"Dan Jacobson" wrote in message
...

Do most countries allow Permanent
Residents to obtain an operator's licence?
a station licence? all without needing to return
or have any paperwork from one's country of origin?

I don't know about other countries, but the US has no citizenship
requirement to obtain a US amateur radio operator or station license.
All you need is to pass the examination and to have a US mailing
address. You need never have ever stepped foot on US soil, if you can
somehow gain access to a US mailing address. As only ONE EXAMPLE there
was (is?) a flourishing VE group in Japan which was giving tests in
Japan, and the applicants would use mailing addresses in the US (or US
territories) to obtain their trophy US license, and in the process
grabbing up choice US call signs, which then become unavailable to US
citizens.

As an exercise for a rainy Saturday afternoon, peruse the FCC data for
AH0/KH0/NH0/WH0xx and AH2/KH2/NH2/WH2xx calls and note the clusters of
calls which share a common address and a penchant for Japanese names
(the citizens of the Marianas have predominately hispanic surnames).

73, de Hans, K0HB