Border Crossing Nightmares and Your VISA
Updated December 2024
Going beyond the 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 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 you sign a lease online for 3 months and they only give you one? (Unlikely, but they can.) Officials aren’t required to give you the standard 180 day stay on a tourist visa. They can arbitrarily give you whatever they want. Once you’re confronted with unexpected changes in your trip plans, you might decide early in your mini-life in Mexico that you want to go back and forth on your schedule, rather than the one dictated by an immigration official at the border.
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 these visas, you can apply for private or government health insurance, and in the case of having a visa temporal, more easily obtain a resident visa in four years.
Another good reason to do it soon is that income requirements necessary for temporary and resident visas keep going up. Income requirements went up dramatically in 2012. The income requirements and what is considered income in calculations on whether you meet the requirements vary wildly from consulate to consulate. In some states, like Colorado, income requirements are are over $3,000 a month - way more than you need to live there.
Income requirements set by Mexico on linked to the minimum wage in Mexico. In 2023 the minimum wage in Mexico went up from 102.68 pesos to 248.93 pesos per day ($14.67 dollars a day) and higher in northern Mexico. 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 meet the requirement if you have an investments. This amount also 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 requirements 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 income rental income. That's why it's very important to keep careful notes and records of who you talked to. Which state you apply from makes a huge difference.
Personally, I’ve found Arizona much easier than Colorado or California, and it’s worth passing through Tucson for a few days to secure the visa. (You make your appointment online months in advance. Retirement age applicants with social security and pension income have a far easier time of it that working age people who could potentially compete for jobs.
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 consulate employees’ interview.
During your interview they will review the documents to see that they qualify you for the visa for which you’re applying. 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 whom you talk with, 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 visa card pasted inside (it’s green). 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 as streamlined)
The Immigration Office in Mazatlán 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.
Above: Mexico City
My Border Story
This is a story to illustrate just how ambiguous and capricious the process of getting a visa and keeping can be.
In Mazatlán I was told by immigration officials (I had them write it down) that each time I went over the border, 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.
I was instructed by Mazatlán to stop to get it stamped CANJE, at the border when leaving Mexico. Stamping your passport upon entry does not prove you're in Mexico, but the stamped visa shows you were there. From now on, having that VISA Temporal, the box I was to check is NOT "tourist", but rather "resident.”
But on on fateful trip, I went through Tijuana and took the land bridge over the border to the US rather than flying out of Mexico. I showed the immigration people on the Mexican side and asked for the stamp.
As world traveler and well-known author Elizabeth Gilbert explains her book that tells the story of the labyrinth she navigated securing a visa for her Brazilian fiancé, “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 stamp, even after I showed the written instructions I had been given by Immigration in Mazatlán. Instead, they gave me a crazy story about having to leave the airport, take a cab to the border, get a 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 Visas stamped. I told him such, loudly, in Spanish, knocking over the toy airplane he had on his desk as I did so. He shrugged. When I asked to see his boss, he told me he was the boss.
I’ve since been advised to video the person and the situation should it happen again. Knowing what I do about Mexico, I know this might make a difference only at that very moment. It’s certain that showing such a video at a consulate would be met with another shoulder shrug. At this level of tourism (below that international arms dealer or terrorist), you can wonder if consulates, Mexican immigration offices and and airport immigration officials are even aware of each others existence, let alone communicate with one another. If you mention the actions of one to the other, you’re met with a blank stare.
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 s*#@ and entertain themselves creating hoops to jump. This is an an example of why maintaining your resident or temporary visa status has potential to become tricky.
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, dried and automatic they make it seem but you have to start somewhere.
About the author: All Books Available on Amazon.com/Amazon.com.mx
I'm Kerry Baker, a partner with Ventanas Mexico and author of "If I Only Had a Place," a guide on renting for the aspiring expat. My second is “The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico,’’ a how-two book with illuminating anecdotes. Most recently I published, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for travelers, snowbirds and expats trying to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico.