Visas & residency, without the forum panic.

01The short answer

Visit on the tourist permit. Move on residente temporal. Settle on residente permanente. The one thing to internalize today: residency applications start at a Mexican consulate outside Mexico, not in Mexico. People who learn that late lose months to it.

Standard disclaimer, and I mean it: I'm a real estate broker, not an immigration attorney. Rules and dollar thresholds shift, consulates apply them differently, and your situation is yours. Treat this as the map, then verify the current numbers with your consulate or a good facilitator before you book anything.

02The three doors

Door 1 — Tourist (FMM). For visits. Up to 180 days, no work for a Mexican employer, no path that requires it to become anything else. Free-ish, instant, and discretionary at the border.

Door 2 — Residente temporal. The mover's visa. Valid 1 year, renewable in-country to a total of 4. You can hold a bank account, get a proper lease, import a car, add work permission if needed. After 4 years it converts to permanent.

Door 3 — Residente permanente. Indefinite. No renewals, work allowed, the closest thing to done. Higher financial bar, or 4 years of temporal, or family ties.

Most readers of this site follow the classic path: a few scouting trips on the FMM, then temporal from their home consulate, then permanente by conversion. It's boring and it works.

03The tourist permit, honestly

The FMM is what you get by default when you fly in or cross the border. Two honest warnings the brochures skip:

180 days is a maximum, not a promise. Since around 2021, immigration officers grant what they judge your trip needs — plenty of people still get 180, some get 30 with a hotel booking for a week. Land crossings into Baja are generally relaxed, but the discretion is real. Bring evidence of your plans (return ticket, lodging) and answer plainly.

The perpetual-tourist lifestyle is on borrowed time. For years people lived here on back-to-back FMMs, driving to the border twice a year. It still happens; it's also exactly what the shorter discretionary grants are designed to squeeze. If you're actually living here — house, dog, routine — get residency. It's not that hard, and every system in your life (banking, car, healthcare) works better with a CURP and a resident card.

04Temporary residency: the actual process

The sequence, because the order is the part that trips people:

1. Book a consulate appointment in your home country (or any country where you have legal status). Consulate booking systems fill up; in the US, some cities run weeks or months out, so this appointment sets your whole timeline.

2. Show up with proof of solvency — bank statements showing the required income or savings (numbers below), passport, photos, forms, fee. The interview is usually short. If approved, they put a visa sticker in your passport, typically valid 180 days for one entry.

3. Enter Mexico on that visa — and at the border or airport, make sure you're processed as a resident-in-progress (this is the canje). Do not let a rushed agent stamp you in as a tourist; it voids the process.

4. Within 30 days, finish at the INM office. For this corridor that's La Paz. Fingerprints, more forms, fee, and eventually the card. Facilitators in La Paz will shepherd this stage for a modest fee, and for most people they're worth every peso.

05Permanent residency

Three realistic ways in: convert after 4 years of temporal (the default path — no financial test at conversion); qualify directly at a consulate on the higher savings/pension bar, which many consulates reserve in practice for retirees with pension income; or family ties (Mexican spouse or child, via a different process). Permanente never renews, permits work, and only asks one thing of you: tell INM if you change address. One quirk worth knowing: permanent residents face restrictions on driving foreign-plated cars, so if you're attached to your US-plated truck, that's a reason some people deliberately stay temporal.

06The money thresholds, demystified

The internet argues about the dollar figures because they're derived, not fixed: consulates calculate them as multiples of the Mexican daily minimum wage (or UMA), so they move every January when the minimum wage does, and they swing with the exchange rate. Worse, consulates differ on which index they use and how many months of statements they want. That's the entire mystery.

The actual instrument changed and almost nobody has caught up: the governing rules are the Lineamientos Generales para la expedición de visas published in the DOF on 25 July 2025, replacing the 2014 version still cited all over the internet. The thresholds in that text are not dollars. They are multiples of the UMA, expressed in días de UMA, and that is the fact worth carrying: temporal is 680 UMA días of monthly income over six months, or an average balance of 11,460 UMA días over twelve. Permanente is 1,140 for pension income or 45,850 for balances. Add 220 per dependent. The UMA for 2026 is 117.31 pesos per day (INEGI comunicado 1/26, in force 1 February 2026), which puts temporal income at about 79,771 pesos a month and the permanente balance at roughly 5.38 million pesos. Home equity sometimes counts; property in Mexico above a threshold sometimes qualifies you on its own. Get the current figures from the specific consulate you'll use — not from a forum, and not from this page a year from now.

Now the thing that makes people think the system is arbitrary. Consulates publish different dollar figures for the same law: San Diego has shown about $4,510 a month, Las Vegas about $4,630, Spain about €3,550. Those are not consulates exercising discretion, and no official text authorises them to set their own amounts. They are the same UMA multiple converted at different exchange rates and, in some cases, a different UMA vintage. Convert the multiple yourself, then take the published figure from the specific consulate you will actually use as the operative number for your appointment.

Two more traps. INM's in-country change-of-status thresholds are different numbers entirely (500 and 25,000 UMA días), so never let anyone present one set as “the” requirement. And the points system you may have read about is not live: INM's own wording is “Aún no se ha implementado el sistema de puntos.” Checked August 2026.

On hiring help

I used a consultant in Mexico for my own residency process. The bottom line first: I do not think I would have got through it without them, it would have been a whole pain, and it was well worth the money. Before you follow me into that, two things I checked rather than assumed. Mexico does not license or certify immigration facilitators — there is no Mexican equivalent of Canada's College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants or Australia's MARA registry, so “immigration consultant” here describes what someone does, not a credential anyone issued. And INM itself warns about intermediaries: procedures are personal, official forms are free, no third party is authorised to charge you for scheduling an appointment, and you should never sign blank documents or hand originals of your passport or birth certificate to an unauthorised third party.

None of that makes a good consultant a bad idea — mine was worth every peso. It means the category carries no guarantee, so the diligence is yours: ask for references from people who finished the same process at the same consulate, keep your originals in your own hands, and never pay anyone for an INM appointment slot. Checked August 2026.

07The classic mistakes

Trying to start residency inside Mexico. With narrow exceptions (family unity, regularization windows), you can't. The consulate step comes first.

Getting stamped as a tourist while carrying a residency visa. Watch the officer, say "canje," check the stamp before you walk away.

Missing the 30-day INM window. See above. It's the most common self-inflicted wound.

Letting temporal lapse. Renew before expiry — in-country renewal is easy; resurrecting a dead card is not.

Assuming residency = tax residency. Different systems. Immigration status and where you owe taxes are separate questions; if you have real income, spend an hour with a cross-border accountant before you move.

08Quick answers

Can I buy property as a tourist? Yes. Property ownership doesn't require residency — the buying guide covers how foreigners hold coastal title. Plenty of owners here are on FMMs. Residency just makes the living part smoother.

Can I work remotely on a tourist permit? Working remotely for a foreign employer, paid abroad, is the great gray area; it's widely done and not what the no-work rule was written about. Working for anyone in Mexico requires work permission. If remote work is your whole plan, temporal with a clean tax setup is the grown-up answer.

Where's the INM office for the corridor? La Paz, about an hour away. Budget 2 to 3 visits across the process, or hire a facilitator and usually make fewer.

Do my kids and spouse qualify with me? Yes — dependents can apply linked to the qualifying applicant, with added solvency amounts per dependent.

How long does the whole thing take? Consulate appointment availability is the long pole. From first booking attempt to card in hand: commonly 2 to 5 months. Start before you list your house.

09Sources

Primary: Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) · Mexican consulate directory (SRE) — each consulate posts its own current requirements and appointment system · FMM digital form. Thresholds cited are recent-applicant ranges, not official figures; they change every January and vary by consulate. Verify before you plan.