Mexico

Mexico's visitor permission runs up to 180 days, and two things about it are routinely misreported. The 180 days are a single uninterrupted stretch counted from the date of entry, not a quota you can spread across the year - nothing in the law counts days cumulatively the way Peru and Colombia do. And since the paper entry form stopped being issued at airports, the number you actually get is the one an immigration officer writes on the passport stamp as an estimated departure date. The instrument that governs the border says the authorised period is 180 days; the Institute's own page says the officer sets it. Where you land, and the reason you give, now decide the answer.

Temporary residence is the route for someone who can show money rather than a job, and the numbers were rewritten in July 2025. The old guidelines asked for monthly income of 300 days of the minimum wage; the guidelines that replaced them on 9 August 2025 ask for 680 days of the UMA, and for savings they ask 11,460 days of the UMA rather than 5,000 days of the minimum wage. That is about 2.3 times the multiple in each case, in a different unit. The card is granted for one to four years, cannot be renewed beyond four years in total, and the visa must be obtained at a consulate before travelling - this is not a status you can switch into after arriving as a visitor.

Mexico is one of the few countries in the Americas where a pensioner goes straight to permanent residence rather than serving years of temporary status first. The migration law lists pensioners as a ground for permanent residence in their own right, and the visa guidelines set the test: a pension of 1,140 days of the UMA a month over six months, or savings of 45,850 days of the UMA over twelve. Those multiples are about 2.3 times what the repealed 2014 guidelines asked, and in a different unit. The permanent card, once issued, never expires.

Work in Mexico is sponsored. The employer, not the worker, opens the file: a Mexican employer registered with the Institute applies for the visa, and the permission to work is tied to that job. A job offer of up to 180 days produces a visitor with permission to work; a longer one produces temporary residence. In May 2026 the rules were rewritten to demand far more of the offer letter - the occupation coded to the national classification, the places of work, whether the work is on-site, remote or mixed, the pay and how often it is paid - and a second route was added for unpaid high-specialisation experts who commit to training Mexican staff.

Mexico has no separate investor status. What it has is an investor test inside the ordinary temporary residence procedure, and it can be met three ways: a shareholding in a Mexican company where the money actually paid in exceeds 45,850 days of the UMA, fixed assets of the same value used for business purposes, or - with no money threshold at all - proof that the foreign company employs at least three workers in Mexico. The third option is the one almost nobody mentions and the only one that does not move with the UMA.

A student gets temporary residence as a student, renewable each year until the course ends. The money test is the lowest of any residence route - 220 days of the UMA a month, or 2,290 days in savings, and it can be met by a parent, a guardian, a scholarship letter or a bank's financing certificate. One rule catches people out: this status cannot be reached from inside Mexico. Someone who arrives as a visitor and then enrols has to leave and apply at a consulate, because the guidelines say in terms that the change cannot be made in national territory.

Marrying a Mexican does not produce permanent residence, and the guidelines say so in the bluntest terms available: the spouse of a Mexican may in no case be issued a permanent residence visa. The route is two years of temporary residence first, and only then permanent residence, provided the marriage still exists. Unmarried partners in a recognised equivalent relationship are on exactly the same footing. Naturalisation, separately, needs two years of married life in a shared home in Mexico.

For a child of a Mexican the question is not residence at all: the Constitution makes anyone born abroad to a Mexican parent a Mexican by birth, so the route is registration rather than immigration. Beyond that, descent does open residence. The regulation of the migration law lets a visitor or temporary resident change to permanent residence if they are the grandparent, parent, child or grandchild of a Mexican by birth - a wider list than the family-unity article of the law itself. And for a grandchild who holds no other nationality, naturalisation drops its residence requirement entirely.

Mexico has nothing resembling the Mercosur residence agreement or the Andean Migration Statute. No bloc Mexico belongs to confers a right to reside. What does exist is narrower and real: the visa guidelines recognise international mobility instruments as a ground for a temporary residence or student visa, and the Institute accepts permanent residence in Chile, Colombia or Peru as a substitute for a Mexican visitor visa. The first is a route to residence that depends entirely on a bilateral instrument being in force and not exhausted; the second is a visa waiver and nothing more.

Five years of residence is the general rule, and it falls to two for anyone from a Latin American country or the Iberian Peninsula, for a direct-line descendant of a Mexican by birth, for a parent of a Mexican-born child, and for the spouse of a Mexican who has lived with them in Mexico. The tests are Spanish plus a history and culture examination, both set against content approved by the foreign ministry's own institute, with the history paper waived for minors, refugees and anyone over sixty. The trap is the residence clock: only time held on a temporary or permanent resident card counts, and six months of absences in the last two years breaks it.

Mexico does not count days. The test in the Fiscal Code is whether you have established a home in the country, and - if you have a home in another country too - whether your centre of vital interests is in Mexico. Two things decide that: more than half your worldwide income having its source in Mexico in a calendar year, or Mexico being the main place you carry on your professional activities. There is no 183-day rule anywhere in the article, which makes Mexico an outlier among every country in this reference. Residence brings worldwide taxation, and leaving it requires a notice filed fifteen days in advance.

Mexico's entitlement is written more broadly than any other in this reference: everyone in the country without social security has a right to free public health services, medicines and supplies at the moment they need them, with no mention of nationality or immigration status. The migration law says the same thing twice over, and adds that urgent care needed to preserve life must be free and unrestricted. On top of that sits the social security institute's voluntary family health insurance, open to families in Mexico for an annual premium by age band - but it refuses anyone with a listed pre-existing condition, and it needs a population registry number, which a foreigner only gets with a residence card.

There is no national driving licence in Mexico for an ordinary car. Licences are issued by the thirty-two states and Mexico City under their own rules, and a licence issued by any of them is valid throughout the country. The only federal licence is the one for federal road transport, which a private driver has no use for. Since the general mobility law of 2022, every state must make an applicant pass a medical fitness assessment and a theory and practical examination before issuing or renewing, and may not issue a licence valid for more than five years.

Mexican law is unusually explicit that a foreigner may bank here. The migration law says a foreigner may make bank deposits and buy securities whatever their migration status and without any permission from the Institute; its regulation says a foreigner with lawful status may open bank accounts. What the law does not settle is what a bank will accept as identity, because that is set by anti-money-laundering rules the finance ministry issues for credit institutions, and those are published as a stream of amending resolutions rather than as a consolidated text. In practice the gate is the population registry number, which follows from a residence card.

Mexico draws a line that most guidance misses: a permanent resident imports household goods duty free and permanently, while a temporary resident imports them only temporarily and is obliged to take them out again. The customs law exempts household goods belonging to permanent residents and to repatriated or deported nationals; temporary residents and student residents appear in a different article, under the temporary import regime, for as long as their status lasts. Vehicles are excluded from the exemption outright, and a permanent resident cannot temporarily import a car at all.