(855) 851-5000

Call Us (CANADA / USA TOLL FREE)

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

Search

Mexican Residency Visas: A straightforward process

Every year, millions of tourists visit Mexico’s beaches, mountains, deserts, and cities. They fall in love with the culture, the people, and the food. Many of them decide they would like to obtain residency and live either full or part-time in Mexico. Obtaining legal residency in Mexico is a common topic on social media and it’s important to get the facts straight. Here is some important information you should know about obtaining residency in Mexico.

Types of Residency Visas & Their Requirements

There are a variety of visa types, which we have outlined below. The financial amounts listed below are based on immigration law, however, it is important to note that each Mexican consulate calculates economic solvency slightly differently (based on the exchange rate and what rate they use to calculate solvency). The below amounts may or may not be what is required by your local Mexican consulate and it is vital you review their requirements before applying for your visa.

  1. ECONOMIC SOLVENCY VISA: For foreigners that can prove they can financially support themselves while living in Mexico, you must show the equivalent or above $864,350.00 Mexican pesos in savings or $51,861.00 Mexican pesos in monthly tax-free income.
  2. THE INVESTORS VISA: For foreigners who own or participate in a Mexican corporation with an investment equal to or above $3,457,400.00 Mexican pesos.
  3. PROPERTY OWNER VISA: For foreigners who own real estate in Mexico with a value exceeding $6,914,800.00 Mexican pesos.
  4. FAMILY UNION VISA: For foreigners who can prove direct kinship to a Mexican citizen or resident.
  5. JOB OFFER VISA: For foreigners with a job offer issued by a Mexican company and authorized by INM (Mexican Immigration Authority).
  6. RETIREMENT VISA: For retirees and pensioners with proof of economic solvency equivalent to or above $3,457,400.00 Mexican Pesos in savings or $86,435.00 Mexican pesos in monthly tax-free pension.

The Residency Process

Obtaining Mexican residency is a relatively straightforward process that begins outside of Mexico at a Mexican consulate. The total length of time it takes from start to finish is completely dependent on your closest Mexican consulate and the immigration office closest to you in Mexico.

    • Schedule an appointment with your nearest Mexican consulate located outside of Mexico. This does not need to be in your home country but many people start the process from their home country. Make sure to review the complete list of documents you will need to provide for the appointment.
    • Attend the appointment. You will be required to show all the documents outlined on their website, including bank and investment statements, real estate documents, etc.
    • Have the visa affixed to your passport. This is often, but not always, given the same day of your appointment, if you are approved.
    • Enter Mexico within 180 days of receiving the visa. If you do not enter Mexico within 180 days, you will need to start with the Mexican consulate again. When you enter Mexico, you may be asked to complete an FMM. You MUST be sure you do NOT identify yourself as a tourist and make sure the immigration official is aware of your Mexican visa affixed to your passport. Please note, recent changes in the immigration process have eliminated FMMs at some points of entry. If you are not required to fill out an FMM, the immigration officer will stamp your passport and write CANJE (exchange) in your passport and give you 30 days.
    • Once you pass through immigration, you have 30 days to file for the exchange, or CANJE, process. This must be done with your local immigration office in Mexico and it is highly recommended you hire an immigration specialist to assist you to ensure the process goes smoothly. You will be required to provide the following:
    • a. Passport
    • b. Your original FMM
    • c. Proof of address (optional but preferable)
    • d. Your signature on the following documents:
    •      1. Procedure application
    •      2. Mexican Government Private Policy Agreement
    •      3. Personal Information form (Formato Básico)
    •      4. Letter addressed to the I.N.M. requesting the “Canje” procedure
  • Receive your residency card. INM will notify your immigration specialist via email when your card is ready. You will need to go with the immigration specialist to receive your card.

How long is the process?

The length of time it takes from when you enter Mexico to when you receive your residency card varies by the immigration office. However, in general, the process can take three to four months. You can also opt for the expedited process which would take between one and two weeks.

Important: Once you enter Mexico and start the exchange process, you cannot leave Mexico for any reason until you complete the process and receive your residency card. If you must leave the country during the exchange process, you must request permission to leave from INM. Your Mexlaw immigration specialist can help you with this process.

If you are interested in learning more about the residency process in Mexico or are ready to apply for your Mexican residency, please contact Mexlaw’s Immigration Services Department today.

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policity
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings