How to Move to Mexico from the US
Moving to Mexico from the US is not difficult, as long as you know what to do.
The first thing to understand is that, while you may be very familiar with Mexico, it still is a different, sovereign country, with its own rules for immigration and customs. And you need to follow those rules.
Mexican Residency Visas
If you are planning on moving to Mexico, as opposed to just vacationing here, you will need a residency visa. The two main types of visas you can get are the temporal and the permanente. Generally speaking, you start the process of moving to Mexico from the US at a Mexican consulate in the US. There are more than 50 of them, so you can probably find one close to your home.
Very few Mexican consulates will allow you to just walk in and see an employee. Instead, you will almost always need to have an appointment. Getting this appointment may be the most difficult part of getting your visa. Each consulate sets its own rules. Some say you need to go through a website (that sometimes does not work), while others say you need to call every week to see if there is an opening, because they won’t take appointments more than a week in the future. Others have other methods.
It is more difficult to get a permanente residency visa than to get a temporal residency visa. Both have requirements for net worth (typically, cash in the bank) and / or monthly income. Generally, you will need to show six months of bank statements for the temporal and one year of bank statements for the permanente. Many consulates will not give you a permanente the first time you apply if you are not retired and can show monthly retirement income. Others will.
The temporal residency visa is good for one year and then you can renew it in Mexico for one, two, or three additional years. The permanente does not need to be renewed because it’s permanent.
Once you’ve been accepted to start your Mexican residency process, the consulate will ask you for your US passport and they will place a sticker in your passport. Once that sticker is in your passport you can utilize the menaje de casa with most legitimate movers who would move your used household goods from the US to Mexico.
Once you have your sticker for either the temporal or the permanente, you have six months in which to make your next entry into Mexico, at which time you must tell the immigration official that you have the sticker, so he or she can put you into the system. You will then have up thirty days to present yourself to your local immigration office and go through the process of getting your canje, which is just the Mexican way of saying that you would get your plastic card. At that point, you are a legal resident in Mexico and you do not need to carry your US passport.
Using the Menaje de Casa to Move Your Used Household Goods to Mexico
Once you’ve gotten the sticker in your passport that shows that you’ve started your residency visa process, you are eligible to use the menaje de casa to move your used household goods to Mexico one time, tax free.
There are all sorts of different rules regarding the process and how much time you have after getting your sticker to execute your move. Here are just a few possibilities:
- You have six months or less from the time you started your visa process in order to execute your import of used household goods from the US to Mexico.
- If you have a permanente, you have six months or less from the time you started your visa process in order to execute your import of used household goods from the US to Mexico but if you have a temporal, you can move your used household goods from the US to Mexico at any time.
- Irrespective of if you have a Mexican temporal residency visa or a Mexican permanente residency visa, as long as you have started the process with the sticker, you can move your used household goods from the US to Mexico at any time.
Which one applies to you? That all depends on which moving company you use, which customs brokers you use, and which port of entry your household goods are imported through. Just make sure you talk with your legitimate mover about your specific situation to get their answer, and if you don’t like the answer, you may want to try talking with a different legitimate mover.
