Mexican Paperwork

In September 2019, we applied for temporary residency here in Mexico. Little did we know how many months or steps would be necessary to finally hold this credit card sized piece of plastic in our hands. Let’s just say, applying for a driver’s license was a lot simpler.

There are a lot of people here in Mexico who don’t care about paperwork. A lot of them, being Americans, just come down and live here. Others, that are a little more concerned, pay the $30 for a visitor’s visa, valid for half a year. The later is what we did for the first little while. However, once Ziva was born, we decided to apply for temporary residency. At first, we were a bit concerned that we would have to go back to Switzerland for that because the monthly income you need to be able to provide is a lot higher. To our relief, this proved to be unnecessary. We were able to apply from the US, which we did – not in the consulate in San Diego though, but in Calexico. Apparently, they are less strict there 😉

So we filled out all the forms, put together all the banking information to prove a high enough income during the past 6 months and headed to the consulate. Soon it was clear, that only Christof was able to apply because he was the one with an income. Anja and Ziva would have to apply later, once he had his temporary residency, for “family reunion”. However, Christof received the visa in his passport, which meant that we had 30 days to enter Mexico and hand in the required paperwork at the immigration office (INM) in Tijuana. This is another complete process.

First, you need to go to the INM to get all the information and documents needed. Then you fill out the documents and complete the requirements. In Christof’s case, a letter stating the reason why you would like to have temporary residency, a form where you add your email address and consent to the INM using it for its purposes, a form where you need to fill in your personal information (online and on paper), a proof of payment for the process that has to be completed at a local bank (it’s a nightmare to find one that actually does it! Our tip: the bank inside Walmart at Pabellón in Rosarito) and then you need to get your passport pictures taken (just make sure you stick to their very specific measurements).

In the case of family reunion, it is all of the above plus, for Anja, an translated, original apostilled marriage certificate that we had to order in Switzerland. Thank the Lord for parents who are willing to help with the process! We were able to organize for the marriage certificate to be sent to Anja’s parents, but it had to be taken to the authorities of the canton where we got married, which we cannot do. So they did that for us and then sent us the apostilled marriage certificate. For Ziva, we needed an original apostilled birth certificate as well as a translation. All translations need to be done by an official Mexican translator, a so-called perrito. It got interesting, when Anja handed in her marriage certificate. Switzerland is able to provide “international marriage certificates” that are multi-lingual, i.e. the Swiss languages German, French and Italian as well as English and Spanish. Nevertheless, the question from the officer was, “where is the translation?” In the end though, the case manager decided that no translation was needed and everything was fine.

Once you have all the required documents ready, you go to the INM, where they check everything and see if everything is up to their standards. If it’s not, you can go back and resubmit it later – just make sure it’s withing the 30 days. If everything’s okay, you can go home and wait for the update online. Once you receive that, you can go to have your fingerprints taken and hand in your passport pictures. A couple of weeks later, you can finally collect your card. This process took several months for Christof. He finally received his card in December.

Applying for Christof’s driver’s license was so much easier. One of our friends from church took us to the DMV in Rosarito, where Christof had to present a valid address and the paper from the medical exam that you can do just outside their door. He also had to assure that he had a car with Mexican license plates for the driver’s test. That’s basically the first step. As a second step, they took his personal information. As a third step, he had to do the online test, which was in Spanish. Funny enough, our friend was allowed to help him with the translation. Since Christof passed the test, they took him for a “drive”, which was basically only parking sideways in front of the building. That was it. The same day, Christof received his Mexican driver’s license (that looks like a vertical credit card, by the way)!