Immigration – Messy Suitcase Travel Blog

February 23, 2020September 4, 2022

Drive to Mexico 2020

Our second time driving across the Mexican border was a bit different from the first, even though we used the same crossing – Colombia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo, Texas.

Our travel buddies on the road. Minzy and Sealy

Getting Us Into Mexico

The first time we crossed, in January 2019, we had Mexican Visas, the first step in attaining Temporary Residency in Mexico, because we expected to stay long-term. This time, our Temporary Residencies had accidentally expired because of the extra time we spent in the States taking care of my sick mother, and we knew we are going to stay less than three months, so we entered with Tourist Visas.

The difference was that this time, we each had to pay a Tourist Visa fee at a cost of $575 MXN, about $39 US. (Note that this fee is included in your airline ticket fee when you fly into Mexico). This entailed the initial stop at Immigration office, a stop to pay at the Banjercito window, and then another stop at Immigration to finalize our paperwork.

Getting our Truck Into Mexico

Next, we had to get the Temporary Import Permit for our car. This cost $400 USD, which is supposed to be reimbursed when you leave Mexico, plus a processing fee of approximately $51 USD. I wasn’t as prepared this time as I was previously and I had left copies of my driver’s license and passport buried in a folder in the back of the truck, so we chose to stand in the copy line at the border facility and get those copied.

Next, we had to drive through Customs. It seemed as if every car was chosen for inspection, and ours was no exception.

Inspecting the Cats

This time was that they asked for documentation for the cats. We were traveling with only two because Ellie, the third, was now living at Champlain College in Vermont with Gavin, our youngest. Effective January 1, 2020, you no longer need a Certified Health Certificate to bring a cat into Mexico, but they can physically inspect the cats for open sores, health problems, etc., and you need to prove they have rabies vaccines. The Inspector made us pull out the paperwork, which unfortunately was stored in the far reaches of the truck, entailed a near-total unpacking. He very thoroughly reviewed the paperwork.

Noxy and Kaylee patiently waited during the truck inspection

X-Raying the Truck

Next, Lisa and the cats had to get out of the truck while I, once again, drove it through the x-ray machine. Once they reviewed the x-rays, we were free to go.

The truck x-ray machine — Our truck is inside this x-ray machine

In the end, it took us about 1.5 hours at Mexican Immigration and Customs. Fortunately, there weren’t lines (which is why we like Colombia), or this could have been much longer.

Welcome to Mexico!

And then we were in Mexico! We didn’t take time to celebrate, but pressed forward to get to our first night’s lodging before dark.

We drove about 6 hours to Matehuala, where we had a reservation at the same cat-friendly motel we stayed at last time, Las Palmas Midway Inn in Matehuala.

Our new Garmin GPS seemed to under-estimate our travel time, by about an hour both days. We didn’t run into traffic either day, so that wasn’t the issue. Maybe it was the fact that many of the Mexican roads we drove on incessantly changed speed limits, going anywhere from 110 kph to 60 kph and back. It may be difficult for the GPS to deal with that along with the fact that there may be few people driving those routes and providing route time feedback. It could also be that we drive the speed limit while many Mexican drivers don’t necessarily do that. I don’t really know how the GPS time estimation works, so this is all just a guess.

Another thing that may impact the time estimation is the number of toll booths. Overall, we passed through 10 of these booths at a total cost of $924 MXN, or about $50 USD.

Stopped by the Mexican Cops (the Federales)

Finally, the last thing that was different on this trip was we were stopped by the Federal Police on two occasions. The first of these seemed to be more friendly. The second one was at an organized Federal Police checkpoint. Here they pulled over several people and performed inspections. They asked me 3 times if I had weapons or drugs (armas, pistolas, drogas) and then had me open the back of the truck and open selected suitcases, even going to the point of asking me where my shoes were in one of them, which I had to subsequently dig out. They also frisked me. Asking me to empty my pockets, patting me down and having me lift up my pant legs. So, that was a different experience than last time as we weren’t selected for the inspections as we drove through several of those checkpoints before.

Nonetheless, we arrived in Mexico City with enough time to unload, park the car and find an extremely nice restaurant to have a couple of beers, dinner and watch the Super Bowl (in Spanish).

La Provoleta in Roma Norte – amazing food, great Super Bowl watching (in Spanish)

April 28, 2019

Driving Our Car in Mexico, Part 2

Because it took us a few weeks to start our Visa processing,
the first thing we did after our first trip to Immigration in Guadalajara was
to go to the tax office to get our TIP expiration date extended. Unfortunately,
no one at the Immigration office seemed to know what we were talking about, so
we showed them the paper they gave us at the border. They directed us to a SAT
(Servicio de Administracion Tributaria, or Tax) office in Guadalajara.

SAT #1: Guadalajara

We Ubered there an eventually found someone who spoke enough
English, who told us we were at the wrong SAT office and that we needed to go
to another one even farther away, in the far northeast neighborhood of Zapopan.

SAT #2: Zapopan

We went there, once again found someone who spoke English,
who told us we were at the wrong office and that instead of SAT, we needed to
go the Customs Office at the Guadalajara airport, south of the city. It was
getting late so we decided that I would do that another day.

SAT #3: Guadalajara Airport

Two days later I made the trip to the Guadalajara Airport,
not knowing exactly where I needed to go. As I Ubered into the airport I saw a
big gate with a SAT sign, but continued on to a Customs Office address I had
found online. No one there seemed to know what I was trying to do. I proceeded
to walk to the SAT sign, and was shown to an office where they seemed to only
be mildly confused as to what I was trying to do. There was no English spoken.
Eventually, I filled out some forms I didn’t understand, gave them copies of my
TIP and passport, and received a date-stamped form. I was expecting another
official looking TIP, but I didn’t get that, so now we have the expired TIP and
a stamped form with no expiration date.

I was told online that I needed to go back to the same office
once we finally got our Residente Temporal cards, so I returned with the green
card, expecting to get a more official document. The people at the office
looked at me like I was crazy. They initially told me that I didn’t need
anything new, but eventually had me fill out the same forms and gave me a new
stamped form. Again, no expiration.

Crossed Fingers!

We can only hope that we’ll get our $400 deposit back when we
cross back over the border into the United States with the truck this summer.

April 18, 2019

Getting Our Mexican Temporary Resident (Residente Temporal) Visas – Part 2

Due to the gas crisis that was occurring in Mexico when we
arrived, we were delayed in the city of Leon for a week before finally arriving
in Guadalajara. Then we wanted to jump right in to language school, so it was
almost 3 weeks before we finally made it into the immigration office in
Guadalajara.

Step 3: Visit the
Immigration Office in Mexico

We found the Mexican Immigration page online, downloaded the
in-country immigration forms we needed, and filled them out. We dutifully made copies
of our passports and had more passport photos taken at a (rather pricey) photo
studio in Tlaquepaque. We then arrived at the Immigration office a few minutes
before it opened and showed the greeting staff the forms. They gave us a ticket
and showed us where to sit. We were quickly called up to a window and showed
the woman our paperwork (no English spoken there). She didn’t like my paperwork
since, as I had been warned at the Mexican Consulate in Denver, I needed to use
my full and complete name for everything. (Lisa, who had filled out the online forms,
had not been aware of this.) I was sent to a computer kiosk to refill it, not a
pleasant experience, as everything was in Spanish and a line was forming behind
me. Nonetheless, I was eventually successful. Lisa joined me in the line to
redo hers for another picky reason.

Back at the window, we were given another document that we
needed to immediately take to a bank, where we would pay approximately $200
each, obtain a receipt, and return to Immigration.

Step 4: Pay the Fee at
a Local Bank

We walked a few blocks to find a bank, took a number, and sat
in the waiting area. Mexico is basically a cash society, so people go to banks
with cash to pay their bills – water, electric, cable, phone, and, in our case,
Immigration payments. There’s almost always people waiting in the chairs. When
our number was called, we went to the window and showed the form we were given.
The Immigration woman told us that the receipt we got from the bank had to have
our names EXACTLY as they were on our passports. The bank’s system wouldn’t
allow the hyphen in Lisa’s last name (Hamm-Greenawalt), so she is Lisa Hamm
Greenawalt in Mexico.

Step 5: Back to
Immigration

Returning to the Immigration office, we waited until the
woman who had previously helped us was available, and gave her our receipt. She
took that, along with our copies and the Immigration permit we got at the
border, and told us that we would get an emailed approval in one or two weeks.

Lisa and Lexie got their emails in a week. We emailed it to
Lisa’s Mexican friend in Evergreen, Gabriela, to confirm that the dense
legalistic language in Spanish said we were approved. She said yes!

But mine didn’t arrive until a week later, causing a bit of anxiety.
We were each given an official Mexican identification number called a NUT, for
Numero Unico de Tramite.

But we weren’t finished.

Step 6: Photos and
Fingerprints

We now had to go back to the Immigration office again to get
our fingerprints taken and give them photos, since they deemed that photos we
had submitted earlier in the process were slightly too big. So we got a new set
of photos taken (in the designated “infantil” size), and scheduled to take
another morning off from language school to finish the process.

We again arrived at Immigration right before it opened, got
our tickets and were shown to a different set of seats. Lisa went to one window
and Lexie and I ended up going to another. They accepted Lisa’s photos and took
her fingerprints, giving her one small napkin to get the purple ink off her
fingertips. They also accepted Lexie’s photos, but not mine. They said the
white background, which looked pale gray, was too dark and I needed to get new
photos again.

First we went to the bathrooms to try to scrub the
fingerprint ink off our fingers! In the Men’s Room, a man sprayed my hands with
some solution and gave me paper towels, so I was fairly successful. Lisa and
Lexie didn’t get the same treatment in the Women’s Room so they had to work
harder, and Lexie’s fingerprints were purple for a day or two.

Then we went in search of a nearby place to get photos taken,
found one a couple blocks away, and went back to the Immigration office with
the new pictures. Success!

Then they told us to
come back in a week for our Temporary Resident (Green) cards.

Step 7: Temporary
residents!

A week later we went back to the Immigration office a third
time. Once again, very efficiently, we got our numbers, got called to the final
issue and signed for our Green Cards.

Finally, six months after the first visit to the Denver
Consulate and 6 weeks after we crossed the border, we held our Mexican Green
Cards in our hot little hands! We were officially Temporary Residents of
Mexico.

Celebrating the success of the process and our new status as temporary Mexican residents!

April 16, 2019

Getting Our Mexican Temporary Resident (Residente Temporal) Visas – Part I

Whether you realize it or not, every time you visit Mexico you’re required to have a Visitor’s Permit or a Visa. Most people get a Visitor’s Permit, which is the form you fill out on the plane. Included in your ticket price is the $25 fee for this permit, which is valid for 180 days.

Since we planned on staying in Mexico for longer than 180 days, we had to obtain a Visa. We applied for a Temporary Resident (Residente Temporal) visa, which would allow us to stay in Mexico for 1 year (renewal for up to 4 years) and allow us to import our car (a blog post on that at a later time). This Visa requires that we meet certain asset/income requirements: have monthly income equal to 300 days of the Mexican minimum wage or $30,804MX or savings/investments equal to 5,000 days worth of the minimum wage or $513,400MX. The deciding factor for us was that because we wanted to import our car, because we were bringing the cats with us. So we decided on the Temporary Resident Visa instead of the Permanent Resident Visa, which would not allow us to import our car.

This ended up being a 7-step process for us.

Step 1: Denver

We started in the Mexican Consulate in Denver. We knew that once we the Visa was issued, we would have to cross into Mexico within 6 months. Since we knew that we would be traveling for several months, and to allow for any unforeseen issues, we thought that getting the Visas in August would be good for our planned January entry to Mexico. I had read about other people merely walking into consulates to start the process. Therefore, about a week before I wanted to go to the consulate, I went to check on the consulate hours so we could get there first thing in the morning. To my complete surprise, I discovered the Mexican Consulate in Denver only processed Visa applications by appointment. To make matters worse, they only had 3 available slots in mid-September, very close to when we were planning to leave Denver. They weren’t together, but we grabbed them, signing up online and printing the forms we needed for our appointments.

Lexie and I had our appointments on the same day. It was a bit of a culture shock at the consulate, as everyone spoke Spanish and we didn’t (yet). We were shown some chairs to sit in and watched the very orderly process of Mexicans taking care of their business at multiple bank teller-like windows. A woman came out and took Lexie and me into a back room. She couldn’t find my appointment and subsequently taught me a very valuable lesson – I needed to include my full name on everything Mexican. That includes my middle name, Keefer, and my suffix, III. She took my financial verification data and sent us back out to pay our $36 Visa fees while she found my appointment and verified the info I had given her. Because I had given my full name on the online form, she needed to create a completely new appointment with the full information. This made the process take longer than it should have. She was extraordinarily nice, and fortunately spoke English. We got our mug-shot photos taken and signed some unknown forms, then called back into the office 20 or so minutes later and given back our passports, which now had the Visas in them.

Lisa went to the consulate 10 days later and came home with her Visa. (Note that different Consulates have different procedures and requirements than what we experienced in Denver. Check your local Consulate!)

Step 2: Border Crossing

The second step of our process came when we crossed the border into Mexico in January. We knew we couldn’t get the normal tourist permit, which would invalidate our Visa. Therefore, we very carefully showed our Visas and made sure that our immigration form was marked accurately, giving us 30 days to visit the Immigration office in Guadalajara.

Lexie filling out her paperwork

This is the form we needed to have marked correctly

Next … Part 2, The Mexican part!