How to Get Mexican Residency - 2025 Tips & Tricks

Moving Abroad Resources:

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Roadmap Guidebook that walks you through the five phases of moving abroad ($27): https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/relocate

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Blueprint Course which offers step by step guidance on everything from choosing the right country to immigration to taxes and everything in between: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/blueprint

👉 Want us to handle the details of your move abroad? Apply for our white-glove relocation services here: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult

👉 Free Moving to Mexico Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico

👉 Free Moving Abroad Checklist: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad 

Remote Work and Online Income Resources:

👉 Expat Income Accelerator course which shows you the multiple ways you can make money globally based on our 15+ years of experience in online business, investing internationally and living in multiple countries: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/income

👉 Get Your First High Paying Client Online Bootcamp which walks you through the first four foundational steps of creating and monetizing an online business based on 15+ years of experience in online business: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/firstclient-yt

👉 YouTube Mastery Workshop which shows you how we’ve built two YouTube channels that bring clients and passive income from digital course sales (including turning Entrepreneur Expat into a six-figure business in six months): https://www.YouTubeMasteryWorkshop.com

👉LinkedIn Mastery Workshop which shows you how to use LinkedIn to find remote work, clients and connect with recruiters based on Justin’s experience building a six-figure business and finding remote work on LinkedIn: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/linkedin

👉 Free Make Money From Anywhere Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/money-guide 

V I D E O S    T O    W A T C H    N E X T :


Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2

Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23

Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j


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Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com


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Disclaimer: The information in this video should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Entrepreneur Expat can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.

Transcript

Justin: 0:36

One of the common myths I hear about residency in Mexico is that if you get residency here in Mexico, you have to live here full-time or you risk losing it. That's not exactly true, and Mexico can actually be a great place for a back pocket residency that you can have without. Needing to maintain consistent physical presence in the country. If you pay attention to a few key details. In this video, we're gonna be breaking down how long you actually need to stay in Mexico to qualify for and keep your residency, whether you are temporary or a permanent resident. Hi, I'm Justin Keltner and here on Entrepreneur Expat. We talk about moving overseas, building a life and business in a country that is not necessarily where you were born, as well as financial strategies and business strategies and tax strategies to help you navigate the entire process. Of course, this is not legal advice or financial advice, consult your professional, but we do have. Free consults available to those with a million dollars or more in net worth. Where we do connect you with all of the top legal and real estate and immigration professionals all over the world to help you make your dream of moving abroad at reality. You can find that@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult, and make sure you subscribe to this video if you're interested in more content like this, and check out all the free resources down below as well, including the Moving to Mexico guide. Where we lay out the entire process of how to move here, that's available completely free below this video for those of you that maybe don't qualify or aren't ready for those relocation services. First, let's discuss a little bit how long you actually need to stay for to get your visa. And I'll give you this from the perspective of the clients that we work with every single week here, who we bring down to Mexico and help them get their temporary residency. So you can typically apply for temporary or permanent residency through a Mexican consulate abroad. You don't actually need to live here in Mexico. And in fact, in most cases, you can't apply for temporary residency as a foreigner from within Mexico, other than a few edge cases, like where you've got a very close family member that's Mexican and you can basically join them in the country through, different types of visa processes. But we don't do, we don't do too much of that. most of the people that we work with are applying through income or through assets, so they're gonna do that at. The consulate abroad. Now, of course, approval depends on your financials, either your income or your savings, not how long that you've actually been in Mexico. Once you're approved for that visa, you typically have 180 days to enter Mexico and complete that residency. Process. So you're gonna spend typically at least a few weeks in Mexico making sure that you finalize everything. You've got an immigration appointment, perhaps a follow-up appointment if they don't have the card or they're delayed for some reason, or they're just really busy because so many people are coming down here at those appointments. You're gonna get your fingerprints taken, you're gonna get your photo taken, they're gonna get your signature to print on the card, and then sometimes that day or other times. A few days later, they're gonna call you back in so that you can actually pick that card up. Now, after that, you can actually come and go as you please, but there is one caveat, which is you've gotta make sure that you are in Mexico to handle your renewals. Now there's a little bit of a grace period for that in, in a lot of cases, like within around 30 days. But you gotta make sure that if you get temporary residents, they will typically give that to you for a year at first. Then you go back to immigration after that year when it's about to expire. They'll give you that for another three years, and then once those three years are up, generally you can convert that temporary residence to permanent residence. The cool thing is Mexico does not require you to spend a certain number of days in the country. Each year, you just show up for those renewals. You're pretty much good to go. You can live here full-time, part-time, or just visit. Visit occasionally as long as you renew before your card expires. Now, who knows if this is gonna be applicable. Three or five or 10 years from now, this is how things are now, which is another reason that I encourage you if you have been thinking about relocating to Mexico or really anywhere else, that you book that call with our teams that we can help assess your unique situation and actually advise you. On the process, make sure you get in line as soon as possible to get that consulate appointment, to get that residency card, whether it's for Mexico or somewhere else, because they're always changing the rules, they're changing the requirements, so you wanna make sure that you secure yours before things change again. If you are planning on being gone for long stretches of time, then you're gonna want to track those expiration dates of your cards very carefully. You must be physically present in Mexico to renew the card, so make sure that you plan your travel. Accordingly. Now we're gonna jump into when you can actually qualify for permanent residency and the details of that. So like I mentioned earlier, you do need to have four years of temporary residency and at that point you can apply for permanent residency. In some cases you can apply for permanent residency right away. But since this last year, they've actually been only making that direct to permanent residency route available to people that are already retired. That means you're in your sixties at least, and you're already receiving a pension of some type and that you're not working anymore. that's a very important detail. So when you do have permanent residency, either because you get it right away through being retired and having at least.$300,000 in the bank as of this year or around$7,200 per month in a pension. You don't need to worry about renewal. Or of course, if you did those four years of temporary residence. You renew that, you change it to permanent, and then you no longer have to renew that permanent residency card. You can still live part-time in Mexico. You can still live abroad. There's really no formal requirement to spend a number of days each year in Mexico. Now there is another little caveat because being gone for too long can raise questions if you're trying to apply for naturalization later. The citizenship in Mexico does require actual, actual presence, so it's not a lot. Typically, at least as of today, what they're asking for is six months of total time in Mexico. You wanna make sure you document this, you wanna make sure you get your. Your passport actually stamped whenever you're gonna leave the country. If you, you're holding that temporary or even permanent resident card so that they know how long you've been in the country. If you just fly, let's say to a border town and then cross back to the us, but without getting your passport stamped, then they have no way of actually knowing how long you've been in Mexico. So you've gotta be in Mexico for six months out of two years, which it averages out to about three months per year, or it could just be six months in one year. Those two years prior to applying for citizenship. So like I said, that's three months in year one, three months in year two, before you apply for that Mexican passport. And you need a minimum of five years of total legal documented residence, regardless of the amount of time in those five years that you're in the country, other than the last. Two years before you apply for the passport. If you have questions, of course, feel free to reach out to us. Feel free to book that call so that we can answer all of your specific questions and some of the personal details and nuance that perhaps we can't get into too much detail on in this video. So there are a few times where you also can lose your residency. So we alluded to this earlier, but if you let your temporary resident card expire without renewing it in time, you're gonna have to start the process over from. At the beginning, you can also lose your temporary residence or even permanent in some cases if you go through the wrong entry points when you're coming into the country. So they have these new eGates as an example, where you can scan your passport in electronically as a tourist, and you'll be able to enter a little bit quicker than if you were to wait in line. the immigration kiosks there when you're actually entering, that's a problem if you have a residency card. In fact, we worked, fortunately this has never happened for any of our clients because we advise them in detail exactly what they need to do to get, and then also to keep that residency so they don't have any issues. But we have facilitators we've worked with where they've had people in the past. Went through those electronic gates, not once, not twice, three times, and she had to fix, uh, that issue. The first two times, she was able to fix it. The third time, the government said, you know what? You're gonna lose your residency. We just don't have any more patients for you, and there's no guarantee that they'll even give you. Two or three shots of doing something like that wrong before you will lose your residency card. Have to start over from scratch and potentially have to meet even higher thresholds for proving that you are qualified to get that residency. Now, if you leave Mexico for more than 180 days after your card expires, you lose your legal status less than that. There's sometimes ways that you can fix it, but you wanna make sure, that you are very careful about those. Renewal dates. Now, permanent residents rarely lose their visa unless they violate Mexican law or voluntarily renounce it. Again, be careful still not to go through those eGates because that can definitely complicate things, but once you're permanent, you're definitely a lot more safe. Amanda and I are gonna have our permanent residence and then Mexican passports in just the next couple years here, so we're. We're pretty excited about that and just be, be, be aware though some local immigration offices might interpret continuous residents differently if applying for citizenship especially. So make sure you book that call with our team so that we can talk about your unique situation and make sure that this would be a good residence for you, either to actually live here, to live here part-time, or even just to have that plan B in your back pocket. You can later convert to a Mexican passport, which is actually ranked quite well. There's hundreds of visa free countries that you can go to without Mexican passport, so that's pretty exciting. Now, here are some strategic tips for part-time residents. You want to keep your documents up to date, make sure you're, you're renewing them before you're planning on traveling, so that might be renewing your US passport if you're a US citizen or you're a Canadian passport. you wanna also maintain proofs of residence, so your, your lease or your utility bills for things like opening bank accounts and for renewals, because a lot of the time immigration will ask for a proof of address in Mexico when you are renewing one of those cards. You also might consider getting a Mexican tax ID or RFC number as well as a bank account, even if you're here part-time because it shows stronger ties in case that they do make the citizenship process. Difficult later. And if your goal is eventual citizenship, then you wanna plan to spend more time in the country each year, and especially in those two years prior to applying for your citizenship. So at the end of the day, you really don't have to live in Mexico full-time to get or keep your residency, but. Definitely plan to to plan ahead and make sure you know how renewals work, how timelines work, and how that's going to affect your travel plans. And if you are somebody that's got a million dollars or more in net worth, you're looking to understand this visa strategy better. You wanna get some personalized assistance from our team on your relocation. Whether you're looking to come part-time, full-time, or just start the process, then apply for that free consultation@entrepreneurexpat.com. Slash consult. and if you're not quite there yet, then check out all of our free guides, including our free Mexico relocation guide@entrepreneurexpat.com slash Mexico. Thanks again for watching, and we'll see you again on the next one.