Country-wide policy
Every Money Threshold Is Set in the UMA, and the UMA Moves Every February
No Mexican immigration threshold is written in pesos. They are all multiples of the Unidad de Medida y Actualización, a unit the statistics institute recalculates each January by the previous year's inflation and publishes in the official gazette, in force from 1 February. The unit exists because a 2016 constitutional reform forbade using the minimum wage as a unit of account and converted every such reference into the UMA - which is why the 2014 visa guidelines, written in days of minimum wage, were replaced in 2025 by guidelines written in days of UMA at about 2.3 times the multiple.
Topics it changes
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through marriage
- Visiting as a tourist
What it requires
- Read every threshold as a number of days of UMA, not as a peso amount
- Apply the UMA in force on the date the proof is assessed - it changes on 1 February each year
- Expect a peso figure published by a consulate or a law firm to be a conversion, and to go stale each February
At a glance
- Daily UMA
- MXN 117.31
- Monthly UMA
- MXN 3,566.22
- Annual UMA
- MXN 42,794.64
- Published
- In the first ten days of January each year, in force from 1 February
- How it is recalculated
- The previous year's daily value times one plus the year-on-year change in the consumer price index for December
- Why it exists
- A 2016 constitutional reform barred the minimum wage from being used as a unit of account
Why the multiples jumped in 2025
The 2014 visa guidelines asked a temporary residence applicant for monthly income of 300 days of the minimum wage. After the 2016 reform that sentence had to be read as 300 days of UMA, because the reform turned every use of the minimum wage as a unit of account into a use of the UMA. The guidelines published in July 2025 restated the same tests in UMA at about 2.3 times the multiple - 680 days of UMA a month in place of 300 days of minimum wage. The rule did not change. The unit did, nine years earlier, and the instrument caught up. The two sets of guidelines are not denominated in the same unit, so the change in the multiple is not the same as the change in what an applicant must show. We have not sourced a minimum wage figure, so we do not state what the real movement was.
What to do with a peso figure you find somewhere
Treat it as a conversion with a date on it. Consulates publish tables in local currency, law firms publish them in pesos and dollars, and all of them are arithmetic applied to a multiple that itself only changes when the guidelines change. The multiple is the rule; the peso amount is a snapshot that expires on 31 January.
What the law says
«Actualización es de $117.31 pesos mexicanos, el mensual es de $3,566.22 pesosmexicanos y el valor anual $42,794.64 pesos mexicanos»Our translation - not official
Actualización is $117.31 Mexican pesos, the monthly value is $3,566.22 Mexican pesos and the annual value $42,794.64 Mexican pesos
The Diario Oficial's HTML edition drops the space at some line breaks, which is why words run together inside this quotation. It is quoted as the publisher renders it rather than tidied.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Mexico's official gazette. An instrument takes effect on publication here, and the visa guidelines, the acuerdos that amend them and the annual UMA values all appear here first and sometimes only here.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and never consolidates them. The 2025 visa guidelines and the 2026 acuerdo amending them are two separate documents with no merged text anywhere, so what the rule says today has to be assembled by hand. An article number inside an amending acuerdo - ARTÍCULO ÚNICO, Transitorio Tercero - is an instruction to amend, not an article of the resulting instrument. Its HTML conversion also drops the space at many line breaks, so stored text contains run-together words and, in preambles, whole paragraphs without spaces; a quotation carrying such a join is reproducing the publisher exactly and must say so. Note that www.dof.gob.mx fails TLS validation while dof.gob.mx works.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«El INEGI publicará en el Diario Oficial de la Federación dentro de los primeros diez días del mes de enero de cada año el valor diario, mensual y anual en moneda nacional de la UMA y entrarán en vigor dichos valores el 1o. de febrero de dicho año.»Our translation - not official
INEGI shall publish in the Official Gazette of the Federation within the first ten days of January each year the daily, monthly and annual value of the UMA in national currency, and those values shall come into force on 1 February of that year.
The one month between publication and entry into force is why January applications are assessed against the previous year's unit.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chamber of Deputies' law library, which maintains the texto vigente of every federal statute together with a reform history for each. It is where the Ley de Migración, the Ley de Nacionalidad, the Código Fiscal and the Ley Aduanera can be read as amended rather than reconstructed from the decrees that amended them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Nothing below statute level is here. The Lineamientos, acuerdos and administrative instruments are where almost all Mexican immigration practice actually changes, and none of them is published by this body - the Reglamento de la Ley de Migración it does carry has not been reformed since 2014 and is in places overtaken by instruments it cannot show you. It is also not an authority on when a reform took effect: the transitional articles of the amending decree live in the Diario Oficial, not here. And its standard pdf/ edition is not safe to extract: a reading of the Ley de Migración from it silently dropped 21 of 162 articles, including article 52, the one listing every migration status. Use the pdf_mov/ edition and check article numbering for gaps after any fetch.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«UMA: A la Unidad de Medida y Actualización que se utiliza como unidad de cuenta, índice, base, medida o referencia para determinar la cuantía del pago de las obligaciones y supuestos previstos en las leyes federales, de las entidades federativas y de la Ciudad de México, así como en las disposiciones jurídicas que emanen de dichas leyes.»Our translation - not official
UMA: the Unit of Measurement and Update used as a unit of account, index, base, measure or reference to determine the amount payable under the obligations and cases provided for in federal, state and Mexico City laws, and in the legal provisions deriving from those laws.
The closing words - provisions deriving from those laws - are what reach administrative instruments such as the visa guidelines.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chamber of Deputies' law library, which maintains the texto vigente of every federal statute together with a reform history for each. It is where the Ley de Migración, the Ley de Nacionalidad, the Código Fiscal and the Ley Aduanera can be read as amended rather than reconstructed from the decrees that amended them.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Nothing below statute level is here. The Lineamientos, acuerdos and administrative instruments are where almost all Mexican immigration practice actually changes, and none of them is published by this body - the Reglamento de la Ley de Migración it does carry has not been reformed since 2014 and is in places overtaken by instruments it cannot show you. It is also not an authority on when a reform took effect: the transitional articles of the amending decree live in the Diario Oficial, not here. And its standard pdf/ edition is not safe to extract: a reading of the Ley de Migración from it silently dropped 21 of 162 articles, including article 52, the one listing every migration status. Use the pdf_mov/ edition and check article numbering for gaps after any fetch.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«todas las menciones al salario mínimocomo unidad de cuenta, índice, base, medida o referencia para determinar la cuantía de las obligaciones ysupuestos previstos en las leyes federales, estatales, del Distrito Federal, así como en cualquier disposiciónjurídica que emane de todas las anteriores, se entenderán referidas a la Unidad de Medida y Actualización.»Our translation - not official
all references to the minimum wage as a unit of account, index, base, measure or reference to determine the amount of obligations and cases provided for in federal, state and Federal District laws, and in any legal provision deriving from all of the above, shall be understood as references to the Unit of Measurement and Update.
This is the bridge. The 2014 visa guidelines were written in days of the minimum wage; from 2016 those words had to be read as days of UMA, and the UMA has grown far more slowly than the minimum wage. The Diario Oficial's HTML edition drops the space at some line breaks, which is why words run together inside this quotation. It is quoted as the publisher renders it rather than tidied.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Mexico's official gazette. An instrument takes effect on publication here, and the visa guidelines, the acuerdos that amend them and the annual UMA values all appear here first and sometimes only here.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and never consolidates them. The 2025 visa guidelines and the 2026 acuerdo amending them are two separate documents with no merged text anywhere, so what the rule says today has to be assembled by hand. An article number inside an amending acuerdo - ARTÍCULO ÚNICO, Transitorio Tercero - is an instruction to amend, not an article of the resulting instrument. Its HTML conversion also drops the space at many line breaks, so stored text contains run-together words and, in preambles, whole paragraphs without spaces; a quotation carrying such a join is reproducing the publisher exactly and must say so. Note that www.dof.gob.mx fails TLS validation while dof.gob.mx works.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The statistics institute publishes the UMA in the official gazette in the first ten days of January, and it takes effect on 1 February. An application assessed in January is assessed against the previous year's unit.
The 2026 variation was about 3.7% over 2025. The UMA tracks the consumer price index and nothing else.
Fees, by contrast, are written in pesos directly in the Ley Federal de Derechos and are revised by the annual revenue decree, most recently on 7 November 2025. Fees and thresholds move on different calendars and for different reasons.
Comparing a 2014 multiple with a 2025 one tells you how the instrument was rewritten, not how much harder the test became. The units differ, and we do not publish a minimum wage figure to bridge them.