning documents and payment are taken there while approval happens elsewhere. The remark on that row further instructs applicants to coordinate with APECO by email first. You cannot simply walk into any office and file it.

Everything else about ASRV is deliberately omitted here. Whether it is currently open, and what class of status it grants, is whatever the responsible authority publishes now — the secondhand write-ups on this line mix old and current versions freely. ⚠️ One more caution: that directory PDF carries no official version date, and office authority does get adjusted in practice, so re-check the bureau's current directory and call ahead before travelling anywhere on the strength of a table. The same caution applies to every Chinese-language summary of this route you will find online: if it does not name a source document and a date, it is not usable evidence. On verifying policy generally, see how to check current residency policy without getting burned.

Work backwards from facts that already happened to you

Do not start from "I want permanent residency." Start from what is already true about you. The mapping below runs backwards from facts to categories.

You were once a Filipino citizen and later naturalised elsewhere → look at 13(G), and note that you must be physically in the Philippines when filing. You already held permanent residence and merely travelled abroad without abandoning your Philippine domicile → your question is 13(E) returning resident, not a fresh application. You married a Filipino citizen → check your passport first: a mainland Chinese passport holder goes through TRV, commonly called MCL, not 13(A).

You are coming to retire → that is the PRA line, outside the four groups here. You hold capital and want to convert it into status → that is the BOI line, also separate. You simply want to live here lawfully without annual drama → do not start with permanent residency at all; compare the long-stay visa classes first in the Philippine long-term visa options. You want a passport rather than residence → that is naturalization, decided by courts.

Once the category is fixed, the order is the same for everyone: confirm eligibility (the five deciding facts), assemble the four layers (what you need before filing), confirm the filing venue and its receiving status (which door to use), then work the sequence in the six-step residency guide. Cost structure is separate again: why the price differs by route.

One honest closing note: most readers belong to none of these four groups. Without a marriage, a former-citizen history, a retirement plan or investable capital, the realistic path is to run a long-stay visa properly rather than manufacture a residency case. Describing your actual situation saves far more than copying someone else's. For disputes, consult a licensed Philippine lawyer; this article is not legal advice.