Mexican Consulates Under Investigation — Why This Matters If You Want a Plan B

The U.S. is reviewing Mexican consulates, which has significant implications for anyone considering a move to Mexico. This issue extends beyond simple international relations, highlighting a broader challenge for those seeking global diversification. We explain what this means for your plans to secure residency in Mexico or establish a plan B abroad.

We handle your relocation and global diversification. Apply to work with us: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult

Interested in moving to Mexico? Download our free Moving to Mexico guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/Mexico

Looking to move abroad anywhere in the world? Download our free Moving Abroad Checklist: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad

Transcript

0:00

The US is reviewing all 53 Mexican consulates for potential closure. This isn't just a diplomatic headline. It's a signal for anyone thinking about moving to Mexico or building a plan B abroad. In this video, we'll talk about what's happening, why it's part of a bigger problem, and what it means if you're serious about global diversification. I'm Justin Keller from Entrepreneur Expat, and here we help freedom-minded professionals and entrepreneurs build global lives without sacrificing comfort, income, or security. If global diversification is on your radar, make sure you like and subscribe to this channel. This is exactly what we cover here every single week. And if Mexico is part of your plan, grab our free guide at entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico. If you're thinking more broadly about moving abroad or building a plan B, you can head to entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad for our moving abroad checklist. And if you have a million dollars or more in assets and you want hands-on help, then apply for a free consultation at entrepreneurexpat.com/consult. So what's going on here that is causing this review of the Mexican consulates in the US? Specifically, Marco Rubio, the head of the US State Department, initiated a review of all fifty-three Mexican consulates in the United States. This could potentially lead to closures, and Mexico runs the largest foreign consular network inside the US, spread across twenty-five states. Some of the things that triggered this review included the deaths of two American CIA officers during a counter-narcotics operation in northern Mexico, and further friction was caused by the DOJ indicting a Mexican governor and nine others on drug and weapons charges. Mexico refused extradition. Now, of course, the official line is that they're aligning the foreign policy with the America First agenda, uh, but no specific reason given for this consulate review and potential closure other than that. And there is precedent for this. The US has previously closed China's Houston consulate As well as three Russian facilities during escalating tensions, according to CBS News. Now, my take is this isn't just about politics. It's really about a bigger trend of declining Western nations asserting whatever leverage they have left, and US-Mexico relations are really the latest pressure point in this big worldwide game of risk, if you will. And this pattern is playing out across multiple countries, and the way I see it is every single time you see a headline like this, it's just one more reason to start or continue to diversify globally. I've said this before many times on this channel, single country dependence is the real risk here. You want to not just depend on one country's government, one country's business, one country's economy. You want to depend on multiple countries and really have your eggs in multiple baskets. That's really the entire idea behind global diversification and something that we talk about a lot here on Entrepreneur Expat. Options really only exist if you actually build them in advance, and that means not waiting until the last minute, not waiting until things are really bad. So why does this particular topic here really matter? Why, why does this consulate review of Mexican consulates in the US really matter whether you're looking potentially at moving to Mexico or maybe not? Well It's really just another bit of writing on the wall saying that global diversification is not optional anymore. It truly is the strategy. Because if there are fewer consulates, if they do end up actually closing some of those consulates, of course, fewer consulates are going to mean fewer resources and more friction. It could potentially trigger retaliation on residency visa processing. Uh, this has happened in the past for sure. The US does something that upsets another country, and then that other country institutes countermeasures, uh, in order to get back at the US. Of course, the timelines could become a lot slower, the requirements could rise, and the options could narrow as well, whether it's for Mexico or for another country. And, you know, we always talk about this, the window to act is narrowing, and the best time to try to get that, that plan B passport or that plan B residency was yesterday. The only second-best time truly is right now. It's today, right? That window is absolutely narrowing. And in fact, we hear stories all the time about clients getting locked out of their first choice countries. It happens very, very regularly. In fact, we've had clients that decided to work with us with our white glove relocation services, which you can find more about at entrepreneurexpat.com/consult. They decided to work with us, but before that, they were attempting to get residency in countries like Portugal. And then, of course, what did Portugal do? Portugal locked down, uh, their visa programs and made it a lot more difficult to get residency. So they said, "Well, okay, let's at least do it for Mexico." But For a lot of people, Mexico was their first plan B. And what happened was instead of, you know, acting right away, you know, they reach out to us and say, "Okay, well, maybe we'll do this in a year, maybe we'll do this in two years." And then unfortunately, they were maybe in the threshold for the permanent residency or temporary residency, and they ended up just for a few thousand dollars getting locked out of Mexico. And it's very, very likely that the pressure's just gonna keep coming down. Uh, more and more people are gonna get priced out of moving to Mexico or moving to their first choice country. And like I said, it's just- it's writing on the wall of a much greater trend at play for this worldwide game of musical chairs, which is when you have money, you typically still have options. But as time goes on, you need more and more money, uh, to be able to access a lot of these options. And Mexico is still accessible, especially for many of those high net worth clients that we work with on a weekly basis. But the environment really is starting to shift. And, um, what most people get wrong about things like this is that they're not necessarily locked out overnight, right? We, we don't wanna necessarily believe the panic because there's a lot of other people right now on YouTube saying, "Oh, this is, you know, the end of being able to get your visa in Mexico, and it's... You know, you're not gonna be able to, uh, even do that anymore." That's not necessarily true. You don't wanna believe the panic. Um, but global diversification is not something that you do when it's urgent because You've already probably lost your primary options, or there's so many people trying to go down that same path that it's a lot more difficult for you than it would've been when you were, you know, to, to try it when, when you knew that you needed to diversify but you weren't feeling the pressure. You wanna do it before you're under that immense pressure. Waiting does not preserve the options that you have. It really eliminates them. You wanna do things before the landscape gets super tough. So here are some of the things that I would recommend that you do now. You wanna treat this as a signal, not just a headline. You know, you don't wanna necessarily panic, but by the same token, your process of moving to Mexico or anywhere else is going to take some time. And the earlier you move, the more options you have. Not only that, the more we're able to help you if things actually do go wrong or get trickier or the requirements change because at least we're staying ahead of things, at least we're moving while, uh, the playing field is, is a little bit more in your favor. And also, Don't anchor to one single country. We have a lot of clients that are moving here now with our support. They're getting their visa in as little as 60 days and their residency card and everything else that goes along with that visa. Um, but they're already saying, you know, "What's our plan C? What's our plan D?" My wife, Amanda, and I are on track to be able to have our Mexican passports within the next year or so here, and we're already saying, you know, once we have those, what is our maybe plan C country? You wanna build flexibility, and you also wanna realize that Your first choice countries can close their programs or price out. So you really wanna build that global diversification strategy when you build it before you need it. You wanna start, uh, when you are still ahead, when you still have more options. So if this resonated with you, hit that like button. It helps us out a lot with our mission of reaching a million entrepreneur expats or aspiring expats. Uh, you also definitely wanna subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell because we cover this kind of thing regularly. If you're interested in more information about moving to Mexico, you can check out our Moving to Mexico guide below this video, as well as some of our other free resources. And like we mentioned earlier, if you've got a million dollars or more in assets and you want some real guidance from our team putting together a global plan, just go to entrepreneurexpat.com/consult. Don't wait for a worse headline to start your planning, to start your global diversification. Go ahead and book that strategy call with our team so that we can help you move to Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America, or come up with a comprehensive holistic plan for your global migration strategy. Thanks so much for being the best part of our community, and we look forward to seeing you again very, very soon.