Mexico Changes Immigration Requirements Again | Moving to Mexico

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Transcript

Justin Keltner: 0:36

As of June, 2025, there are now new rules for immigration to Mexico. So if you've been thinking about moving to Mexico from the US or anywhere else recently, you wanna make sure that you're up to date with all of these new rules and regulations and how they affect you. That's what we're gonna cover in today's video. Hi, I'm Justin and on this channel Entrepreneur, expat. We talk about everything to do with living the life of your dreams abroad, building a location independent business so that you can actually make that happen, as well as all of the support systems and infrastructure and visas and accounting and all the other things that you need to make that transition as smooth as possible if that's something you're interested in. Subscribe to this channel and give it a thumbs up as well. Click that notification bell and if you wanna take things to the next level and you're like, yes, I want your help and your team's help moving to Mexico and getting all my paperwork and everything else squared away, then go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and we can help you there. So what is the main thing that's actually happening right now with immigration in Mexico? In just the past few months, Mexico has updated the residency visa guidelines, so specifically the financial requirements are now based on something called UMA in Spanish. That's Unida de Meida, a legal index published annually by the I-N-E-G-I, Mexico's Statistics Agency instead of the minimum wage. It used to all be based on the daily minimum wage. And so this change is now causing a little bit of chaos with the consulates and everybody trying to catch up and understand what's going on. So I'm gonna give you the exact peso and dollar amounts we're gonna get a little bit. Uh, numerical here. So just bear with me'cause there's a lot of numbers and figures and conversions and things like that to cover. We're gonna talk about why the change was made and clarify why instant permanent residency is now also limited to retirees. That's another thing that they have recently implemented. So before 2025, most consulates calculated its solvency using Mexico's daily minimum wage. The 2025 Mentos or official guidelines published in the DOF Mexicans Government Gazette switched that calculation to UMA and UMA is updated once a year, while minimum wage has historically been rising much faster due to social policy. So the reason for this change is that using UMA is going to keep the requirements much more stable and predictable. So what are the 2025 residency thresholds now? As of, uh, as of now, as of 2025, that UMA is set at 113.14 pesos per day, or thirty four hundred and thirty nine pesos approximately per month. So using those values, here are the actual requirements that you're gonna face at the consulates this year. As a temporary resident going the monthly income route, you need 680 times the UMA for about the past six months, or in some cases 12 months, which equals 76,900 pesos per month, or around$4,100 US per month. The cool thing is that's actually a little bit lower than what the amount was before, but of course these values are expected to go up every single year. Just perhaps not quite as fast as they've been going up. Now, if you're a temporary resident that's qualifying based on savings or investment, you're gonna need 11,460 times the UMA average over 12 months, which equals 1.3 million Mexican pesos approximately, or 69,700 US dollars in average balance in your savings or investment accounts. Over the course of the last 12 months now for permanent residency for retirees or pensioners only. Uh, and I'll get to why in a second. You need a 1,140 times the UMA per month in pension deposits for the last six months, which is about 130,000 Mexican pesos or 6,900 USD, or 45,850 times the UMA average. In savings over the last 12 months. So that's around 5.1 million Mexican pesos, or 279,000 US dollars. In your savings, or in this case, retirement accounts, uh, over the last 12 months. That is your average, uh, savings balance at the end of the month for each of those last 12 months. So it's about 279,000. USD that you're gonna have to have to get permanent residency. And here's the new trick that they added, which is that they are no longer giving instant permanent residency unless you are retired. So even if, let's say you're in your thirties, forties, fifties, you meet the higher threshold, which is I've got 300 k free and clear US per person, uh, that wants to move with me and my family. You've got that in your savings or investment accounts. They're no longer giving that permanent residence right away. You actually have to be of retirement age and prove that you're either fully retired or receiving a pension. That's a huge change in those, uh, June and July guidelines. Everyone else needs to first go through the temporary residence process first, and then, and only then can they transition after four years. Two permanent residents, unless they qualify through family or another similar route. So let's get into the details now of why Mexico is actually using that UMA instead of the minimum wage. So like we said earlier, minimum wage is a social policy tool. That's been increasing aggressively every single year. So if solvency was tied to minimum wage, the thresholds would keep rising sharply. And we've seen this, it's been going up by five 10, in some cases, 15% every single year in terms of the requirements in that, not just makes it difficult for foreigners to come and move to Mexico, uh, above and beyond what the actual relative. Cost of living increase would be, but it also changes the requirements for other government fees. And so by tacking this onto the new uma, we're stabilizing those requirements around those different government fees for both foreigners and Mexicans alike, and setting pace. Uh, and basically adjusting them only once a year for inflation. It just makes things a lot more predictable for applicants, a lot more consistent for the officials and a lot more palatable for locals as well. Uh, so that instead of having different government fees that you might have to pay as a Mexican calculated based on that minimum wage, it just didn't make sense to charge people based on that. So if you are currently going through that process of trying to figure out if you qualify, uh, and you're looking to get your residence from Mexico, first of all, don't go it alone. It is very difficult. You have to be able to speak Spanish in many cases. You need to know your way around the immigration system, the appointment scheduling system in Mexico. There's so many little details, so much minutia that you just don't think about where Sure, you could figure it out if you're willing to travel to 2, 3, 4, 5 different cities and get. Denied various times because of silly clerical errors or paperwork that you're missing, or a number that wasn't converted properly, or perhaps a bank statement that wasn't signed on the right letterhead, because some consulates require that if you're not a resident of the state, it's a, it's a mess, guys. So if you are looking to. Uh, have support with that process. Just book your free consultation@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult, and you could speak with me or a member of my team about handling that for you. Fully white glove start to finish, including even picking you up from the airport when you land, handling your housing here in Mexico while you're getting your residency card process, which sometimes can take a couple of weeks or longer. Uh, we handle all of those details for you fully white glove, so you, you don't have to even think about it. But here are the numbers anyway. Here are the steps to qualify so that you do have an idea of what is actually going on. So for income, bring six months of clean bank statements showing deposits of at least. 4,100 USD, uh, to be precise. Forty one hundred and thirty two USD per month, that's a minimum. It's not an average. So if maybe you're self-employed or you, you've kind of had like career changes in one month, you've got zero and the other month you've got 10,000. Even if it averages out, you're not gonna qualify. You need six months, or ideally 12 months, where the minimum is$4,132 every single month. And for savings, it's very similar. The average balance every single month must be at least 69,000 and some change, I'm gonna say$70,000, uh, just to be absolutely safe because they do adjust this sometimes. So you've gotta have at least that 70,000 USD in the savings or investments accounts for every month in those past 12 months. And then for retirees applying directly for permanent, make sure you've got that income of approximately 7,000 per month every single month from your pension. Or every single month in the last 12 months, you've got around 300, uh, around$300,000 or$279,000 in savings every single month. Average balance closing out that month. Those are the documents that you need to have, and in most cases, it would behoove you to also bring a letter on the bank letterhead signed by a representative of that bank that validates those accounts. More often than not, they're starting to ask for that almost all the time. So you want to have that. So those are the numbers, those are the changes. They're not really massive changes right now in terms of what's required. In fact, if you were just on the cusp and you had maybe.$4,200 a month in income, you might not have been able to qualify before they switched all these things over from minimum wage to uma. Perhaps now you can qualify because it did get adjusted plus or minus a few hundred dollars. Uh, and what this is also going to do is make it so that most likely the requirements aren't gonna go up as much every year as they have been. But I will tell you this, even though they've stabilized the numbers that they're using, they could all out forego one of these programs and say, you know what? We're not. Accepting remote income anymore as a qualifier, you've gotta have that money in your savings account. You've gotta have that 70,000 or. Almost 300,000 USD for retirees in your savings accounts to qualify. Uh, it's not uncommon for them to go from one day having a program available or a certain type of income or savings, uh, scheme available to actually get a visa here in Mexico to the next day. It doesn't exist anymore. They actually just did this to, with the, uh, regularization program in Mexico. It used to be that with those sorts of things, you could just regularize your stay in the country for a couple thousand dollars in fees and be good to go with a four year residence card without having to prove any sort of income or savings. They, they took that away from one day to the next, uh, just earlier this year. So if you're thinking about doing this, you do not want to wait. You want to take action now? Book a call with our team@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult. Uh, you can buy resources down below as well. We've got coaching programs, we've got guidebooks, we've got all sorts of things to help you out, whether you are just beginning the process and you want a little bit of guidance to take you to the next level or perhaps. You're really serious and you're like, Hey, I'm ready to go. I'm sick of everything that's going on in the us, uh, or Canada or wherever. Uh, I want your help. You can book that consult there and we can help you along with that entire process. But do not hesitate. Do not wait. Uh, this is a small change, but. Sometimes they come out with small changes that are favorable. Sometimes they come out with really big changes that are unfavorable. So you do not want to be the person, uh, like people we've talked to that have been denied visas for Portugal or Spain or other countries because they no longer meet the requirements or Mexico because they qualified last year and, and this year they don't. So definitely book that consult. And you can also grab our free Moving to Mexico guide@entrepreneurexpat.com slash Mexico. Check out the other resources below this video. Make sure you hit that like button and you subscribe to our channel and we'll see you again on the next one. I.