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.

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!

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!