Border Nightmares: What Most Americans Don’t Realize
Updated December 2022
Mexico City
Beyond a tourist visa
Before we get into the risks, let’s take a few minutes to consider why you might consider applying for a resident visa or temporary visa in the first place, over just having a tourist visa if you are going back and forth frequently to Mexico.
What if a friend calls from the States and wants you to meet her watch whales in Baja and her planned vacation falls on Day 185-190 of your stay (a tourist visa is typically for 180 days. )? What if it’s winter and you just found a place on the beach for $500 dollars a month but your visa says you have to leave in two months when the place requires a six month lease?
You might decide early on in your mini-life in Mexico that you want to go back and forth on your schedule, rather than the one dictated by your passport. There are other more pragmatic reasons to apply for a Visa Temporal or resident visa. If you are 60 or older, you can apply for a CURP card, which gives you sizable discounts on luxury bus fares, air fares and many other discounts. With a Visa Temporal, you can apply for private or government health insurance, and four years later more easily obtain a resident visa.
Another good reason to do it soon is that changes in 2020 increased the income requirements necessary for temporary resident status in Mexico. Income requirements went up dramatically in 2012 as well. The income requirements vary wildly from consulate to consulate. In some states, like Colorado, income requirements to apply are over $3,000 a month!
Who knows how high they will go and how soon?
Income requirements set by Mexico to get a visa depends on the minimum wage in Mexico. In 2020 the minimum wage in Mexico went up from 102.68 pesos to 123.22 pesos per hour. This means that the income requirement for foreign residents seeking a resident visa went up too. The exact income requirement will depend on your ties to Mexico, the type of visa you are applying for, and your personal situation.
You may also meet the requirement if you have an investments. This amount too varies from state to state, but is typically over $150,000 . If you are in any danger of falling below the threshold in your investments over the next few years, you may want to apply sooner, while your savings/investments exceed whatever the benchmark is.
Obstacle # 1 - Ambiguity on income requirements
Websites make all these requirement sound deceivingly matter-of-fact, when in fact it’s up to interpretation by a number of people you’ll come in contact with.
People are surprised at times by what is not allowed as income, or by how capricious the decision can seem. A person in California may be allowed to include rental income in their estimate at their local Mexican consulate. A person in Kansas might be told by the Mexican consulate in Kansas that they can’t. That's why it's very important to keep careful notes and records of who you talked to, and the reason which state you apply from makes a huge difference.
Obstacle #2: Conflicting information from Mexican consulates in your interview
You may expect everyone in a Mexican consulate to be completely bilingual in English and Spanish. They often are not, although on the surface they may appear to be. I have been utterly shocked by the level of English in people advising me at the local Denver consulate. From reading expat forums, you’ll see misunderstandings occur frequently. Having experienced what I’ve experienced, I’m betting that a language exam was not part of interview.
During the interview they will review the documents to see that they qualify you for the visa for which you’re applyng. A temporary Resident visa allows you unlimited entries into Mexico for four years. You can pay the fees for all four years at once. Don’t be fooled however: You still have to visit the immigration office yearly to renew it. It’s non-renewable after four years at which time you have to decide if you want to become a permanent resident or start all over.
Take careful notes and names of who you talk to, although as you’ll soon find out in the story below, it likely won’t help. At least you’ll know it wasn’t your fault when you get screwed over. You’ll also get a sense of what the life of an immigrant coming into the US must be like.
Obstacle #3 - Immigration office procedures once in Mexico
Once I arrived to Mazatlán, I went to the Immigration Office with my passport and new card pasted inside (the green one). I received the document that I had to take to a local bank in order to pay the $200 (US) processing fee for the actual loose card. The bank gave me the receipt to present back at the Immigration Office in order to complete the next step: setting an appointment for fingerprinting. {Since writing this blog, the process in Mazatlán has been thoroughly modernized but I’m outlining the process because I suspect other immigration offices aren’t)
The Immigration Office sent me an email (in Spanish) a few days later letting me know when they were ready for me to come back for fingerprints. I returned that morning (There are specific hours for this type of tramite) and had fingerprints taken from all ten fingers.
Two weeks later, I went in and received the physical card, very similar to the one pasted into my passport. So far, everything had gone according to what I was told. I began to believe that if I did what I was told, everything would proceed according to the established process.
But it’s AFTER you get your card where the fun really begins.
The Border Story (you’ve been waiting for)
This is a story to illustrate just how ambiguous and capricious the process of getting a visa and keeping it is.
The FMM is a separate form from the customs sheet (forma aduana), the one that you're given on an airplane before you land to declare the value of what you are bringing in. When you have a Visa Temporal, you are in essence a "temporary Mexican," no longer a tourist
In Mazatlán I was told by immigration officials (I had them write it down) that each time I went over the border in either direction, I had to go to the airport immigration office and show them my new green Visa Temporal card and passport with the card pasted inside.
The airport official was to give me the FMM card to fill out and turn it in to them, informing the Mexican government where I be staying. (If you are flying, you are supposed to ask for a FMM form on the plane). I was told (and had in writing by the immigration office in Mazatlán as well) that they would keep part of the form to enter that information into their system.
I was instructed to hang on to the remaining part of the FMM document during my visit to the US and get it stamped CANJE, at the border whenever I come back to Mexico by land. Stamping your passport upon entry does not prove you're in Mexico, giving them properly checked FMM form does. From now on, having that VISA Temporal, the box I was to check is NOT "tourist", but rather "resident.”
When I went through Tijuana and took the land bridge over the border to the US, I showed the immigration people on the Mexican side the written instructions I had been given by Immigration in Mazatlán regarding the FMM document.
As world traveler and author Elizabeth Gilbert explains in her book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage your day at the border totally depends on what side of the bed the immigration officer woke up on.
At any border crossing in the world, it comes down to who you happen to encounter there. At the Tijuana airport, the border immigration official refused to give me the required form regardless of what their office in Mazatlán told me, giving me a crazy story about having to leave the airport, take a cab to the border, get the form, have it stamped, and then take a cab back from the border to the airport to turn the form in.
Of course this is absurd. Thousands of VISA Temporal holders are flying into Tijuana every year. You can bet they weren’t taking two $50 dollar cab rides back and forth to the border to get FMM forms stamped. I told him such, loudly, in Spanish, knocking over the toy airplane he had on his desk as I did so. He shrugged.
I still have no idea whether the immigration guy was trying to shake me down, just wanted to hassle me, or if entering the US via the California land bridge is just so lawless that immigration officials just don’t give a f*#@ and feel they might as well create hoops to jump for their entertainment. This is an an example of why maintaining your resident or temporary visa status is so tricky.
Baja
If you slept through all that, you can skip the whole Visa Temporal process and never stay over 180 days at a time as permitted by the Tourist Visa, like millions of other happy part-time expats. :)
Requirements for Visa Temporal
The following has been copied word for word from paperwork provided by Denver Mexican consulate to give you a sample of what you might encounter.
For your interview at the consulate, you will need
1. A letter requesting temporary residence to live in Mexico as a Retiree or Rentista, indicating the city/town where you will live, an address in Mexico and a travel date.
2. Two front and (and perhaps one right-profile) passport size photos, with visible face and without glasses, color with white background
3. Documents proving economic solvency.
4. Original and one copy of proof of investments or bank accounts (notarized) with a monthly average balance equal to 5,000 days of Mexican minimum wage or $32, 430 U.S. You must show original documents and 1 copy of each for the last 12 months.
5. (If you have property in Mexico) An original and one copy of public deed before a notary public attesting if possession of real property in Mexico with a value in excess of forty thousand days of general minimum wage in Mexico City (DF) or $249, 420 dollars.
6. Filled out application form provided by Consulate
Payment of consular fees for the issuance of VISA in accordance with the Provisions of Mexican Federal Law, $36.00 (as of 05/2015)
Visa Renewals
If you happen to move to a different city in Mexico later, you’ll need to go to that Immigration office and report your change of address if you have a VISA Temporal in order to renew it in the new city when your renewal date comes around.
Pay close attention to the date on the Visa Temporal when it's issued to you in Mexico. Even though the A Temporary Visa can be good for two years if you pay for it, but it has to be renewed yearly at the place where you initially had it issued.
Related link:
An more thorough article by Yucalandia on immigration rules. It’s hilarious how cut and dried they make it seem but it’s a place to start.
About the author:
Hola, I am Kerry Baker . At the very least to consider Mexico, you'll need to rent first. Take a look at "If Only I Had a Place" for aspiring expats wanting to live luxuriously for less. “The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico.” is an entertaining, information how-to on creating the perfect expat life and what to expect in the culture.
Most recently I released “The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for travelers, snowbirds and expats seeing to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico.